Quote from: julia64 on August 12, 2016, 10:28:29 AM
I am at the very beginning of my transition and have been starting to come out to more friends and family, seeing a therapist, started my referral process for an endocrinologist and gotten onto a waitlist for electrolysis (long wait list for the place that was recommended to me). So far everything has been going fairly well but even given that and the amazing support I have been getting form family and friends, I have been feeling very down on myself, feeling hopeless and not wanting to go through this life.
I had a little breakdown in my therapists office today and with my therapists help came to the realization that I need to take some more time for myself. In the past in order to deal with my dysphoria I have just kept myself busy, completely filling my schedule. Since I have come to further accept who I am I have still kept my schedule very busy but have not made anytime for myself, which causes a rift since the outside world currently views me as male and I see myself as female.
I have been having a very rough time lately and have even had some suicidal thoughts which have not been this strong in a very long time. I am pushing through these bad times but they still hurt very much. I am excited and scared to go further down this road of transitioning from male to female and know there will be many hard times but that eventually they will become fewer and further between. I have already had some great times including going to trans-pide where i had never felt so much myself, and I cannot wait for more feelings like this I guess I just need to push through the hard parts.
Sorry for the rant. I just needed to get it all out.
Julia
When I came to the point I needed to take on the Trans-Beast for real I had lost my job, got a new one some 350 miles away in rural West Virginia, working for a defense contractor vs being the hero, can do, can fix anything, engineer in small companies. In other words I wound up with WAY too much quality time with myself. A situation that totally denied me my coping mechanisms I called The 3-D's. Diversions, Distractions, and some Denial.
I feel your pain. I felt a pain much like yours. Taking on something this big is an awesome task. TBH No One wants to be trans. I did anything and everything I could to avoid taking on the beast.
Even as I did I had my dark times. My WTF Am I Doing
meltdowns. Shame and Guilt fueled by fear overwhelmed me at times. Some days just a few moments, other times lasting weeks. The worse often coming on after taking some seemingly major step to what you believe will be good for you. A You that Shame and Guilt says does not deserve anything good. Internalized transphopia can lead to a lot of self esteem and self worth issues too. Believe me!
How did I, Do I Still Do Today, get through these periods? I started with something I learned in my career, "I Know What Does Not Work". Easy to say when you have a smoking box of electronics in front of you. Much harder to apply to your life. But the simple fact is you spent a lot of years doing things that didn't work. I spent many decades never learning. Yet with each and every what now looks like a Baby-Step, my life got a Giant-Step better. Oh sure, it was scary. Plenty of fear before taking that leap along with a lot after as you wait for the world to come crashing down on you. But it didn't. Only some sunshine appearing in a dark cloud filled threatening sky.
As you bring more sunshine into your life, the sky eventually no longer looks threatening. In other words....
It does get better
