G'day all,

Something I caught my self doing the other day was intentionally thinking of things that would cause myself to 'Trigger'.

Thinking about it a bit more, I know I have a tendency to try and ignore my feelings, play it down as well as being completely numb/don't care about anything. I also find that I even question my self, 'Am I crazy for feeling like this?' , 'Stop being such an Idiot and grow the <not allowed> up!' and so on.

Recently when I have been getting like this due to the situation I am in, I have found that I have been thinking of events in the past from when I was younger which not only remind me that my feelings are genuine, but are also massive Triggers (due to how bleeding obvious they are to me now) just so I can feeling something (even if it causes myself anxiety and myself to panic).

So I guess my question to ya'll, Has anyone here intentionally made them self trigger and why?

Cheers,
J

Yeah, I have. Usually, for me, it's doing things I KNOW I shouldn't do. like when I look at FTM stuff on Tumblr my mood usually drops big time because of some of the crap I see on that site (especially pre-op nudes, like wtf people). But I keep looking anyway and seeing things that upset me and make me feel bad about myself.

Oh yeah.  Looking at the transition videos on YouTube when I was very short of money (both MTF & FTM).  Best way to send me under the bed with Dopey. But sometimes I just needed to see it was possible

Quote from: immortal gypsy on July 04, 2014, 12:11:32 AM
Oh yeah.  Looking at the transition videos on YouTube when I was very short of money (both MTF & FTM).  Best way to send me under the bed with Dopey. But sometimes I just needed to see it was possible

Yeah, I am guilty of this as well. Very much a double edged sword that one.

One of my big triggers is when I see pictures of FtM with nice beard or hairy chest, I envy every hair of that.
I know many cis men dont have hair (I would be probably one of them) but I'm jealous anyway.
Here in Italy most guys are hairy so it's quite an issue for me.
Sometimes I keep looking anyway because I dream to become like them.

I call them my "WTF are you doing!" meltdowns. A lot of 'grow up', 'you are being stupid', 'This makes no sense' etc. intermixed with equal doses of just plain beating up on yourself with things like 'you know you'll never be happy', 'there is something wrong with you', ect.

Guilt and Shame are powerful forces especially when combined with low to nonexistent self-esteem. That light you see at the end of the tunnel is always a train. If there is anything I am great at it is beating up myself.

To counter it all (which tended to last from hours to WEEKS!) I developed a sort of affirmation. By nature I am a very good problem solver and have a pretty good ability to 'What if' things to death to design and fix things for which I get well paid for. Unfortunately, these superpowers only seemed to work on anything other than myself. In fact, I perhaps could not have a worseer outcome listening to myself.

Aside from one common thread. "I know what does not work". Which pretty much is everything I tried for the a good 40 years to deal with being me. When I get into a WTF funk I constantly remind myself of that. Followed by all the positive things I've seen starting to happen to me and my life.

I think so much of this has to do with such an inherent belief of "I am Bad", aka Shame. A bad, evil, sick person, does not deserve any good things. When we start realizing good things are happening our brains smoke, shame coupled with fear of the unknown join forces for the beatdown.

It does get better. It takes a lot of hard work to shake those two old friends, Guilt and Shame. After 3 years on this journey with some pretty intense self-triggering death spiral meltdowns I haven't really had any for a good year or more. The only times have been related to my wife and the effect all this has on her. Yet again, I do trust her and truely believe it, when she says how much better I am for taking this trip and how much more she loves me now that the real me is breaking out of its hardened shell

I call it facing my feelings.

I think it's really important for me to examine my past and allow me to experience whatever unhappiness comes up. If I do that enough, my past and its reminders lose their power to affect my mood.

I do this all the time. I do need to face my feelings, but there's a time and a place, and I feel like I sometimes get really compulsive about recognizing all feelings anytime it's okay to do so. It's complicated. It's obviously rewarding and important to be aware of and experience your triggers occasionally, but I don't know where to draw the line between healthy and dysfunctional for myself, and I don't know how other people manage it.

This is something I struggle with all the time.  When I'm not feeling particularly dysphoric, I'm uncomfortable because I'm thinking, "Uh oh, I'm not trans today."  I have come to rely on those feelings of dysphoria to tell me that I'm on the right track, and when they're not there, I worry that it's a sign that I should just stay male, or a sign that I'm making a huge mistake by transitioning.

And this is becoming more of a problem as I progress down the transition route with therapy, starting HRT, and all of those other things which have done a good job of making the dysphoria stop burning a hole through my insides.  Triggering those feelings again is a bad habit I've got into to try to make me trust myself that I'm making a good decision by transitioning.

Quote from: JoanneB on July 04, 2014, 06:53:02 AMUnfortunately, these superpowers only seemed to work on anything other than myself.

How true!

Biggest trigger for me is watching guys who have been on T at least a year and pass extremely well etc. I have stopped watching FTM videos on Youtube for this reason. They just make me depressed.