Through my life, I've always felt very androgyne, though I do have my male and female feeling moments. I've been squeezed into the female role that my body was assigned to, but it feels too right whenever I bind my breasts down or choose to wear converse instead of cute sandals. My shift in thinking and feeling is so clear that I identify as a tri-gender FtA. I really wish I had more balance, though. I think I need to stop being so envious of those who have been able to feel like one thing all their life, right or wrong.

I've always been about 100 lbs overweight and I've also had significant self image issues - hating myself for feeling different from everyone else and not fitting in. I've internalized way too much blame over the years and it's destroyed me.

I bought new clothes at target to help me embrace my androgyne side more- my closet was much too feminine and it wasnt reflecting me. My parents asked me about it. I told them about my fluidity, and here's what my dad said-

"I'm a physician, and dabbled in psychiatry. I believe you just have self confidence issues and you're just too lazy to put anything into your appearance."

I don't like spending 10 minutes in front of the blow dryer with my hair. True. I hate makeup- foundation feels so caked on. And I don't really like wearing jewelry. So I don't. It just doesn't feel right. My MtF partner and I were at walmart the other day. She was going nuts over the adorable accessories. I was standing there thinking "what the heck is wrong with me? why am I not getting this excited when I should be?" I am lazy, I know, but with many other experiences like that behind me, I'm just so confused because of all of this external stuff I have to deal with from other people.

Is my self confidence and self esteem low because i'm different from everyone and have never fit in? The oppression over the years, and the stigma of being different? I was always interested in things that were inherently girly and boyish. A nice mixture. Or does my gender identity feel like it's changing because of confidence and self esteem? To me, that feels backwards. << My parents are very straight edge and subscribe to the gender binaries. When I came out to them as a lesbian (which I thought I was at the time, but in all actuality I'm really more of a pansexual, that's another topic) they were against it. My parents advocated for defense of marriage between a man and a woman.

What are your experiences like? I'm still trying to come to terms with my gender identity and sexuality, and damn is it hard. It's going to be so hard explaining everything from here on out. They are going to find out when I finally get surgery to take off my breasts. It'll be obvious. My partner plans on making a full transition- and she's starting hrt soon. So much ahead of us. >.>

Self confidence and self esteem - are these affected by our gender? Or is our gender affected by them?

Quote from: Ketsuban on May 11, 2014, 04:00:45 PM
Self confidence and self esteem - are these affected by our gender? Or is our gender affected by them?

I think it depends on the person. My lack of suitability for my gender assigned at birth held me back in big ways - socially, professionally, and general satisfaction with life. In my teens and 20s, my confidence took a hit. As my 30s wore on into my 40s and I developed a successful family life and career, I was able to build confidence as a non-conforming member of the male gender. When I transitioned, this confidence followed me - I'm now as confident as a woman as I was as a man.

Is my self confidence and self esteem low because i'm different from everyone and have never fit in? The oppression over the years, and the stigma of being different?

This for me.  Needs to be unlearned, its based on bull and its not valid for us.  Being different is a positive not a negative. Self esteem issues are complicated.  I have them as an alcoholic.  I hope you find a way to overcome that self esteem issue.  It has to come from inside you, not from the outside.

I hope that helps somehow.

Interesting thread.  I am finding that my confidence is increasing rather than decreasing, as I become more understanding of my gender, of my non binary nature and of it's fluidity.  This may be in part celebration of the fact that I now understand the reason for my intense dysphoria; that I have found an effective treatment (low dose hrt); that I am finding relief from a more flexible expression; and that we have been able to maintain our marriage through a MTA/Q transition. 

At the same time I have found much support, insight and advice from folk on Susans as well as an increasing body of opinion that supports gender as a bio/psycho/social phenomenon rather than what I had feared as arising from a deviant personality or damaged psyche.  Learning that I am not broken, that I can empower myself with endo assistance to craft and find my way forward has been enormously beneficial both for my confidence and for my self esteem.

It is however a little like learning to walk, or to riding a bike, in that the first few steps are unsteady and uncertain. But I am now setting a direction and speed within my growing capabilities.  Pursuing adventure and a more challenging course will require unconscious competence, but I sense that this is attainable and will happen, and then I will be in a truly wonderful place.

Safe travels

Aisla

If there's one thing I know, it's that the more you internalize those feelings, the more they will eat at you...

They're eating me too. 

Honestly pretty much of the time lately, I just feel like gender is ridiculous and anyone in my position would think so, but people as a whole haven't really been in my position. I try not to be too hard on society and especially on myself, but that's so easy to just say...

I wouldn't blame yourself for not getting excited about things, only, if you think you would naturally get excited about them but you can't, that's definitely a depression thing.

Idk, bleh. Hugs... ;o;

Life pivots around moments in time.
Understand that those moments are events that we don't have to control in themselves.
We do have control over the direction we move as we pivot passed them. Choices.
They may be limited, they may not be good, but there is always the direction that will get you to the next point.
The one you will have a better direction, one that will get you to the next point in time, the next pivot.

What's around the next corner is not guaranteed to be one that you will like.
Do your best and move forward to the next curve in your road.
Something blocking your road? Learn what you need to fly past it, around it, even through it.
Find the key to the locked door or learn to break it down.

Things can always be worse, to the point that when they can't possibly get any worse, then things can only get better.
That's a tough road to be on...
The other one, is the one that things are always getting better.
Eventually you run out of the possibility of things getting better, you live with the fear of knowing they will only get worse.
That's a tougher road to be on.

At the crossroads? Know that to step past the edge of your fears is to step out of your comfort zone.
Right there is where life begins, to step past it is to live. Your comfort zone will be right behind you, you can step back when you need to.

The glass of water isn't half full or half empty, it's simply a glass of water. Drink if you need to and move on.

Those points in time that you pivot on have no width, no height or depth. If they seem to, it's an illusion that you let your idea of time fool you with.
We use time to mark the events that shape our lives, to count those moments we pivot on.
To sit still and wait for them to come to you, you'll be waiting a lot longer than if you seek them out.
There's no guarantee that the next one will be any better or worse. But you need them to get through life.

A lot of times I feel like I'm lucky, that I have skated right through...
I'm still here, something must have gone right. But when I look back I see nothing but mistakes that I've made.
When I look forward, I see the solutions, what I've learned from those mistakes that I try to leave in the past.
Some mistakes I carry with me, I'm not done learning from them yet.
Some are pretty damn heavy, but they get lighter the more I learn from them.
It's how I lighten my load, so I can run again...
Always looking several or more steps ahead to see what I need to push off from, to leap over.
It feels like flying, only because I think that one day I will be able too.
It doesn't matter if I ever do or not, it's simply the idea that is the point of it.
Everything that I see up ahead to push off from, to keep my momentum up...
Life pivots on them, they are moments in time.
Ativan

I like that! Philosophical. True. And sometimes making the best of a situation requires an attitude adjustment. Rigidity can be destructive. Flexibility is valuable trait.

my confidence grows as i learn to accept myself, just the way i am. it seems that the lack of confidence and self esteem came mostly from denying myself. from never giving myself a chance to be as different as i really am. from always wanting to be special, just not in the way i am. now i know who i am, what makes me special, whay makes me strong. and as i learn more about my weaknesses, my confidence still grows, because i learn how to conquer those weaknesses too.

I like the title "Gender fluidity, self confidence, self esteem" because for me they all go hand in hand and can be viewed as ascending steps if you will. I initially thought about gender in binary terms and was headed toward full MtF transition. "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" Then came a ray of clarity in my mind's eye and I began to see things differently, that some sort of gender fluidity was going to be a more realistic approach toward settling my internal turmoil. The idea of having to submit to all manner of surgical slicing and dicing as a requirement to fit in a binary mold suddenly became less important.

As I morphed mentally and outwardly in my style and presentation as more androgynous in every respect, I began to like who I was becoming and my need to be recognized as either male or female lessened more each week. The concept of a need to pass went by the wayside, after all what gender criteria do I need to expose just for the sake of satiating the comfort of others? My need to be liked and accepted by strangers and onlookers has never been the least bit important to me. My approach to this was having diverted my headlong plunge into transition toward a more subtle incremental change as I explored the possibilities of a non-binary mindset. This new strategy would allow family and friends to consider that perhaps I was simply just becoming a rather colorful and still lovable eccentric rather than someone who had gone off the rails and had detonated an atom bomb in their faces. This then was the key to building my own self confidence under a different kind of transition altogether.

Finally, and though my life didn't ever really depend on it, came acceptance from those that really counted in my life and the understanding that those others who turned away had perhaps never been true friends and merely casual associates whose opinions never held any sway over me anyway. This internal and external bulldozing away of the nonessentials has been most liberating and I have come to really enjoy who and what I am and am not for once.

When I learned that self esteem is not dependant on gender, but on how we react to gender, how we face the struggle of living in a binary and confused world, then self esteem began to evolve from a deep center, a core that is built on values, on genuine personality, on who I am deep down, before the programmers installed what turned into a virus of self condemnation, based on them being contaminated with rigid views that do not include or recognize the reality of the fluidity of human nature....and all this from a young age.

Be who you are.  " Eyes wide open heart undefended, innocence untarnished...cinderalla man, hang on to you plan, try as they might they cannot steal your dreams" - Jethro Tull

Just make sure before doing anything surgical that you are absolutely sure about your choices, and identify where fear blocks and why it is there.... know yourself.  There is time.

But self esteem is based on what we do for others without looking for compensation or validation.  It is created spiritually, I think, and from seeing through things, and the experience of surviving much.

We generally walk tough paths in here, but we keep walking...

Hang in there and be careful.   Journey's beginning here.  Take  time and enjoy the process as much as you can.

Love to all here.

By the way I am in agreement with Shantel... the key to me is in authenticity, and you can't get to authentic until you really understand yourself, can quiet the noise around you, and find the truth of who you are.  Only then is it safe to form the body with surgery and hormones.

I love fluidity.  It is a big part of who I am, in all of its complexity and freedoms.

Fear is not a good motivator, nor any of the other heavy emotions.  Truth is the best motivator.  My journey took quite a while to find it, and then accept it, and then build self esteem upon it.  Deep down in our guts we know who we are, and we need to listen to that voice carefully, or we pay a price for it.

Many thanks again to all here.

Actually I think we all are in agreement...

For a long time, I actually had been thinking fluidity was the antithesis of confidence. Thinking to myself, just pick one already, and that being confident was impossible unless one is gender static. What if I was wrong about that? That line of thinking started long before I knew of the concept of fluidity, or any other non-binary identity. Going back and forth between I'm a guy and I really want SRS then back to being a guy but feeling guilty about even considering SRS has been my existence ever since I heard of SRS as a kid.

While picking one might seem more decisive, picking either one eventually makes me dysphoric, even if dysphoric in totally different ways depending on which binary I pick. If there's anything I truly am confident regarding gender right now, it's that I am genderfluid. I'm also fairly certain I need to stay androgynous, even if it's difficult being Non-binary in this binary world.

I learn so much by quieting myself long enough to really listen to you all.
Whether asking the questions that we all have, or answering them in the ways we know that are ourselves.
I quiet the incessant thinking of to many things at once and just listen.
This process of learning is ongoing.
It's a never ending quest and I wouldn't have it any other way.

From Shan: 'This internal and external bulldozing away of the nonessentials has been most liberating and I have come to really enjoy who and what I am and am not for once.'

From SJ: 'you can't get to authentic until you really understand yourself, can quiet the noise around you, and find the truth of who you are.'
'Truth is the best motivator.  My journey took quite a while to find it, and then accept it, and then build self esteem upon it.  Deep down in our guts we know who we are, and we need to listen to that voice carefully'

In the back of my thinking is a thought that persists.
That one day, somehow, I will run across that pile of all the things that were wrong, all the mistakes I've made.
I'll run right to the edge, the cliff I made out of them.
I won't stop at the edge and look down, I won't step off and fall...
I'll run and then leap. I will fly.
Ativan

Quote from: Ativan Prescribed on July 04, 2014, 10:05:07 AM

In the back of my thinking is a thought that persists.
That one day, somehow, I will run across that pile of all the things that were wrong, all the mistakes I've made.
I'll run right to the edge, the cliff I made out of them.
I won't stop at the edge and look down, I won't step off and fall...
I'll run and then leap. I will fly.
Ativan

Great aspiration!

But what if these choices were not really mistakes and were in fact nothing more than necessary steps in our development and on our life path?

I am finding great benefit in owning my choices.  They were the best I could do at the time.  Even if later they are shown to be poor choices,  there is learning and peace in acceptance, ownership and integration.

Aisla

Quote from: Aisla on July 04, 2014, 02:23:23 PM
But what if these choices were not really mistakes and were in fact nothing more than necessary steps in our development and on our life path?

I am finding great benefit in owning my choices.  They were the best I could do at the time.  Even if later they are shown to be poor choices,  there is learning and peace in acceptance, ownership and integration.

Aisla

I commented about this elsewhere, but I was owning my choice yesterday, it was too hot for a hoodie or a vest, I didn't want to wear one of my hawaiian style shirts either, I hate collard shirts when it's hot. I went to the supermarket in sandals, skinny jeans that show off a rather female ass and thighs after all these years on HRT. I was wearing a very clingy light cotton Henley T shirt over a Coobie Bra covering my large B sized boobs and a white baseball cap with crushed bill. My silver hair was flying all over and I got a load of second takes from people, the assistant store manager stopped me to chat and shook my hand, just another normal transdrogynous day and a chance to give a few shoppers a cheap visual thrill and something to talk about.

Excellent.  Btw happy holiday

Aisla

Quote from: Aisla on July 04, 2014, 02:57:30 PM
Excellent.  Btw happy holiday

Aisla

Thanks hon, you likewise. I'm babysitting a scared dog, he's going to get some doggie drugs soon!