Aisla,

Thank you for this advice.  It is something I will consider.

I also wanted to say that I'm very happy that my thread was able to help so many others. 

It is a terrific thread.  And I am worried about you.  I would encourage you to keep good professional gender therapist/endo around you, will echo Aisla's sentiment on finding a stable hormone level that agrees with your core identity and physical needs, without vascilation on again off again on hormones, all or nothing. 

Fluidity can be part of identity, as well as core, as well as physical, as well as presentational.  They all are different factors, for me.

Its ok to be anything at any time, but important to be able to just feel without stuffing your feelings.  To live.  To be real.  To breathe.  To rest in that realness.  As it changes, as it morphs based on new experiences.  Need to flow with it.

Stay with us dear and post a lot and listen a lot and vent and be present.  Sooner or later, things will be more clear, starting with acceptance of yourself and conditions outside yourself as they are.  Once accepted, they can be changed or challenged, but the first step comes with accepting life on life's terms, and then getting beyond that.

No not easy owning a non binary identity, nor any trans identity.  But we do own it.  We take ownership of it, and the process of discovery probably never ends.

Be well and be careful.  Testosterone and i do not mix, personally.  Hormones affect people in different and big ways, so be careful with your body and sensitive to it's needs.  It may be perfect for you, it may not be, it may need an adjustment.  Pros need to be in on that one.

So glad to have you return to us.

Satinjoy,

Thank you for your caring words. 

Unfortunately, gender therapy has not helped me.  I felt like I was paying a lot of money and getting nowhere. I have a good friend who is much more helpful at helping me explore my feelings from a non-biased point of view.  I end up having to educate gender therapists, so my sessions are more about them than myself.  Even though my therapist was not a stranger to non-binary identity, someone who is binary cannot understand us.  That's how I feel, anyway.  This is made even more complicated with my traditional Korean values and way of thinking.  I spend so much therapy time explaining myself and educating my therapists and I'm so tired of that.  I am not paying money to educate them about culture and gender identity.  That should be done at another time.

Next year, I will be moving to a city with a large Asian population so it is entirely possible that I can find a therapist I mesh with and this problem will be solved.  I'm optimistic!

Yes, I agree going on and off hormones is very bad on my body.  I have eased back on my T dosage and will see how it goes.

It's also hard on me to go from feeling very secure and happy one day to miserable the next.  And I never know why this happens.  I can't always identify triggers.

Part of it is that I am very uncomfortable being seen as female, but I have such a gentle and feminine personality which causes everyone to call me a woman.  *sigh*

I'll try to come back here more often and post, but I get embarrassed at the fact that my feelings go back and forth so often.  I'm naturally a stoic person and rarely share these personal feelings with others, so it's difficult for me.

It is a safe place to express feelings dear.  I have no experience or concept of the cultural issues at all, but the post sounds good.

I hate the ups and downs I have them too, its just life.  Some of those downs are way down.

I was fortunate enough to get a really good therapist.

Hang in there, we are all here.

Quote from: Kouzoku on July 10, 2014, 02:37:34 PMPart of it is that I am very uncomfortable being seen as female, but I have such a gentle and feminine personality which causes everyone to call me a woman.  *sigh*

I'll try to come back here more often and post, but I get embarrassed at the fact that my feelings go back and forth so often.  I'm naturally a stoic person and rarely share these personal feelings with others, so it's difficult for me.

I feel this way too, but as someone MAAB, my experiences have been quite a bit different. Really, I'm a bit jealous of your situation, I'd love to be able to go back and forth between clothing from either side of the department store in public, sometimes I feel like dressing very feminine, but the best I can do is men's slim straight jeans and an athletic cut T-shirt.

Why restrict yourself anymore than you have to? Don't feel bad about wanting to wear some article of clothing, it's mostly arbitrary why some clothes are classified as men's and some are as women's, and these restrictions on color and style vary quite greatly over culture and time.

you don't need to be embarrassed about your feelings changing even more abruptly than the wind. i think quite a few of us have that in common with you. this part of the forums really is my safe haven when i get so unstable i don't know what or who i am any more. there are people here who remind me that no matter what, i will always be me, and there really isn't anything more i have to be.

did you get top surgery, or will you eventually? (i read your posts too lazily to notice whether you included that information.)
do you have any place at all where people will treat you like a guy?

i found that it's much easier to exist when i have this other forum where i'm a guy fulltime. even if people doubt me or misgender me, others will correct them for me. and only a couple of the members know i'm actually trans. just having that place makes it easier for me to keep up my offline life where i'm still stuck with a female role, makes it feel more like i'm just crossdressing for convenience, and the only things that bother me are that i can't take off my boobs along with the female clothing in the afternoon, and i don't have a male voice to add to my online existence.

Yes, I do have places where I can be treated as male.  My dentist assumed I was male anyway since he's also Asian and has seen many feminine looking men.

Some people are just confused and can't guess my gender.  Many people assume I'm female b/c they equate "pretty" with "female" even if other clues point them in the opposite direction.

No, I haven't had any surgery yet, but I think I will have top surgery. 

Yesterday I think that I found part of what's causing me great anxiety.  When I was trying to live a female life, I could attract men and have boyfriends.  I think I equate having a female body with being loved.  Now, I feel like something is wrong with me and that no one will find my third gendered body attractive and that I'm unlovable.  I haven't had a relationship or any human touch since I started transition four years ago.  Yesterday I started seeing a new doctor who gives me massage and acupuncture, so I think that will help but it will only be once every week or two.  I will cherish those visits.  Anyway, that's probably a huge reason why I get tempted to just forget about the entire gender thing and stop hormones.  It is actually a sad predicament as I've been abused most of my life and lack human closeness, love, and touch.  I'm in therapy now to work on this.

I also forgot to add that I'm "out" as third gender to many of my doctors.  So I don't try to hide who I am.

For the past few days, I've been thinking about this non-stop, and have just been a fit of anxiety because I want to just be myself and not have to think about this so much anymore.

What I decided was that much of the advice here about hormones makes sense.  I think that, for me, lowering my T dosage as much as possible is the best option.  So that's what I did this week.  My doctor said that it's my body and so I can do that if I want.  She's very wonderful and I'm lucky that she understands this is about me.  So I'm going to do this for a while and see how things go.

As far as my chest goes, I'm quite flat, but not enough to go without binding.  It's mostly because I have large nipples and they will show through anything.  But my binder actually makes me dysphoric because it makes my very unnaturally flat.  Also, I cannot wear very low cut tops or thin shirts, which is my style, and so I feel constantly trapped and suffocated.  Ideally, I'd like to still have breasts, but ones which are absolutely tiny and I need to have my nipples reduced in size.  One day when I can just put on a shirt, I will feel so relieved.  I cannot wait to throw my binder in the garbage bin.

I'm sharing all of these details because I know that all of you will understand.  I want to show you that your advice has helped me greatly.

So we'll see how things go from here.