what do you do when you feel doubts?
what do you do when you feel doubts?
I can't seem to shake imposter syndrome or doubts about whether I'm "trans" or whether I'm a woman, etc.
Just wondering what you all do when you feel that way, if you have any recommendations?
It makes me feel awful, there is so much commitment to a transition it feels like you have to be certain, but I just don't have constant certainty.
Sometimes I'll sit down and try to analyze it objectively, basically considering the "null hypothecis" - if I am not trans, then I would be cis, if I were cis then a certain set of things would be true (like, estrogen would probably not feel so great, testosterone would not make me depressed, etc.).
I keep this in my phone for whenever those thoughts hit.
I love this tweet, but it doesn't seem to do much for dispelling doubts. Admittedly I tend to over-think everything, and I am interested in philosophy (especially epistemology), so maybe some of this is just my temperament intersecting in an unfortunate way with a difficult life choice.
If you like epistemology, then I have some thoughts that might help.
At a neurological level, our brain seems to store information in terms of essence. To simplify and generalize the raw information our sensory organs capture, multiple stages of compression break it into something we can efficiently work with. For vision, your brain breaks info into elements like lines movement, color. From there, it tries to place the subject and the context, identifying what it sees and where it is separately.
The fun part of this system is that it does a lot of generation. The raw image you receive from your eyes looks like shit. It's mostly light and dark, with a small section of 8k full color and a blind spot right under it. We perceive reality like a movie by constantly moving that 8k part to get as much info as possible. Our brain fills in any missing details with what it thinks should be there.
We understand the world by simulating it in our minds. Like an AI generation model, it builds a version of reality using the interconnected schemas we piece together over our lifetime. Our memories and past experiences are saved as generative prompts of what happened, not what actually happened. Every single time you remember something, you're not accessing a detailed file, but generating it from scratch using key details and connections.
The end result of using fallible essences to build our reality is that we often struggle when they reveal their inaccuracy. When ideas are central to our being, understandings indispensable to our entire view of the world, we try everything possible to preserve it.
Realizing you are trans feels like a Matrix level reversal of reality because it truly is. There is no reality we exist in other than the one our mind builds. Having such a core paradigm overturned feels like the world was turned on its head and pulled inside out. It's hard to let go of that old reality emotionally, as without it you free fall through uncertainty.
It's hard, but rejecting solipsism will get you to the most likely epistemological truth: We will never escape this cave. We can never perceive anything but shadows of what's out there. Even our most well tested and fundamental theories of science rely on shadows that tell an incomplete story. If we found an understanding of everything, it would still be a shadow. The most generalizable shadow, but still only a representation of the true form.
.........
There's always a chance you're wrong about your identity, but with the abandonment of certainty comes the rejection of deduction. You can't prove that you have the "transfem essence" because no essence can be proven for reality.
Medical disorders? Tools fundamentally relative to place and time. Taxonomic definitions? Created for convenience. Quantum particles? They ain't truly particles, just quantized bits! We made it ALL the fuck up.
You probably can't find that certainty. It's most likely impossible. The best we can do is choose the most likely option and move on. You've started your transition. Being cis isn't the null; being trans is.
Cis guy here. I don't question my sex/gender etc. If you're not entirely sure, I would reckon that, at the very least you're somewhere in between. All that being said, glory to you, and your identity :)
I used to think I was a cis guy :-) I guess many trans women have thought that. I didn't really question my sex or gender that much either, if anything I actively avoided doing that. I knew I was a bit non-conforming in my gender, I wasn't the manliest man, so I felt insecure in my masculinity and tried to compensate in various ways.
And when I first transitioned, the intense doubts at first made me think I was non-binary (in-between), but what helped me realize that was unlikely is that there was nothing about masculinity that felt affirming or good to me, and nothing about femininity that feels off or wrong to me. I truly wish I had been born a cis woman, and I have long felt that being a woman is the best thing you can be (even when I thought I was a cis man).
Yup, those are thoughts that don't occur to me, not that there is anything wrong with them, either way of course. I too wish you were born in your body of choice. I however support your transition into the person you wish to be, kind stranger. I desperately hope you live in an area where bigotry isn't prevalent, and you can be safe with who you are. I genuinely wish you the best, and may you live an long and happy life.
we like to look back on our many "egg moments". makes us feel much better. those moments where we said the most trans thing to ever be said, etc
(totally valid to not have these but a lot of creatures do)
My friend told me he didn't notice any signs when I came out to him. I noted that I "joked" with him frequently about being a lesbian. His mind just about melted from the realization.
In any case I was wrong, I'm Pan but there are moments like that sprinkled throughout our eggy pre-lives that everyone else pays no mind to and sometimes so do we.
Yes, in the first few months after egg-cracking I would sit down and journal for an hour, writing out every "sign" or indication I could remember from growing up where suddenly I could make sense of it because I was trans. Things like: why in 3rd grade did I wear a heavy winter coat in the hot summers, why did I never feel comfortable showing my legs or arms in public (there wasn't a single day I went to school in shorts and short sleeves, I covered up no matter how hot and humid the weather was).
I decided to not worry about labels and instead figure out what I want. Who cares whether I'm Really Trans™ if I get to have a feminine body -- and that's something (if I'm honest) I've wanted so much since... well, as long as I can remember. Do I feel like a woman? Eh, who knows. I certainly never felt much like a man. Or a human, come to that.
And sure, some days I don't want to look at my dysphoria-inducing face practicing makeup, or listen to my dysphoria-inducing voice doing training, and that's fine. Put on some androgynous clothes, cuddle up with Blåhaj and Trust the Process while I watch a film or something. More often than not I end up wanting to do something girly anyway after a while.
And some days, when I get the tuck just right, and my hair isn't too bad, and I've got on some nice tight jeans and a cute sweater, I think: "do I want to be a trans woman?". And the answer is hell, yeah.
The doubts seem to be able to shift from "am I trans" to "is this affirming" really easily. Even when I can feel it is affirming, the non-affirming aspects of being trans, the literal dysphoria that confirms I am trans, can make me feel confused about whether I am delusional about what I am feeling, about what I find affirming, etc.
I think a lot of the doubting comes from fear about being trans, about the commitment and long-term and permanent changes to my body, and so on. In a world without transphobia I might feel some doubts or uncertainty, and that could be difficult (I'm the kind of person that can't get a tattoo because it's "Permanent"), but I think I would have a lot less obsessive doubting, a lot of this is just coming from some kind of survival drive or something, lol.
And yeah, I feel the ups and downs. Androgynous clothes never help me, but some kinds of self-care like shaving can be a bit brutal, having to look at my face in the mirror, etc.
I’m the kind of person that can’t get a tattoo because it’s “Permanent”
I had this too! I think it came from an internalized idea of "I must accept the body I was born with." Gave me a massive crisis when my girlfriend at the time got her ears pierced... I was so close to figuring it all out 20 years ago!
Now I've allowed myself to change my body, that's all just vanished. Still don't fancy a tattoo though :P
I just remember that I'm biohacking my body with hormones, and remember that's rad as fuck, and that I'm rad as fuck, and anybody who thinks otherwise is most defiantly not rad as fuck.
lol, I don't have that kind of confidence or self-esteem. Where you see rad biohacking, I see fragility and disease - a problem with my body that makes me reliant on industrial inputs I cannot produce myself, which keep me desperate and dependent (esp. on my employer, my only feasible path to health insurance).
When that happens, I think of aging. I notice that I would dread aging as a man but I am fine with aging to be an old lady.
I do feel like ageing will somehow rob me of my gender, since being a woman feels so tied up in being pretty and having a man's body puts so much pressure on doing everything you can to lean into being pretty so you won't be confused for a man. Being old will texture my skin and make it harder to appear as a woman, but maybe it won't be such a big deal.
Either way, another one that struck me was that I thought I had body dysmorphia and just hated being fat, but what I realized one day is that actually I hated the male pattern fat distribution on my body, and I wouldn't mind feminine fat distribution even if it made me not skinny, etc. Recognizing there was a gendered lens to my body hatred was a shock to me.
I had a lot of doubts to begin with. Part of what helped me was learning that it's not useful to think of words like trans as prescriptive, but as descriptive. I started only thinking in terms of benefits and making myself comfortable.
I want to wear different clothes and otherwise present myself differently because I've always wanted to? Then I'll do that.
I tried HRT and I liked the mental and physical effects? Then I'll continue with HRT.
I have no connection to my name and prefer a female coded name? Then I'll use a new female coded name.
Etc. etc.
Trans is just a word and the more important part is making yourself happy.
Edit: The word trans is useful because it describes a bunch of the stuff I'm doing, and it makes me happy when I see things that are trans supportive. I think it's also worth remembering that gender is a spectrum and that being transgender is defined as not identifying with the gender you were assigned at birth/not being cis, and therefore includes a lot of identities and ways of expressing yourself.
No one else gets to go inside your head and tell you how you feel, so it's only up to you to decide whether or not you are trans. Honestly you can do a bunch of gender non-conforming things and even do all sorts of transitiony things and stuff associated with being trans and then just decide to "not be trans" if you feel like it, even if others might describe you as such. What do they know anyways? Most people haven't really put their gender identity under the looking glass or even so much as read about the subject.
Yes, I do tend to think of the trans label as a diagnostic category that if I'm in it, I should do certain things, so it is prescriptive and that grounds my choices around transitioning. Before transition I couldn't motivate myself around things like my comfort or desires, that felt too selfish, especially for something that admittedly blows up my life and creates so many problems (I have lost several family members as a result of transitioning, for example).
It was only by realizing I was essentially living with a condition and not medicated that I was being irresponsible, and that was being a burden on others because I was living this way.
That said, whether I think of trans as prescriptive or descriptive, the doubt feelings have a foothold because it can equally target uncertainty about what I experience as what I want or find comforting - I can wonder if I am delusional about my own assessment of the mental and physical effects of HRT. This is especially the case when I started HRT and realized I had been really not mentally well for most of my life and not realized it. I had depression, suicidal ideation, intense anxiety, and a whole host of other issues that seemed to magically disappear when I started HRT, and the fact that I had never thought I had those things before really unseated my confidence in self-perception.
Anyway, yes - at the end of the day it's undeniable and not ambiguous that I'm a trans woman, I feel very happy on estrogen and as a woman, etc. - the doubts are truly disconnected from reality, or maybe a better way of putting it is that the doubts are an attempt to rationalize detransitioning because it's risky and scary being a trans woman where I live, and there is a part of me that is clearly concerned about survival as a trans person. (Of course, detransitioning at this point is even more likely to threaten my survival, just in a different way.)
Yes, I do tend to think of the trans label as a diagnostic category that if I'm in it, I should do certain things,
That's because of generations of transphobic gatekeeping shoving that down our throats. They hide the people who don't fit the acceptable narratives, and deny them care and invalidate them.
That is absolutely not what being trans is about.
Being trans is about taking the steps to live your life on your own terms. If you don't know what your own terms are, then its giving yourself permission to explore and find out, because even that is living your life on your own terms.
It was only by realizing I was essentially living with a condition and not medicated that I was being irresponsible, and that was being a burden on others because I was living this way.
The reality of living with dysphoria is real, but it's important that you don't equate dysphoria and trans identity. One can be trans without dysphoria, and whilst there is a relationship between the two, they are distinct, and one doesn't automatically flow from the other.
You don't need to know all the answers. You don't need a diagnosis. You don't need a permanent and forever label that you are 100% certain of, because honestly, none of those things will give you what you want. If you're chasing them, it's because you are trying to validate who you are to yourself and to others. And that self doubt is a real thing, that so many of us struggle with. But we don't solve it by finding labels and saying "See, I've got proof", because the self doubt doesn't care about that, and will still sneak through the cracks.
We disempower self doubt by living our lives on our own terms, and over time, the truth of our lived experience starts to undo the lifetime of self doubt we've been taught. Of course, it's much harder than a single sentence makes it sound, but just be careful not to fall in to the trap of chasing labels and identity as the answer to the doubts you have, because they're not. The labels help you understand more about yourself and the people around you, but they're tools, not answers
I cracked my egg about 1 month ago. I'm about to start HRT in less than 2 months (MTF). I'm 26.
I sometimes do have moments of doubts but they quickly vanish when I look at myself in the mirror wearing my fem clothes, or when I do makeup. Something incredible is how I feel like jolts of pure happiness when people call me by my new name.
I remember the day I told myself I am trans and going to do HRT. There was a storm and I was outside yelling, crying and dancing. I didn't care about the rain, nothing mattered around me for a moment, just me being incredibly happy, maybe for the first time in my life. Just the realisation itself is a strong sign for me.
First of all, congrats - I wish I had transitioned when I was 26!
I do feel happiness when called my name (esp. by strangers or people who didn't know me pre-transition), and I feel happy wearing women's clothes (I felt this way before my egg cracked too, which is weird because I have internalized wearing women's clothes as a part of my "cis male" identity and experience).
I think "doubt" becomes a bit of an amorphous term, at some point I think it's clear that what I'm experiencing is essentially an emotion, a sense of insecurity, fear, and uncertainty about transitioning rather than a reasonable intuition that I'm not trans or that I am wrong. Ironically I seem to "doubt" the most when I am dysphoric and feeling the symptoms that prove I am trans most strongly, when I can look at those symptoms and reason through that this is what makes me trans.
I had a lot of doubts before coming out and getting on HRT. Now I know I am a woman, sure I still have days I don't feel pretty and dysphoria gets me down, some days I don't feel like a woman and I just feel like me.. But before HRT I never felt like me, I had nice distractions time to time, but I never felt comfortable in my own skin and now I have that most of the time. <3
Some days you don't "feel like a woman", but on days when you "feel like a woman" what is that like for you?
I find there is almost a psycho-social aspect to "feeling like a woman" - that getting dressed up, wearing makeup, and then being in society as a woman results in something remarkable where I begin to see myself as a woman more.
I have habituated seeing myself as a man in this same psycho-social way, and in my dreams I sometimes revert to a "man" this way, and sometimes in my dreams I am a "man living as a woman" in that particular trans way (where my body is neither fully male nor female, and I try to live as a woman but feel insecure in that position).
All that said, I felt like being a man was more truly a deception somehow. For whatever insecurities I have as a woman, being a woman doesn't make me feel like I'm putting on a fake character or show for people the way that I felt when I tried to live and pass as a man (the fact that I felt like I had to "pass" as a man when I was assigned male at birth is maybe a sign here).
I agree that I feel much more comfortable in my skin, but sometimes it feels like maybe some dissociation thaws and I suddenly become much more sensitive to my male body - like all the positive effects from transitioning overshoot and I suddenly expect myself to be a cis woman in a cis woman's body, and reminders that this isn't true then are even more disturbing than it felt when I felt fully like a monster but felt so far away from being "me" in my body.
I discussed this with my partner, this was a huge comment to unpack. And we agree that maybe you aren't quite feeling doubts, but instead insecurity/imposter syndrome. And that is something I mean when I say I feel not like a woman some days, and in others that I don't feel as pretty as I'd like. We have some extra baggage having come from a testosterone heavy past and we experience the same insecurities a cis person would experience with that added.
That said in the social aspect I receive a lot of affirmation, and I honestly don't even try to pass. I struggle but honestly I have to recognize that most of my battles are between me and my mirror, colored by thoughts of my pre-transition self.
I have a couple answers to this that might be uncommon, personal, and wouldn't have helped me in the early stages, but were the final nails in the coffin of this doubt for me and I haven't ever worried about it since.
The first came a couple months after coming out. I noticed that I had already changed a lot, almost entirely mental. I couldn't describe exactly how, but it felt like I really had done myself a favor and burned the bridges I needed to in order to take control of my life. At that point, I started to figure - well, if this whole being-a-girl thing doesn't work out, who's to say I can't transition again? I couldn't imagine going back to who I was before - I knew that if I was going to ever identify as masculine again, it'd be a retransition, not a detransition. And tbh if that ever happens I very much look forward to what new roads lie in front of me. It's nothing to be afraid of - everyone I fell out with in the process of coming out was no real friend of mine anyway. And I know the people in my life now would have my back.
The second was that I developed pretty severe fibromyalgia after some time on HRT. I think I had it to a low grade before? But it definitely worsened to a disabling degree after about a year on hormones. It's not a very well understood condition (and as a diagnosis of exclusion it's probably not just one condition) but it's a lot more common in women, which maybe implies it's just part of how my body works on estrogen. So I had a choice to make - would I rather go off estrogen if it'd help with the pain? And the answer was a surprisingly immediate and definitive "hell fucking no". Even with a new disability life was so much better. That's the point I knew it was the right choice and I've never doubted it since.
I guess the way I'd tie this up is - it took a long while after I started giving it a go to be 100% assured I'd made the right decision. It is a leap of faith you will have to make without a guarantee - that said, if you're thinking about it to this level your odds are probably extremely high. And you'll know pretty quick if things like HRT are for you or not.
You might also benefit from nonbinary identity in the meantime to give yourself the space to explore any and all options. I landed on identifying as nonbinary but broadly transfemme - you can figure out the more specific parts of your identity later, just figure out what you want to explore in the present and you'll get there with some time!
I've been on HRT for 2 months and I still have doubts occasionally. But then I think of stopping HRT and going back to how it was before and it fills me with absolute terror. That really helps with the doubts.
Deciding whether to start HRT in the first place was a bit more difficult, but it helped to realistically compare the two options. I could either start HRT and have a small probability of finding out it wasn't right for me and regretting it. Or I could do nothing, but I already knew that I would regret that decision for the rest of my life. So I went with the better odds!
Yes, once I started HRT taking seriously the thought of stopping definitely shocks me back into affirming continuing HRT. I think sometimes I forget how bad it was before I was on HRT and it allows me to entertain delusional thinking, like that it's all just placebo, etc.
Deciding HRT was definitely diagnostic for me as well, and it seems I clearly prefer it.
That's a great question, I probably should have an answer to that
I think about what my character would be on the character creation screen if I was given a free respawn.
If that doesn't work, I think about cutting my hair, bagging everything feminine in the house, throwing it away, etc. That idea usually has me in tears. (Is that a clue I'm not cis?)
Also trying to remember how depressing it is to go back to presenting as male.