To feel, not to think

That depends at what point you consider yourself to 'know' your identity.

I mean theoretically you could have incredibly strong feelings about your identity and that's fine, but you might find in practice that bits of it don't work.

Let's say, for example, you felt really strongly you were female.

Well what does that actually mean? Does that mean you automatically want long hair, boobs, dresses, make-up, long nails, an overwhelming desire to own all the shoes in the world?

Thing is without experimentation you are left with guess work. You know, I am a woman, I like shoes, but I don't want a million pairs, but if I watched a lot of TV I could be convinced that I need to do so to be a proper woman.

I think you can have strong feelings about it I just know I wouldn't act on it without taking baby steps to try it out first...I mean it's a BIG life change sometimes...

 

Only try things you feel you need to do. For me binding my chest and wear guy clothes were my ways of experimenting with my gender identity. I found that looking at myself with a flat chest just felt 'right'. And when I do that and present male, (which is l always as I'm now full-time me, yay!) I walk with a lot more confidence and my head up, whereas before I always hung my head and watched the floor.

 

It's true that sometimes we let our heads impede our hearts. Even though I feel strongly that I'm a man, my head creeps in to remind me of little chinks in my masculine armor. I question not what I am but how I will choose to live my life. Acceptance is a choice. Ultimately, you will have to feel through this to discover your own truth and the decide what to do with that knowledge.

 

OK quick lesson about experimentation!

Todays subject: PANTIES.

So this was one of my first experiments, hell I even wrote a damn blog about it because I treated it like SCIENCE.

Purpose of the experiment: I WANTED to try wearing panties - note that wanted is in bold and caps. VERY important word. If you don't want to do the experiment, DO NOT DO the experiment!

Planned directions:
1. Buy underwear
2. Wear underwear
3. Assess situation

Reality of situation:
1. Go to buy underwear
2. Beat self up
3. Freak out for 6 weeks
4. Stay up all night. Order from Japan with something else so it wasn't just underwear I bought
5. Get underwear
6. Beat self up
7. Freak out for 6 more weeks
8. Try on underwear
9. Assess situation

Experimentation for things like this doesn't usually go as planned until you're comfortable with what you are doing, and to get comfortable you need to be able to stop thinking "A guy wouldn't do this" or "What if someone finds out". It is really hard work to get to that point.

I don't know what you are doing at the moment, but I found that if I wore underwear under my normal clothes and went about my day, I would forget about it. I think that is what made it easier was not actually thinking about it at the time.

Instead I noticed that I felt a bit more confident in public. If I'm honest after I had stopped beating myself and telling myself how I should be ashamed the only thing I wanted to do was tell someone else about it.

I don't know what you are experimenting with at the moment, but if you can do it, leave it and forget about it then you can assess.

As for seeing how you feel, stop looking for right and wrong or good and bad. Instead just look for CHANGE.

It shouldn't be too hard for you to make a note of how you feel before you start to experiment with things. When you do experiment just take a mental note if how you feel changes even if you don't understand HOW it has changed.