I'm very confused about this. In my head, I try to think of myself as male, and when I do it feels right. But if I'm not consciously trying to think of myself as male, then I think of myself as female, and that makes me feel disgusting and sick and I hate myself. But I'm finding it very very hard to change the way I view myself, and its making me upset and making me doubt my gender. I'm just wondering how it was for you guys, like how easy was it to start thinking of yourself as a different gender, or was easier once people started using the right pronouns and seeing you as your gender?
I think it's understandable that it might take a long time to adjust if you've been addressed a certain way your whole life. I've always thought of myself as male but it took a while for me to adjust to pronouns
Hey, I'm not that far ahead in my transition. I too am a female and when I imagine myself as a male I feel right. Like if that was me then I wouldn't have worries concerning myself anymore. At first when I started to think that way I was very young so I thought of it as something wrong and I made myself think that it was something shameful which I have to hide so I kept those toughs to myself. I would usually wait to go to bed and then i would imagine myself in all sorts of situations if I was male and that made me happy. But on the morning when I was supposed to get up and move on with my normal female life I would get depressed. I wouldn't want to get out of bed because the illusion would disappear. I still feel this way most of the time. I recently started to understand what these feelings mean and that I'm not the only one that has experienced them. I do feel uneasy in my female body, even more when i have to wear something that would show clearly that I have boobs (and mine are pretty huge so it's not something that I can hide easily. I still doubt my gender because sometimes I feel OK being female and sometimes I loath is so much that I want to rip my breast away with my bare hands so I would be able to look at myself. I don't know if it gets easier once people start using the right pronouns or seeing you as the gender that you feel you are. I know I feel very uncomfortable when someone close to me refers to me as "he" but that uneasiness is caused mainly because I'm scared what they think of me when they say it. And I know that I feel extremely happy and exited when someone on the street mistakes me for a male but I don't really think I can be one or the other (male or female). I don't see myself as a full male nor full female. I would be happy to be a female mistaken for a pretty boy. I guess it depends on you what gender you feel you are or don't feel you are. You have to decide that for yourself and then begin the transition to who you want to be recognized as.
It's taking me awhile to adjust too. It seems everytime I start to see myself as Ashe, someone calls me by my real name and it's jarring.
I still do that. I think it's because we've been brought up being used to seeing ourselves as females for our whole lives.
It's funny how I can relate to what you described there, but I ended up by just convincing myself that I was female and that's it. Not that I'm completely happy with it, but I can live with that.
I'm not sure how I do it. I've just always defaultedly seen myself as Not Female, to the point where I used to have to try very hard to see myself as Straight Up Female Inside And Out. I've never really seen myself as female in anything but body and body alone. Socially, yes, it's still jarring. Most people still refer to me in the feminine, and very few are aware of how I prefer to be seen and addressed at this point in time.
It makes sense as what the other people have said, it must be very hard getting used to something that has been pinned on you for literally your entire life. I had the same thing when thinking that I was gay- I would think of myself as a lesbian- it would feel right, but then the flood of anxiety would wave over me as I was accepting (... Or *not* accepting) my sexual. It sounds like you are in a similar situation with your gender. *hugs*
yeah, i get it. i'm about 50/50 for how i refer to myself in my head, at the moment. and whenever i refer to myself as a girl, get all "wait you're a guy, you're supposed to be a guy, are you really a girl is that why you thought 'she', what have you done" etc. but i think it just takes getting used to.
I've not told anyone about what I'm feeling yet so I've not had the experience of anyone who knows me referring to me as male. The only time that's happened has been with strangers and it's always made me really pleased. I'm usually grinning inside when they're getting all embarrassed and apologising for their mistake. Over the last week or so I've set myself up a new email account as Andrew and started using the name to log in to some websites I use. I've also tried replacing my name in my email signature at work, just to see what it would look like. It just seems to fit me so much more. I think it'll be far more difficult to get used to ticking the male box than using a different name though.
