Dissociation versus dysphoria gender identity and depression

Don't worry about "faking" anything, just try to figure yourself out. Feeling gender neutral doesn't necessarily mean anything about your gender, and if you're dissociating from depression, it's very unlikely to be related. If you really can't figure out your gender, I find it easier to use a concrete standard (it's hard for me to understand how one can feel like a certain gender). I figured myself out by asking what gender I want to be seen as socially and what I want my biological sex to be.

 

Going off of this advice, I read in a self-help gender book that sometimes it can help to redefine Female as "Receptive/Reactive" and Male as "Aggressive/Active" and think about things or traits that apply to you in these categories and if you would also define them as female/male from those perspectives...

As for your dissociation issues, I'm not sure if I can directly help you with that. Perhaps you should ask yourself though: have your gender issues / dysphoria only arisen during periods of dissociation? If they do not continue or bother you outside of these states, then perhaps its just a symptom of your dissociation rather than you having an issue with your identity. If it helps at all though, I do feel very similarly during periods of dissociation as well though. At times of extreme stress of anxiety, where I might feel emotionally numbed, I often can't pinpoint how or what I am feeling in relation to my gender because of the fact that I feel disconnected from pretty much all of society. However, I still experience dysphoria and gender identity issues outside of my dissociative episodes which is how I personally know that the two are not always related. However, if you suffer from some type of DID or personality disorder and both your gender dysphoria and dissociation occur regularly as a result of just how you experience life in general as oppossed to being changed by certain environmental factors or triggers, then it may be possible that they are simply symptoms of your personal experience in this world.... in any case, I am by no means a professional and if you are able to speak with one or get further medical input or do some soul searching, then that would probably be a good step in determining some of the potential differences between how these things affect you.

 

Really disagree on the receptive vs regressive. That's a pattern in men and women, but it'll become a gender role once you put much more stock in it than that. How you ID is your business, but I'm not sure that's a good way to go about it in general.

 

Receptive vs Aggressive*
Really feel its just a matter of perception. Sometimes changing your mindset or trying to view things from multiple different angles can make you realize how you've felt about something that you didn't know before; its really just a suggestion based on a tactic I read in Dara Hoffman-Fox's "You & Your Gender Identity" self-therapy book...because for some, roles are deeply ingrained into how they actually mentally makeup / view gender in general, and for others, not so much.

 

Ahh I guess I meant to say redefining femininity and masculinity as receptive and aggressive. Those sometimes these characteristics can help us socially define male and female, and breaking them down into traits rather than just big broad words that mean a mess of who knows what socially can help calm inner confusion.

 

Sorry, I knew it was aggressive. Yeah, if that's how you make sense of it, that's your prerogative, I just personally wouldn't recommend it.