u/Biospark08

Context: I challenged myself to go through this weekend visit to my rural hometown over the 4th with zero boymoding.

Holy wow... this weekend has been a whirlwind of fear and awesome. I've gotten so many weird looks, some "hell yeah!"'s, and one "you're rocking it!" from the various tourists and hometown folks.

I was going about my 4th of July wandering yesterday, fully visible as a non-passing trans woman, just white knuckling through the anxiety.

Well, I was approached by the folks doing a parade float for the local municipal bar, which is "the big one" for the town. They needed another candy thrower because one was too hungover from partying to participate and they would not take no for an answer.

In their words: "people gotta see that trans is part of this country too".

Sooooo, I hopped up there. Got a wicked sunburn due to not being prepped to sit for 2 hours waiting for a parade to start... but y'all?? It was awesome!!!

People shouting positive messages, heard a few "Fuck Trump!"'s shouted out. Lotta weird looks as we went past everyone but heck 'em!

Hearing my chosen name called over the PA system by the parade announcer was freaking music to my ears.

Got done with the parade and we all headed to the bar for a "hell yeah!" drink afterwards and everyone there was so damned nice and supportive :D

I had to explain my chosen name like 20 times and had to start giving random people drink chips because folks kept buying them for me 😭

I'm so, so glad I went through with not boymoding on this trip home. I thought it would be a disaster but it's been so... magical for my self esteem. Hell yeah 🩷🤍🩵

I'm visiting home for the 4th and my mom and I stayed up a bit talking over drinks last night. She's always been reasonably accepting of my transition but had never gotten directly involved.

Out of nowhere, she blurted "betchya I got a color that'll look good on you." I was like ???

She walked me to a cabinet and pulled out this big lipstick variety pack, dragged me to the bathroom mirror and we tried lipstick colors for like 45 minutes. Tried a light purple and she let out this super excited gasp, "there! That one's you!" she wasn't wrong, super cute color + matches my eyes and skin tone well.

After that she pulled me to her closet and dug around for a while, pulled out 4 American flag styled tank tops and had me try them on (we're kinda close on size), found one that fit.

I'd mentioned earlier in the night that I was forcing myself to not boymode on this trip and after she finished dolling me up with clothes and makeup she told me "no daughter of mine is going to hide herself" and gave me a huge hug 😭.

I felt so... just freaking seen and accepted, it was that scene I always dreamed of having of being taught how to do these things and basically being treated like a doll by someone way more experienced than me.

I know my mom 100% doesn't use Reddit but all the same, just gotta shout it out: I love you mom!!!

I keep seeing it thrown around that a trans woman, for some reason, has 1 year to figure out a style that works for her. Dunno about you but my first year was filled with entirely too much panic, chaos, and change to sit down and really figure out that style question lol.

My first 1.5 years I tried following the "dress your age" stuff and tried to fit in with my local populace of generic suburban-vibe middle aged women. Holy guacamole did that jack up my dysphoria and self loathing to an 11/10 but I tried to stick with it because I kept reading "you gotta dress your age!"

Nah. I finally stopped doing that, threw on some spikes, tall goth stomper boots, black lipstick, nail polish, and eyeliner. Full punky goth rocker. It flipped the switch internally to where I basically rarely feel dysphoric anymore and when I do it's pretty light, easily countered by finding joy in my style.

Do I dress like I'm in my mid-30s? Nope. Do I care? Nope.

Basically just wanted to share because I'm an example of both the 1 year rule and "dress your age" just not always being good metrics to live by. Dress like you, vibe like you, take all the time you need, damn the haters, and rock on y'all <3

Let's freaking do this! I'm wired up, fired up, and ready to go! Dropped my Juul off in a hazardous electronics bin (don't worry, I contacted my city waste management to make sure it was an acceptable place to dispose of a vape beforehand). Time to get jiggy with it :D

I was in a terrible place for about a decade. Spiritual and mental turmoil, a whole 9 yards of bad coping mechanisms and just overall lost in life.

I was advised to just "give it a shot" in regards to going on a vision quest. At the time I thought it all sounded like hokey silliness.

Well, I went on said vision quest and for whatever reason I decided to actually take it seriously. It changed my perception of life completely.

I won't bore with all the details but I did end up having a vision, an eagle made of rainbow light that filled my sense of perception with absolute certainty that I could fix my life if I just set aside my doubts.

I came out of the quest completely changed. Instead of this twitchy and anxious junkie, I felt like... me. I could feel the real me under all the b.s. I had piled on top over the years.

Since then I've uncovered my standard running spirit animal (fox), made a cute little shrine, and turned my life around. I'm no longer a user, slowly making progress in all areas of my life, and have been called a "great teacher" and "good leader" by others... which past me would have thought impossible.

The guy who pressured me into undertaking a spirit quest and the eagle that visited me are wholly responsible for who I am today.

I will never turn my back on this spirituality, it saved me when nothing else could

There's a TL;DR at the bottom.

This is almost entirely going to be a rant about some functional psychological principles and how they relate to transition brainworms. Purpose is to give some baseline understanding of one of the core sources of brainworms, why the brain does it, and why awareness of the process can disarm it.

The brain is an incredible organ, it's essentially an engine for optimization. Cognition tries to take any problem and determine the most effective and efficient route towards a solution. Super great for 90% of things but there are some flaws with the system.

Both today and in ages past, conservation of energy is one of the most important survival goals that comes pre-programmed into the human psyche. Can't outrun an angry animal if you burnt all your resources pondering esoteric concepts.

These two things come together to form a baseline psychological reality that we have to work around: the brain is the laziest organ in the body.

The brain automatically tries to use our capacity for optimization to solve for the question of how to conserve energy. Applied in realistic scenarios, the brain tries to get out of doing stuff at every opportunity.

"Ok, cool... how does this relate to brainworms?" I'm glad you asked!

As we're all aware, transition is exhausting! It's a total revamp of basically our whole lives. Body, habits, voice, all of it is on the workshop bench during transition, up for review.

So, the brain takes a look at all that work and it might be cool to pick at it for a while... but then says "F this" at other times.

One thing to be aware of is that our brain doesn't talk to us (the conscious observer) directly. It's a sneaky little shit: uses subconscious signals, emotions, and narrative frameworks to try to trick us.

So! We're plopping along, doing our transition thing and the brain decides it wants to be lazy. That is when brainworms get thrown at us in full force.

We can see this mechanism in action if we deep dive on the feeling -> action mechanism of a brainworm:

We're doing our thing and the brain chucks out a "You'll never pass! You're a pariah!!!" into our conscious thoughts. Why? Well, let's look at what the result would be if we followed the brainworm.

If I'll never pass but passing is a goal of mine, there's really no point in trying to expend effort in that direction anymore, right?

If transition makes me a pariah, that's a social risk. Social risks were a death sentence for our ancestors... so probably best to avoid that.

In both brainworm scenarios we get to the same result, we get a free pass from the brain to stop acting, to stop expending energy on our transition.

But! We can interrupt this process because, while the brain is lazy, it wants us to transition too. If we catch the brain in the act, we can counter attack with a "but brain, that takes us further away from our transition goals." or similarly "well, if we do nothing, we'll never get there."

These sorts of counters interrupt what the brain was trying to do by evoking a direct emotional reaction from the brain. "Oh... right, I want those transition goals, nevermind about the brainworms if the inaction they cause will get in the way." Is the typical mental response.

Now! This process hinges on a particular thing: you gotta know that the brainworms aren't true. Not meaning on a visceral level, just a cognitive logic level will do fine because the brain can work with that.

(Tangentially, this is one of the big psych reasons that places like 4tran can be so harmful, as they culturally reinforce brainworms by asserting that they are true which takes away our ammo)

TL;DR the brain will do everything to get out of working. One trick it uses is brainworms. We can stop this by reminding the brain that being lazy will harm our progress towards transition goals.

I was a daily drinker for about a decade. Did so in order to numb various persistent psychological pains.

As I've been adding more sober days, I've noticed two things: First, the constant state of psychic pain appears to have been Caused by the drinking in the first place. That has gotten waaaay better in sobriety. Second, I'm trans as hell.

Alongside numbing the pain, the drinking also numbed my other feelings and made my internal world really hard to see. Sobriety is bringing that ability to feel back and, well, it's VERY obvious to me now that I'm super trans lol.

Like, I'm 2 years on HRT so I was pretty sure about being trans. Thing is, I was constantly besieged by doubts and fear. As sobriety has gone on longer, those doubts and fears have been fading as well. It's becoming a lot easier to just... observe to myself that I am trans while also fully accepting it as reality.

Got hooked on the ol' cigarettes ages ago; swapped to a vape like... idk 6 years ago or something? It's time to kick it, effectiveness of HRT is my primary reasoning. I've got my quit date set for Monday morning (research suggests it's the best day of the week to start a new habit change).

Here's to looking forward to healthier lungs, a healthy wallet, and efficient HRT!

Picture me 2.5 years ago: sad little squeembus of a dork with a drinking problem and the self-esteem of a neglected machine shop push broom. Couldn't get hardly anything done and just went wherever others directed my life.

Cut to today, 2 years into transition. That acohol? Gone. Self esteem? Dommy-mommy status. Chores? Complete. Dork? Still a dork but I got boobs now, so that's cool.

I can't even properly express it. Transitioning, not just meaning HRT but like... accepting that I'm a trans woman and moving in that direction, it brought on a real capacity for being able to change my life.

It used to be, when I'd picture a desired change, my brain would instantly react with "why bother. Too miserable." Now? My brain immediately goes into planning mode to get those changes started.

Transition saved my life and it made me feel like my life is worth saving 🩷🤍🩵

I'm in the tail end of IV and decided it was time to properly do a base instead of a sprawling lawn factory. I got entirely overwhelmed at the prospect of setting up all my chemical lines again.

Then... it just kinda fell into place mentally? This modpack basically forces the player to come to terms with task and time management. I'd been playing with a "brute force it" mindset, so far. Works okay for progressing in little leaps but not for mega projects.

I don't have to set up 800,000 chemical lines. I just need to set up 1. That's it. 1 thing at a time and it'll be done before I know it!

I know I'm not the only one like this. I'm far enough in my transition and secure enough in my identity that I'm largely done having to ask for advice on forums like this. I'm still here because there are dozens of people here every week asking the same question "am I trans?" or a variation of "am I allowed to be trans".

It absolutely shatters my heart to come across the same problem over and over again... A person might be trans but their surrounding society denigrates and hates on trans folks. So, they bottle it up, fight against it, won't explore it further. Suppression and self loathing about being trans is 100% driven by external factors; being trans is just a thing that can be a reality for some folks, it's the hate that gets inside which messes us up so much (well, and living with dysphoria but that's a whole other ballgame in regards to what I'm trying to say).

Like... goddamn. Can I be completely real for a second? I wish so hard that I could scoop up all these questioning people, let them exist for a few weeks in a truly safe place... just let them really question themselves deeply without society brutalizing their psyche along the way.

It might be a pipe-dream in my lifetime but... wow... to be in a world that doesn't have a hardcore cluster of transphobes intentionally spreading lies about us? A world where people can explore their gender freely? Just; my god, there's so much wonderful beauty to be found in an honest expression of gender that it seems completely insane that it's fought against so much...

If you're questioning at all right now and you happened across this post, just know that you've got people in your corner. We're ready to go to bat for you and help you understand yourself along the way.

After about 2 years of general internal work on my sense of self acceptance, I woke up today and it was clear as day... I'm a woman. There wasn't any static or clouded judgement, no qualifiers or doubt.

For the past year, I'd wake up and immediately feel a sense of dread due to my first thought being "I'm just a man" followed by "I'm transitioning", which made me feel a bit better.

Today though? It's not even in question that I'm a woman, it would seem that my subconscious may have finally clicked in place after all the gentle nudging 🩷🤍🩵

Figured I should share this in case it might help someone else.

Woke up today and my brain was immediately an asshole about it, just super extreme dysphoria and brainworms at full attention.

I tried all manner of self-soothing and positive affirmation but the dysphoria was having none of it. Just raw, unadulterated stress and suffering about my most dysphoric features.

Finally got it to calm massively after it hit me that the brain is basically an impatient toddler about all things (demands results right away and throws a tantrum when it doesn't happen). The self talk that finally worked went a little something like this:

"Listen slut, I get that you're in pain right now, upset about a lot of shit but here's the deal. We've got a solution in motion, taking baby steps in the direction of making the source of the pain go away. However, this is a multi-YEAR process and you're getting all pissy that we're not at the end yet.

Imagine being a first year college student and absolutely losing your mind about senior year final exams when there's 4 years of life to live to get to that point. That's what you're doing with all this dysphoria you're throwing at me.

We'll achieve our transition goals, or at least make progress in that direction, but you HAVE to stop berating me about the fact that I can't make time go faster. Stop with the dysphoria and just let me cook, damn."

To my absolute shock... that actually worked. A few seconds after I finished that internal rant the dysphoria I was feeling just... kinda stopped? Well, not stopped but went to maybe 2% of the intensity it had been at.

It's been about 2 hours since then and every so often my brain will poke at upping the dysphoria but I just remind it about the time thing and it calms back down. Obviously not a cure all but it worked this time.

(P.s. the use of calling myself "slut" in this context was a term of endearment, as my friend group lovingly refer to one another like "hey slut, how's it going?" and such)

After realizing I'm trans my life became a whirlwind of change with a smidge of agoraphobia due to fears of ridicule and whatnot. Over the past 6 months or so I hit a severe rut. Motivation in the dumpster, no energy, just... a bit of a useless lump who struggled to get in the shower or take out the trash.

Thing is, I didn't feel depressed? Quite the opposite actually, trans joy abound! But! The rut got me stuck thinking "hell, what if I'm actually wrong and I'm not trans???" It was this awful spiral that kinda turned into self-loathing...

Talked to my GP about it. He basically smacked me upside the head with (paraphrased): "bitch you Are trans, but agoraphobia you say?". He did a minor blood test and found my vitamin D was basically non-existent due to lack of sun exposure.

He was super understanding of why I was hiding out at home a lot and felt "get more sun" represented unreasonable psychological strain (his vibe was that I'd emerge when ready).

That said, he hit me with the plan of just eating a can of sardines packed in water per day + a vitamin D supplement. It's been 1 week since making the change...

Oh. My. God. I feel like a freaking valkyrie! This world is mine for the taking!!! It's like a divine spark just got shoved into me and I've been hauling ass through all my stuff I had been slacking on.

All this to say... if you're like me and became a shut-in hermit in early transition, feeling like I did... don't forget about vitamin D. We get a lot of it from the sun, so not going outside can be a bad-sad-bad time for our body and mind.

Everything I can find online just says the amps/volts available are solely determined by the hatch as long as your eu/t is high enough for that voltage tier. What I keep seeing is that your total EU output into cables = eu/t of the generator multiplied by the amps.

So, based on that... Say I'm generating 8 eu/t on the generator and have a ULV 64 amp dynamo hatch... does that mean I'd actually have 512 eu/t to play with even though the generator only produces 8 eu/t?

At a crossroads these past few months between continuing with transition, detransition, or taking my leave from life. I've been so stressed out about this decision and it kinda took over my life for a few months.

I realized last night that it's the very fact that I've been keeping these other options on the table that is causing the problem. "I can always detransition if I have to" and such like that.

By keeping these other options, my brain was just kinda automatically staying in limbo, constantly analyzing and re-analyzing the options.

Thing is... there are no other options, not really. Detransition would lead to the same place as option 3 and I really don't want to take that third option, I like my cat too much. So... that just leaves option 1: transition and don't look back.

This morning I mentally closed the doors on other options. I have my path in front of me and it's locked in. Let me tell ya... the profound feeling of relief and certainty is palpable. I will take my HRT, I will fight for my right to exist, I'll struggle with style and expression... but I WILL be here and I WILL transition.

My name is Freya and I will live up to that name. No more hiding or shame. If we're going to do this... we're fuckin' doing it.

EDIT: Wow! Thank you all for the huge outpouring of support and encouragement! I feel super fired up and ready to go. Kinda feel like I need a sword or something to wave around with all this positive energy!

I can feel it seeping back in. I was doing so good for a while there but now the world is starting to feel deeply hostile again, I've got a general eggshell-walking anxiety, and I feel that creeping dread.

All that in spite of the fact that all my bills are paid, I'm in a peaceful little apartment with my cat, and... really nothing is happening. The threats aren't here but their after image still is.

I know it's a process, it'll come and go... getting better each time but still. I wish I could actually just reach into my subconcious with a blanket and juice box to get her to understand that it's okay now.

The grounding exercises help a bit but... whew... writing this out is really helping. I'm not sure I actually need that hug (just the best tag I can find for this). Just knowing I'm allowed to talk about it with others helps.

It'll be okay. It will pass. (Intentionally went back and left this vague to avoid directly triggering others with my particulars)

I've been transitioning on estradiol for 2 years and I've hit a secondary identity crisis.

I figured I was MTF because when I consider myself as a woman I get this mild sense of euphoria. However, in the past 6 months or so, I also get this uncanny sensation of it not being quite the right fit. It's like anxiety mixed with a vague internal recoiling.

If I imagine my future self as NB, either highly androgynous or completely devoid of a gender at all, I get this sense of comfort and... idk, accuracy? However, no sense of gender euphoria.

It's 100% not that I view NB as somehow easier. In my mind it actually vibes as harder in a lot of ways due to people not understanding NB + exclusionary b.s. that goes on in some communities towards NB identities.

I've explored demi-girl and MFT butch/tomboy type stuff already and it comes with that same vague sense of euphoria + unease.

Leaves me in this weird position... do I pursue euphoria still and keep trying to figure out that sense of unease OR do I pursue the sense of comfort and accuracy of androgyny/non-genderedness?

When figuring yourself out was it euphoria or a sense of comfort that ended up being the right thing to pursue?

This is gunna be an odd one and maybe long?

For ages I've just not had confidence in my sense of self after realizing I'm trans. I couldn't figure it out because I'm not ashamed of my transition and am generally resilient against bigotry. Then a few sessions of d&d changed that for me.

So, I've always been physically a runt. Little and weak. I'd always approached my gaming fantasy as an overcompensation against that runt vibe; playing as a beefy barbarian with a heart of gold.

It was the power fantasy I thought I needed but... I was chatting with my GM about it and he made an observation: "so, in real life you keep having these confidence and self worth issues and I have an idea on it. Instead of playing as what you aren't, why not try playing as what you are just... the fantasy super hero version?"

We hashed out a character with that in mind and that's how we came up with Nina, a trans goblin rogue who tries to work through conflict before resorting to fighting. We picked rogue with high Charisma because that's basically real life me + goblin because it makes me happy to be a little bit feral.

Omg y'all. Night and day. Gameplay felt utterly smooth and natural. Used to be I'd have to sit and think on what my character would do but with Nina, her kneejerk reactions are just right and fit her theme. Plus, it worked.

Exploring life and problem solving through playing as this character and really leaning into my real life strengths appears to have forced my subconscious into accepting that I DO have positive traits that have value.

It sounds dumb but idk... it's like playing it out is substituting for the "fake it until you make it" thing and my self confidence has skyrocketed over the past few weeks. It's like, yeah I accepted my transition but hadn't actually fully accepted the other parts of who I am.

Have any of y'all had similar experiences through playing out a power fantasy version of yourself?

Not because I physically can't... it's that my mind refuses it so strongly that it's like a revulsion.

I'm back in my small rural hometown to visit family. Only my family knows about my transition so it'll be the first time the rest of the town will be finding out.

I figured "eh, I'll just boymode and stay hidden through my visit" but... I'm sitting in this guest bedroom with my boymode clothes spread out in front of me and it's just making me feel kinda sick.

I don't think my mind will let me go back to being closeted during my stay.

Whew... wish me luck y'all. I think I'm about to out myself as trans publicly in a rural small town where everyone watched me grow up as a "boy".