u/SpotlessStarling

Hello. I'm 21 and I've known I was a guy for about 3-4 years, and have known what I had was dysphoria for even longer. I've stalled on making a change for extremely long because I'm a very anxious person and was really afraid, so I pushed it to the back of my mind as much as I could hoping it might go away. I've reached a point where that's no longer possible, and it has led me to finally consider coming out.

Most of my close family aren't really transphobic and are generally progressive, but they greatly struggle to understand the whole thing, so while I'm certain I wouldn't be kicked out or anything of the sort it's absolutely granted that they'll question it, and a lot. They've, on top of that, always been incredibly overprotective and viewed me as more immature than I actually am. I've always struggled to voice my issues without them dismissing them as me being immature, and while they genuinely do care about me a lot, I often feel asphyxiated and without agency. Based on previous experience I'm almost fully certain I'll only be met with disbelief, denial, and grief. Given that I am really close to them and don't want it to be any other way, I'd like to know if there's any way to make it smoother for them, as I do understand it'll be difficult to accept.

Aside from that, I've found the actual process of coming out to be genuine torture. I've told two or three people (mainly friends) and building up the courage each and every time was absolutely nauseating, and left me stressing about it for days afterward.

All this to say, I'm aware there's unfortunately absolutely nothing that will make this easy and no one's experience will be 1:1 to mine, but any advice I could get to make the process even slightly easier would be incredibly welcome.

Hello! I just found this subreddit and I've felt so happy while reading every post in here that I basically made an account after having been browsing reddit anonymously for ages just to post about it.

Ever since I have memory I've had this MASSIVE aversion to anything small and metallic. I remember being reprimanded as a kid for not wanting to wear anything that had metallic zippers or buttons directly in contact with my skin, and of course, I've never wanted to come anywhere close to jewelry. I feel incredibly nauseated by the smell metal has and that later lingers in your hands, the cold sensation when you touch it and the texture of chains. This also meant I had issues with coins, keys, etc. I would literally gag at just the thought of touching some of these things, and still internally do.

As a child everyone would dismiss it as something stupid that would go away with time, but I'm over twenty now and I still carefully avoid going near any jewelry, zippers and similar, despite how much I like alternative fashion. I've found that there are some very specific exceptions, like some metals that don't really have that same smell or feeling that I despise (I'd say those feel more like plastic?), but either way it's led to a lot of really embarrassing situations where it was really difficult to explain what exactly was wrong with me in a believable way.

I've been diagnosed with autism relatively recently and was mostly attributing this to sensory issues which in turn made it a little easier both to understand myself and to explain it to others, but its still incredibly nice to see so many people with the same problem. I randomly saw the term on a twitter post and when I found this place after googling it I wanted to cry from relief.