Questions About Ones Self And Direction

[Guest April]

Sometimes I find myself questioning myself, wondering if I am doing what is best for me. Every time I ask these questions I come up with the same thing, "yes, this is really what I want !!! ". Mainly I do this when I get down for some reason. So why do I keep asking myself these same questions? Is this normal and just a way to reassure myself to keep going? This week alone I have asked myself this question several time and I believe that it has something to do with the fact I am trying to get the nerve up to tell my sister, and there is a fear of some rejection. What do you all think about this?

[MaryEllen]

Hi April,

Yes, you're feelings are entirely normal. It's a cold hard fact of life that some will reject us. Play your hand, girl, and let the chips fall where they may. It's your life. Don't let fears of what others think deter you from your course. I pray that your sister is open minded enough to accept you. If she truly loves you, she will.

MaryEllen

[Guest Christine-Louise]

Hi April,

Yes you are right about the fear of rejection it gets into your mind and spreads seeds of doubt, we all get that, this leads you to question yourself and what you want from life, you need to put those fears to the back of your mind or others will see that you are troubled and that you don't want, have you tried dropping hints to your sister sounding out the waters so to speak, it may give an answer as to how She feels on the subject.

[Guest Sherri]

Sometimes I find myself questioning myself, wondering if I am doing what is best for me. Every time I ask these questions I come up with the same thing, "yes, this is really what I want !!! ". Mainly I do this when I get down for some reason. So why do I keep asking myself these same questions? Is this normal and just a way to reassure myself to keep going? This week alone I have asked myself this question several time and I believe that it has something to do with the fact I am trying to get the nerve up to tell my sister, and there is a fear of some rejection. What do you all think about this?

You don't need to question yourself because you already know what makes you happy. You continue to do what is best for you. After all, you have to be happy with yourself and that's what matters. Hopefully, your sister will accept you for you without any rejection.

[Guest Isobelle Fox]

Self doubt is pretty much a part of this thing, as far as I can tell.

I spent 20 years going in and out of acceptance. It was like waking up and then falling right back to sleep. The moments of clarity were always happy, but brief, and then the doubt and the fear would drag me back down and I'd spend another year pretending that I wasn't a transsexual.

Our society doesn't really recognize this condition as normal. Parents are not really equiped to recognize and deal with the issues. We have cookie cutter nurturing for boys and girls and cookie cutter social roles for men and women. Those of us who are born somewhere in between, biologically sexed in one way and mentally in another, have to learn like everyone else. We grow up looking at the world around us and taking our cues from how other people behave and what we are told. We may feel, intensely, that something is not quite right, that we don't fit into the pattern that has been applied to us by default, but for most of us there is some period of trying to acclimate to it anyway, some period of trying to absorb the characteristics of the gender we are _expected_ to emulate.

So, when we finally get it together and figure it out, we have to fight not only the fear of rejection but the conditioning we have recieved all of our lives. We have things we have to relearn. Its an uphill fight against something our cultures tend to deny, and something which some part of us usually tries to deny too. So yeah, you have self doubt, and yeah, thats totally normal. How can you not?

The best way to deal with it is up to you. Myself, as much as it hurts and as hard as it can be, I try to face it. I like to ask, why am I like this? What are the paths available to me? Which one is hardest? Which one is most rewarding? What have I tried in the past to deal with this and how did that work out? What am I trying now and how is it going? Its scary. The ansewers aren't always easy to find. They aren't always easy to accept. But I think you have to be at peace with things, even before the world begins to accomodate you, even before your body begins to be a more comfortable place to be. The more fear and self doubt we carry on our journey, the harder that already all to up-hill climb will be.

But these are the places that friends and family and counselors should step in and help too. When we doubt, when we are afraid, it is good to have other people to help us. When we stumble, its good to have someone to catch us. Its too bad that so many of us are afraid to talk to people for one reason or another.

I feared rejection too, at first. Now that everyone knows and no one rejected me, I find myself in an even worse place. I need more than ever to talk, I need help more than ever to get through this, but now that I've tested the waters, I find myself more afraid to be a "burden" to my friends and family than I was when I thought they might just reject me outright.

So, its hard, yes. But I think it does get better. We just have to keep trying.

And we have this place too, where we can come and say, hey, help me, talk to me, listen to me, without any fear at all. And thats good. : )

Keep moving forward April. Don't lose heart and don't let the doubt and the fear be your boss. You're who you are. Look for the best in yourself and find a way to bring it into the world, whatever it is. And if its hard to do, then in the end it will only be more rewarding when you succeed.

::hugs::

[Guest noeleena]

hi... acceptantce is the main thing for your self . first up is do you accept your self . i do & have done for over 50 years . not to say i knew much about my self . just being able to for who i was as i came out over 11 years ago i had no problems being both male & female i am just a transfemale or a women. the other thing is being accepted by others. are you. that is not quite so easy for some of us . i have been & still being accepted as a women . if we are open like i am that helps so much i know it has for me . i know what you are saying yes i did. i ??.. my self many times its all part of.. if you like.. finding out who we are . i am 60 . so for me it has taken a long time yet we can get there & do it ...yea ... & its so neat.

...noeleena...

[Guest Rayne]

Sometimes I find myself questioning myself, wondering if I am doing what is best for me. Every time I ask these questions I come up with the same thing, "yes, this is really what I want !!! ". Mainly I do this when I get down for some reason. So why do I keep asking myself these same questions? Is this normal and just a way to reassure myself to keep going? This week alone I have asked myself this question several time and I believe that it has something to do with the fact I am trying to get the nerve up to tell my sister, and there is a fear of some rejection. What do you all think about this?

Doubt is normal along the way now and then. The basic rule is, do only what makes you happy. If you don't feel like going farther than you have, then don't. Do what makes you happy.

[Guest Evan_J]

A lot of times, when I read other people's threads I end up hearing a lot of things that end up helping me. This is definately one of those times. I guess I've been doing some of what you're doing April. Questioning. In the end its like Isobelle was saying, I run the "other" options by me and none of them will help me; none of them will "fix" it, or make it better other than moving forward. I know there'll be a lot of difficult moments with that as far as other people I know actually having to deal with it because its not "talk" any longer then, its not just "presentation" and "self identifying" its a "tangible" thing in that physical changes have been made. And that typically is where the families and people who've known us "have problems". Maybe its a self-check-point when we do that (question) much like its usually said that the therapists etc. provide "check points" along the way, maybe these are ones constructed by our conscious minds to make sure that we want what we want. Its one way to look at it.

[Guest April]

A lot of times, when I read other people's threads I end up hearing a lot of things that end up helping me. This is definately one of those times. I guess I've been doing some of what you're doing April. Questioning. In the end its like Isobelle was saying, I run the "other" options by me and none of them will help me; none of them will "fix" it, or make it better other than moving forward. I know there'll be a lot of difficult moments with that as far as other people I know actually having to deal with it because its not "talk" any longer then, its not just "presentation" and "self identifying" its a "tangible" thing in that physical changes have been made. And that typically is where the families and people who've known us "have problems". Maybe its a self-check-point when we do that (question) much like its usually said that the therapists etc. provide "check points" along the way, maybe these are ones constructed by our conscious minds to make sure that we want what we want. Its one way to look at it.

I have found that this is exactly what it is for me.

I have not been posting allot lately but i have been keeping a watch on the forums.

Lately I have been finding myself in allot of deep inward thought as well as outward though about myself. Mostly inward, trying to dig out the soul that is buried in the closet. In doing this i have stopped thanking about what i want to become, what i am, and most of all, the thing standing between here and there. This dose not mean that i have decided not to think about it but to just dig a little deeper inside of me when i do for the answers. Well i guess a few days ago i stuck my head out to look at my outward life and found that allot has changed. I found that things i did i do not do now, the way i walk , talk, act, and interact with people has all been altered. This was even more evident with my last therapy session when at the end of the session my therapist told me out of the blue that i was different now.

I have not tried to make any of these changes, they are all natural and come from what i am finding deep inside myself in my attempt to find the true me that has been lock away for so long.

Ooh!!!!! don't think that this dose not cause problems because i have found a few of my comments and actions that i did not monitor very closely, and came out as a first response has sparked a few really weird and awkward responses from some of the guys at work. So now i really have to watch myself at work.

[Guest jantonio]

This is a very good thread and I actually felt compelled to respond to it. At the beginning of my journey I did question myself asking myself if I was doing the right thing for me and for my family. But as I go farther along the road that doubt has been diminishing to the point that I really want to start my physical transition. I have transitioned from the aspect of the real life test and this has helped me alot in my reafirmation. What also has helped me is having the support of some friends, my therapist and specially my girlfriend. All I know is that I am in the right path and ultimately I started to do whats best for me so I can be happy.

Jose Antonio...