Ditch the Gender Rulebook: A Specialist's Take on Authentic Living!

Dr. Z addresses personal standards—the thoughts, behaviors, actions, and mindset that set your own parameters for what is important to you, providing a framework for what is right or wrong for you, what is valuable, what matters, and what you care about. This discussion becomes necessary because many clients, especially trans women and trans men, work very hard trying to aspire to cisgender standards or transgender community standards.

The reality is that you cannot feel confident, affirmed, grounded, and strongly rooted in your own identity and core self as long as you continue aspiring to cisgender standards or transgender standards. Aspiring to somebody else's standards—whether cisgender standards or standards set by other trans individuals who feel entitled to create exclusionary rules for everyone—creates alienation, depression, and struggle because you cannot reach a place that is not yours.

Having a transgender experience makes you an expert on your own path, not on everyone else's journey. You cannot generalize your experience to everyone else. Personal standards should belong to you, written around the scope of your circumstances, aligned with your personality and who you are—not something you aspire to that doesn't belong to you.

Watch to understand why creating your own standards is the only path to genuine confidence and empowerment.