Don't Trust Your Feelings About Your Gender? Tips on How to Start Trusting Yourself!
Dr. Z discusses how to start trusting yourself when mistrust represents one of the biggest issues running through transgender and non-binary communities—mistrust toward oneself, toward your thought process, toward your feelings, toward your realizations regarding gender identity. This mistrust can continue throughout gender transition and even post-transition when people have completed whatever transition means for them, yet still question whether what they did was the right thing, whether they're actually feeling better.
The most common reason why mistrust is so prevalent: you have a history of growing up where you tried to express your authenticity and people around you—parents, caregivers, peers, siblings, the world—told you in one way or another that your expression is not right, instilling the tendency to mistrust yourself when it comes to gender from an early age. Current narratives from various corners continue to instill tremendous mistrust in your sense of self.
The best way to gain trust: start paying attention to your feelings—not your mind, which can rationalize, make excuses, and self-sabotage. When you feel certain ways about certain things continuously and it forms a pattern, it becomes an undeniable experience situated in relationship to your actual self.
Watch to learn how to trust your feelings and reclaim your internal compass.
