How to Break Your Fears by Re-Building Your Inner House!
Dr. Z shares a metaphor to help combat one of your biggest fears—how others will respond to you deciding to undergo transition (also works for internal fear of being afraid whether you'll pass, whether you'll make it).
Dr. Z tells clients: context and perspective is really everything. Perspective when it comes to transition is really really important. Why? The person looking at your situation today making decisions about transition all the way into the future, hyperventilating, terrified, catastrophizing about how things will unfold is completely different person than you'll be six months from now. Perspective is going to shift. Six months from now the person looking at their transition, assessing where they're at, making decisions about other transition-related things is going to be a completely different person. Therefore perspective is incredibly crucial. Realizing that perspective shifts—you cannot think about the future that is a year from now when year from now you're going to be a completely different person.
The House Metaphor: Imagine your inner self as a house. Right now your inner self as a house is a house that doesn't really work for you (assuming you're struggling with gender dysphoria, the house you have for yourself is not working—it's giving you a lot of distress and pain, therefore not a very functional house). Your inner self is a house. You're standing outside that house looking at it, knowing you need to repair the house, perhaps go in and completely reconstruct the interior or even exterior, knowing you have to make all these changes.
You're standing on a street looking at your house and yet you look at your tool kit. Some of you looking at your toolkit only have a hammer and nails. You're standing there from that point of perspective and you're terrified because you're looking at the house thinking "wait a second, I can't possibly fix it, I can't possibly remodel the house—what I have is nails and a hammer, I don't have paint to paint exterior, I don't have walls to put in, I don't have new flooring." You're standing there looking at the completely big entire picture, looking at your toolkit, and you feel paralyzed.
Watch to find out why you're also thinking about how the rest of the people will think when they look at your house (what if my neighbor won't like how the house will look, what will these people say, this house doesn't measure up to the house next door—all these fears are paralyzing you and stagnating you), why you can be in opposite position (standing in front of house with very full toolkit with lots of tools at your disposal, every possible resource to remodel, yet you're paralyzed because "I don't know which step to take first, which tool to use first, I'm not sure if house will turn out how I want"), why you don't really know until you start doing it (once you start fixing a little bit about your inner house, you realize how much more you enjoy living in it/inhabiting it—you feel much more confident, assured, better about yourself, so you continue working even if you feel you don't have resources, you try to find way to get resources), and why working on internal house means nobody can foreclose on it (all work you put towards inner self, all work you cultivate to becoming closer to authentic self—that growth stays with you, benefits you for rest of life, nobody can take it away, and it propels you into growth in other areas of life).
