Inner Critic in Relation to Your Transition.
Dr. Z shares 2 areas in gender transition where inner critic tends to sabotage your progress or be very self-destructive.
Inner critic is present in all of us—a voice inside our head that tends to be nagging, judgmental, always sees things as glass half empty, very pessimistic, always telling us we can't or shouldn't do it, has a lot of shoulds and shouldn'ts attached to it. We all have inner critic in different domains: career shifts, body image, relationships. Inner critic is a normal part of being human. That critical part sometimes becomes very valuable but a lot of times it's incredibly destructive.
Area #1 - Being incredibly critical about the progress you're making: The inner critic (that nasty nagging voice) becomes very hyperfocused on "you're not moving fast enough, you're not doing things the right way." It also focuses on the past ("you should have started earlier") and some things you were born with (effects of testosterone/estrogen during puberty). The inner critic latches onto those things, hyperfocuses all around progress. It becomes very detrimental to your transition—can stall you, sabotage you from making progress, pretty much paralyze you from making the next move. Inner critic really likes to nitpick (glass half empty), especially during plateau times when you feel things aren't happening—inner critic comes in even stronger and hits you even harder because it takes that opportunity ("here's the moment when you don't have momentum, so I'm gonna let you in and take advantage").
Watch to find out how to deal with inner critic around progress (remind yourself: you're already first away from where you were way back before you came out or decided to do anything about dysphoria—that in itself is very big progress; not being able to see things doesn't mean things aren't happening or changes aren't accumulating—they'll be shown eventually, everything you do will add up to something even if it may not add up to expectations you have), why that inner voice is just chatterbox in back of your mind (part of mind trying to maintain status quo—part that doesn't like changes because changes require adaptability, and as humans we don't always like adaptability, we like to maintain things the way they are), and Area #2 - Passability (whatever passability is for you): Whether you look the way you want to look, whether you're achieving the looks you want to have. Many tend to set very very high bar in how changes should manifest externally, how quickly they should manifest, and exactly how you should look.
