Notices by terra (she/her) (terraboops@girlcock.club), page 2

since i didn't get it, i moved to an island so i could incubate myself

it's wild to look back at how i was pushing myself towards transition even with nearly no conscious awareness

i mean i tried to work at the gayest company i could think of and moved to an island to meditate when that failed

when people started perceiving me as a woman, suddenly i had a different experience in the world.

in general, my experience is that people view me as less competent. this means that every day i am questioning myself and my abilities more.

when i would experience anxiety, it was no longer so easy to dispel it. instead of seeing how the world treated me and thinking that my anxiety was wrong, my anxiety would essentially say "what if the misogyny is right?"

#feminizationfriday

for #feminizationfriday tomorrow, i am going to talk about how my patterns of anxiety have changed with transition

thanks to my childhood - i was always pretty anxious, but transition has made my anxiety into a tangible problem in my life

i will talk about:
- my experiences of anxiety before transition
- how (trans)misogyny becomes anxiety
- how estrogen has changed my experience of anxiety
- stuff i do to manage anxiety and ways i hope to improve how i regulate anxiety

while puppy fixes their ipad, it's time for me to write #feminizationfriday.

tonight i will talk about anxiety. i share my lived experiences as a white trans woman working in tech who came out at 35 and began HRT at 36. it'll be 2 years on estradiol in October.

my experiences are my own and we're all different and that's pretty cool. what works for me might not work for you and my problems are not the same problems everyone else has. ❤️

i have always had anxiety. i remember before transition learning in therapy that anxiety could lead to panic attacks and that those could manifest as angry outbursts. that made me realize my anxiety was a lot more widespread than i originally thought.

i would worry about my job performance or relationships or friendships, despite being reassured i was doing fine. just before i was promoted to staff engineer, i can remember feeling such dread about my performance review.

#feminizationfriday

these anxieties come from the high expectations placed on me as a kid. the ways i was treated and the expectations of me. i was very good at jumping through all the hoops, though.

in all relationships i would always have this vague anxiety about not being enough. i had no conscious awareness of it though, it just caused me to make problems for myself and others. really silly problems.

#feminizationfriday

however, when i challenged my anxiety before transition - it was a lot easier to dispel. i had ample evidence and my experience was of generally doing well at life and excelling at achieving my goals.

because of dissociation, the emotions of anxiety were also more distant and they were a lot easier to ignore.

although i was much less conscious about anxiety in any way, it was something i could manage and keep contained. it mostly impacted my relationship with my partner.

#feminizationfriday

thank you for following my posts on:
- transgenderism
- leftistism
- uncomfortably horny-ism
- occasionally technology
- ... and attempts at shitposting

taking #feminizationfriday off this week.

sept 6 i am going to talk about my thoughts on authenticity and social pressures.

keep being magnificently queer to each other ❤️☺️

for #feminizationfriday later tonight, i am going to chat about my thoughts on authenticity and social pressures during transition.

- how i approach authenticity
- the ways i have delayed my transition
- social pressures i would navigate differently
- mitigating social pressures

finished with dinner, time to write about authenticity and social pressures. as always i will speak from my own perspective and i offer it, not as advice, but to share my experience. if you find it helpful, use it- otherwise put it back and forget it.

there's no right or wrong way to be trans, but i have certainly made missteps in my transition.

i will start tonight by talking about how i've approached authenticity throughout transition.

#feminizationfriday

i really didn't have an understanding of authenticity before realizing i was trans. it was a concept i was familiar with, hypothetically... but i really didn't know how to approach it. my emotional range was so narrow and i was so out of touch with my feelings.

once i realized and accepted i was trans, authenticity became a primary focus. once i realized how important authenticity was to my happiness and thriving, i made it top priority.

#feminizationfriday

when i started with my focus on authenticity, it was simply a reaction to the realization: i didn't know who i was (e.g. i thought i was a dude previously) and i had to grow up from a baby girl to a woman suddenly in my 30s -- who did i want to be?

it seemed to me that the only way to find out who i was and who i wanted to be was to explore my authenticity.

my approach: "setting my GPS to joy"

#feminizationfriday

setting my GPS to joy means to do more of what i love.

try to avoid stuff that doesn't bring me joy and seek out stuff that does.

the surprising part about this was that seeking out my joy became much easier during transition. when i stopped dissociating because of gender dysphoria, i could actually feel things... and when i took HRT my emotional range increased.

#feminizationfriday

more importantly, having an emotional guidance system meant that i led myself to places that i wanted to go and places where i was accepted for me.

i made better friends and actually kept them. i got myself out of situations before they became toxic.

this is why authenticity is now a requirement for me; i only accept situations where i cannot me fully authentic if i have to and it has to be worth it... otherwise i might as well be cis!

#feminizationfriday

okay, back to it. so far i covered how i have approached authenticity at different times in my transition.

now, ill talk about the ways i have delayed my transition because i wasn't committed to authenticity.

internalized transphobia kept me from realizing my authentic self for 20+ years. during that time i became very good at lying to myself and not questioning too deeply why i did many things i did to survive untreated gender dysphoria.

#feminizationfriday

but it wasn't always my internalized transphobia keeping me back. in the early days of transition, i didn't have many trans people in my direct support network, so i lacked the information necessary to overcome anxiety around some decisions early on.

i was pretty sure i wanted HRT from the start, but i had heard a lot of conflicting information about the effects amd consequences.

my ideas about HRT were so misguided back then...

#feminizationfriday

i didn't get medical support until 18 months into the process, despite starting out on the coast where there were a lot more trans-competent doctors. this was mainly because i had incorrect ideas about how fast HRT would work and at what point there would be irreversible changes.

arguably it was my own fear that stopped me, but that fear was grounded in misinformation and lack of information.

it's sad how many times i have held back my true self because of misinformation.

#feminizationfriday

love that, as a woman, i am never allowed to have "irrational" feelings

and to have my feelings heard, i have to soften them with careful qualifiers that let people overrule them; then they can reassure me that my feelings are valid

but if i simply assert my feelings bluntly then i am an angry bitch; a problem

and my feelings need to align with rational hierarchy too or else they're not valid