Hiya ladies,
Today I’m trying to understand how to let go of the mean, unhappy boy I never wanted to be, and embrace the passionate, loving girlie I dream of becoming.
Before I was brave enough to accept myself I was self-isolating, over eating, and indulging in various other coping mechanisms for short term, unsustainable dopamine hits. I was also mean, anti-social, and very standoffish because I thought that’s who people expected me to be.
Now I want to be, need to be, someone completely different, letting out the parts of myself that I suppressed for so long I forgot they were even there. How did you do it? How did you unlearn those almost instinctive behaviours and defence mechanisms that keep people away and keep your real self buried and suffocating?
Thank you in advance <3
I am not a trans. I am a white cis male. I’m including this info because you asked from post transition people, but I wanted to answer anyway.
What you are asking, i.e. “how to get rid of bad habits” is a question most people struggle with when they want to improve themselves, so don’t worry if there is no clear cut answer.
I would simply advice you to try to embrace who you want to be and don’t be too strict on yourself. Try to be who you want to be and if you sometimes lapse, that’s okay too.
It took me a while, and that mean boy did not disappear, but I’ve made improvements towards being a better person. What I did was mind my manners and habits continuously throughout the years, I believe there is no other way.
I don‘t have a good answer here but I wish you the very best!
I don’t know if there’s any single way to change those parts of yourself. For me, it involved a lot of therapy and learning to interrupt my thought patterns. Cognitive behavioral therapy helped me change my thoughts, feelings, and actions. I originally did a whole write-up on 1 particular analogy that I found really helpful back then, but it’s hard to say if one strategy that worked for me will be effective for you. Changing one’s self and growing into the person you want to be is hard.
You will always need coping mechanisms. Even when life is going well you can still have bad days. What I did was to find healthy coping mechanisms to use to replace the bad ones. There are many ways to cope and not all the ways work for everyone, so just try them out and see what works. One that I started using very early on was relaxation breathing and another that I started more recently is exercising.
Since therapy has been mentioned a few times already, I would go with something else for a change of pace.
Even the worst behaviour has at least some “positive” or desirable aspects that are important to a person.
So if you find why you tend towards certain behaviour, take some time and effort to isolate these aspects.
More importantly, you then need to find something to replace it with something that contains the aspects you value, but do not have the same harmfull side-effects.
Example: Smoking when you are bored or to keep your moth busy. Instead of “just quitting” (which might be difficult), a switch to chewing gum might be more effective, while stopping the damage smoking causes.
Hope this helps!
