chapter 8

dealing with the hard stuff

Most of us have our fair share of stress on a daily basis just dealing with school or work, friends and family relationships, and other regular life stuff. Sometimes life seems like a juggling act—with each of these responsibilities, another ball to keep up in the air. When you have the number of balls you’re able to juggle, this can be a fun challenge. But then, throw another ball into the mix and life can become overwhelming.

Let’s just say gender can bring a lot of balls into the mix for you to juggle!

In this chapter we’ll talk truth about some of the hard stuff that people face related to gender identity and gender expression. We’ll also talk about how people deal with this hard stuff so you can navigate future stress like a champ.

the stress of stepping outside of your “comfort zone”

So where has your Gender Quest taken you? Have you found yourself in unexpected places? Having different experiences, thoughts, feelings? This new stuff can be exciting. But let’s be honest, this process can also be extremely stressful!

Going on a Gender Quest means stepping outside of your “comfort zone.” Your comfort zone contains the things (experiences, people, places, thoughts, and feelings) that you are used to experiencing and managing. It’s pretty comfy-cozy in that comfort zone—kind of like staying in bed in your PJs. If you are reading this book, you’ve already gotten the courage to get out from under the covers and see what’s going on outside. Congratulations—this means your life will be way more interesting and you will be way wiser than if you’d stayed in bed in your PJs your whole life!

But getting out of your comfort zone can obviously also mean experiencing uncomfortable things. You may discover new thoughts and feelings about your gender.

Many of these thoughts might feel good. It’s also normal to experience stressful thoughts. Some common stressful thoughts people experience when exploring their gender include:

• This is so confusing!
• Why can’t other people understand?
• Can I really wear that?
• I hate my body.
• What if I can never be my true self?
• I wish there was a test to tell me my gender.
• Does this mean there is something wrong with me?
• I wish there were no such thing as gender.
• What will happen if I tell people how I feel?
• Why am I like this?
• Does this mean I have to stop playing baseball?
• Does this mean I need to stop liking pink?
• I wish I were normal…whatever that means.

While it is natural for people to feel excited, relieved, optimistic, and eager when they start exploring gender, difficult feelings can also arise. Some common difficult feelings people experience when exploring their gender include:

• Fear/Nervousness
• Overwhelm
• Shame
• Anger
• Hopelessness
• Insecurity
• Jealousy/Resentment
• Loneliness
• Grouchiness/Irritability
• Sadness
• Inferiority
• Depression

Try It Out!:

One way to deal with difficult or stressful thoughts and feelings is to notice that there’s a difference between thoughts and feelings.

Thoughts are:

Sentences or words that you can almost hear being said in your head. We all have this inner voice—it’s our brains thinking. These thoughts can be helpful to us, or unhelpful.

Here are some examples of thoughts that many people have:

• I’ll never figure this out.
• No one will love me.
• I can’t wait to finish transition.
• This is awesome!
• I’m finally getting to be myself.

Feelings, on the other hand, are emotions and moods we experience. People experience feelings in many ways. You may have noticed that you feel sadness as a weight in your chest, or that you feel hot when you’re angry. You might smile or feel a bright feeling in your stomach when you’re excited. People often cry or tear up when sad. Hearts can pound when people are excited and when they’re scared. People may clench their fists or tense other muscles when angry. Our bodies and feelings are closely connected.

Here are some examples of feelings that most everyone experiences:

• Angry
• Happy
• Sad
• Confident
• Anxious
• Victorious
• Frustrated
• Joyful
• Impatient
• Proud
• Irritable
• Excited

So thoughts and feelings are different, but they are also often connected. Often our thoughts lead to feelings.

For example, the thought Everyone at school would laugh at me if they saw me wearing that might go along with feelings of fear or shame or even anger.

The thought Hey, I look pretty darn good in this new outfit! might go along with feelings of excitement, pride, and happiness.

Think back on the thoughts and feelings you’ve had during your Gender Quest. Since we’re in the Dealing with the Hard Stuff chapter, let’s focus on the stressful ones. Write down any stressful thoughts and feelings that have come up below. Then draw lines connecting the thoughts with the different feelings that went together for you at that time.

Thoughts	Feelings

the tricky brain

One thing you may notice is that thoughts and feelings change over time. Are there thoughts and feelings from the previous section that don’t feel as intense now as they did at the time? Circle any thoughts and feelings that are less stressful for you in this moment than they were at some point in the past.

When thoughts remain stubbornly stressful over time, they can begin to weigh us down. Luckily, now we know thoughts and feelings do change over time. The question is, can we change our thoughts and feelings, or understand them in a different way, so we feel less weighed down?

Yes, we can. Now this is some advanced stuff we’re about to get into—changing and understanding brains without any surgeries or drugs or medical degrees. Kind of like the most powerful tool ever! But we figure you should be in on the secret about handling our tricky brains, and we hope you will use these brain-changing powers for good.

So here’s the deal with thoughts and feelings.

• What we experience in our brains is often not completely accurate. Our brains are great at dealing with large amounts of information—categorizing and rating things as good or bad, safe or dangerous, yummy or disgusting. But really, these judgments and categories that our brain has aren’t real. For example, brussels sprouts exist. They are a fact, like it or not. Now when you put a brussels sprout in your mouth and let your brain experience it, your brain could have all sorts of thoughts and feelings about that innocent sprout. One of the authors of this book absolutely loves brussels sprouts. When he eats them, his brain thinks Good, yummy, delicious, and he feels happy and content. When this same author was ten, when his same brain was confronted with brussels sprouts, it would start firing Yuck! Disgusting! Terrible! He would feel sick and woeful and angry that the world ever created such sprouts.
• Even though thoughts and feelings aren’t facts, our brains tell us that they are and we usually believe our brains. For example, the author at ten was convinced that brussels sprouts were inarguably disgusting. He believed that this was a truth you could not argue with, and he thought anyone who didn’t think the same thing was just plain wrong.
• Certain types of thoughts and feelings are more likely to not only be inaccurate, but also to get us into trouble. While we can’t go around questioning and evaluating every thought we have for accuracy, it is useful to know some common tricks brains play that can lead to trouble. Here’s a list:
  • Using all-or-nothing language. Whenever you hear your thoughts contain words like everyone, no one, always, or never. For example, if your brain says Everyone laughs at me, or Things never go my way, beware. These thoughts are usually inaccurate and often unhelpful.
  • Fortune-telling. Whenever you hear your brain predicting the future. For example, when you hear yourself thinking I’ll never get to have the body I want, or College is going to be too hard, again, beware. These thoughts are also often inaccurate and unhelpful.
  • Mind reading. Whenever you hear your brain telling you what someone else thinks. For example, They think I look ridiculous, or She hates me. You know the drill by now—beware. Inaccurate. Unhelpful.
  • Labelling. Whenever you hear your brain labelling a situation or person (including labelling yourself). For example, I’m an idiot, or That’s so stupid. Beware. Potentially inaccurate and unhelpful.
  • Shoulds and Have-Tos. Whenever you hear your brain telling you that you “should” or “have to” do something, it is also useful to examine it for accuracy and helpfulness. For example, I should wear a bike helmet is a helpful thought; it increases your odds of carrying an intact brain into the future. However, less helpful shoulds and have-tos appear in statements like I shouldn’t have told her yet, or I have to get hormones soon.
• By writing down or talking about your thoughts and evaluating them for whether they are accurate and helpful, you can loosen the power that stressful thoughts have in weighing you down. You may find that by going through the process of questioning your thoughts, you actually change what you believe and how it makes you feel. Or you may find that the thought is still there, but since you know the thought isn’t fully accurate, or at least not helpful, you are able to let it affect you less.

So let’s play around with your new brain powers.

Try It Out!:

Look back at your list of stressful thoughts from the last exercise. First, do any of the common brain tricks show up in your thoughts? If yes, list some here:

Consider how you could make these thoughts a bit more accurate and helpful. Many times our unhelpful thoughts can be changed to something that’s constructive or at least helps us cope. For example, Everyone at school would laugh at me if they saw me wearing that might change to: Some people might laugh, but I know my friends won’t. And they will stick up for me.

Try it here:

Unhelpful Thought	Challenge to Thought
My mom will totally freak out if I tell her I’m trans.	My mom’s first reaction will probably be to think and say that I’m going through a phase and she might want me to see a psychologist. But she wouldn’t kick me out or stop talking to me or anything like that. And if she were angry at first, that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t adjust over time.
Unhelpful Thought	Challenge to Thought

Notice: Do your feelings change as you challenge your thoughts? Is it hard or easy to change them?

You may wish to turn back to this section as you listen more to your thoughts to check them for brain tricks. Like any new skill, brain-changing skills require practice. We highly recommend that you practice by writing down your thoughts and seeing what your brain is thinking on paper. If you do this once a day, or even once a week, you can become an all-powerful brain-changing master.

gender minority stress

Like we said earlier, we all usually have enough stress just from our regular life. But for people belonging to groups that experience stigma or prejudice (because of race, class, ability level, gender, or other factors), we face additional stress called “minority stress.” Minority stress happens when people of a minority group experience things like bullying, discrimination, violence, harassment, or rejection because they are a member of a minority group. These minority stressors don’t happen to everyone in a minority group. But even if you don’t experience something yourself, you may be stressed just by the thought that it could happen to you.

“Gender minority stress” also occurs when people treat us in ways that don’t match with our gender identities. For example, if people call you “he” when you know yourself to be a she, call you by your birth name after you have changed to a name of a different gender, or treat you like a gender you don’t identify with, it can be super stressful (or just plain annoying)! All of these “little things” can add up to a serious amount of distress that impacts us just like other minority stressors.

Try It Out!:

Have you ever heard of someone facing discrimination, victimization, or rejection because of their race, class, ability level, or gender? Perhaps someone was a victim of violence or bullying, perhaps others didn’t want to be their friend, or maybe you saw someone being made fun of on a TV show or in a movie. Write down any instances that come to mind.

Pick one instance that sticks out to you. What did you think and feel at the time?

Maybe you can see above how even when something doesn’t happen directly to us, minority stress can make an impact on us.

consequences of gender minority stress

As you can imagine, if you have had any of these minority stress things happen to you directly, the impact can be even stronger. When people think about the times they’ve experienced minority stress, they often have stressful thoughts and feelings come up.

There are three types of reactions to minority stress that are quite common and have been given names.

• Internalized Transphobia

  Whether or not we want to, we all learn from the stereotyped and prejudiced images and messages we see around us. Women hold the stereotypes and prejudices they’ve been taught about women. Men hold the stereotypes and prejudices they’ve been taught about men. And—you guessed it—transgender and gender expansive people hold stereotypes about transgender and gender expansive people. This is bad news not only for how we view others, but for how we view ourselves. When we “internalize” (or believe) “transphobic” things, like Transgender people are crazy, Masculine women are ugly, or Feminine men are inferior, we also end up feeling that we are crazy or ugly or inferior. As you can imagine, this isn’t too good for your self-esteem.

• Negative Expectations About Future Events

  Not surprisingly, if someone has been harassed, bullied, rejected, or been a victim of violence in the past, they may worry that it could happen again; some people even start to expect that it will happen again. This expectation can be there even if you’ve just heard of something happening to someone like yourself, but haven’t been a victim yourself. Having negative expectations can show up in multiple ways. Some examples are:

  • Not introducing yourself to new people because you fear they will make fun of you
  • Not applying for a job because you expect they will discriminate against you
  • Not coming out to family or friends because you believe they will reject you.

    When the world seems hostile, it can be hard to figure out when there is a really good chance of danger or rejection and when it is a good idea to take a chance and put yourself out there.

• Staying “closeted”

  For people who decide the world is not a safe place to be themselves, they may choose to not disclose or show their full wonderful selves to the world. For example, people may decide that they need to continue wearing clothes that don’t feel like they fit, or keep a name and pronouns that don’t feel right, or not let certain people find out how they really feel about themselves and their gender. There is nothing wrong with deciding to do these things. Sometimes it is even wise or necessary to keep yourself safe. And, it turns out that having to hold back in this way can add up over time to be a major stressor.

signs of stress

When you add up all of the minority stressors we just talked about, and the impact on how we think about ourselves, you can get some serious consequences. As a result, people of stigmatized groups (including racial, ethnic, economic, and gender minorities) are at higher risk for mental health and physical health problems.

In terms of mental health, people who have experienced minority stress are more likely to experience the stress as depression or anxiety. Some people even start to feel suicidal as a result. Long-term stress can impact your physical health as well.

Try It Out!:

Do you see any signs of stress in yourself?

Check yes or no for the things you have experienced over the past month:

Yes No

? ? Feeling down or depressed

? ? Crying easily

? ? Feeling overwhelmed

? ? Having frequent stomachaches or headaches

? ? Having no appetite or eating more than you would like

? ? Having trouble sleeping or sleeping too much

? ? Feeling anxious or on edge

? ? Feeling like your heart is pounding or you are having trouble breathing

? ? Using alcohol or other drugs more than you or others think you should

? ? Wishing you weren’t alive

If you said no to all of the above, fantastic!

What happens if you answered yes to some of the above, though? Or even a lot of them? Well, first of all, bravo and brava for being courageous enough to tell it like it is. It’s not easy to see how stress is taking its toll. The first thing to know is you are not alone; in fact, we wouldn’t have dedicated a whole chapter to this stuff if there weren’t a whole lot of people also in your shoes. We get it. While our stories are each unique, we have each faced stress that overwhelms us at times. It wasn’t always easy to deal with it all, so we share below some things that helped us on our paths, with the hope they may help you too.

dealing with stress

The good news is that there are ways to work with this stress to reduce it and the impact it has on you. We all have our own ways of dealing with stress. That’s because different things work well for each of us. There are so many things to try, we’ve each only discovered some of the many things that probably work for us. For example, one of our friends even swears that brushing her teeth helps her calm down if she is feeling anxious or worried!

A lot of people call the ways you deal with stress your “coping skills.” People can have both positive and negative coping skills.

Positive coping skills help us feel better without damaging our bodies, lives, or relationships with others. Listening (or singing) to music, painting or drawing, watching a favorite movie, baking, talking to a friend, and spending time with a pet are all examples of positive coping skills.

Negative coping skills may make a person feel better temporarily. But the problem with negative coping skills is in the long term, they often make you feel worse, or damage your health or your relationships. Examples of negative coping skills are taking drugs, bingeing on ice cream, being mean to your little brother, or punching the wall.

What are some positive coping skills you like to use?

The other good thing to keep in mind about coping skills is that different things work for different emotions and situations. For example, for a lot of people, when they’re feeling hurt or confused by something, talking to someone they trust can be most helpful. But some of those same people, when they’re really sad, won’t want to talk to anyone and may find they want to be alone. What helps them in those moments might be listening to music or writing about what is going on in their journal. If they’re angry, on the other hand, they might find that exercise works better than anything else.

So, this means that in order to become a coping master, you have to (1) figure out what emotion you are feeling, and (2) use one of your best coping strategies for that emotion.

figuring out emotions

Step 1: Figuring out emotions. Believe it or not, this part can be tricky. Often we are feeling more than one thing at the same time, but we may only think about the one that seems the most intense. That’s why it can be helpful to practice. You can practice as much as you want (we suggest a daily check-in journal) to find out what you are feeling.

Try It Out!:

Find a journal for yourself. It can be an actual notebook; or a phone, which a lot of people use so they can journal wherever they are. The key is, it should be something that you are confident only you will have access to. There are many ways of journaling, but one of the most simple and effective things is to just write about whatever thoughts pop into your head. Like we said above, many thoughts aren’t anything very profound. But that doesn’t matter. When you are journaling your “stream of consciousness” like this, all that matters is that you keep writing whatever thought pops into your head. Journaling is something that helps us recognize what our thoughts and feelings are. This seems like it should be plain to see. But the more you start journaling, the more you will see that our heads are very complicated places. Thoughts and emotions zoom by sometimes quicker than we can notice if we aren’t paying close attention. By writing, we can slow down just enough to discover some very interesting things about ourselves.

Start with five minutes of journaling right now. If you haven’t decided on a journal yet, that’s okay, just get some paper and a pen. Ready, set, flow…

Has it been five minutes yet? No?! Well, get back to journaling then! You can even write “I don’t know what else to write.” Just keep putting down whatever is in your head.

Now look at the illustrations on the opposite page. How many emotions did you experience in those five minutes? Were there emotions under those emotions? Circle all that you felt.

Try It Out!:

Step 2: Here’s the part where you get to be creative.

Pick five difficult or negative emotions you think you feel most often and list them on the left side below. Then on the right side, list your coping skills—both positive and negative. If you are stuck, look at the list of coping skills in the appendix.

Emotion	Positive Coping Skills I Know Work	Any Negative Coping Skills I Have Used	New Positive Coping Skills I Could Try
Example: Sad	Listening to music, writing in my journal, crying, looking at funny YouTube videos	Overeating, isolating myself (both feel good temporarily but seem to make me feel worse over time)	Talking to someone, painting

It’s handy to have this list when you are feeling intense emotions. For many of us, when we are feeling intense emotions, we lose sight of all of the positive coping skills we could try. And sometimes negative coping skills that we are used to using can seem hard to resist.

Get a blank index card or other piece of paper that will be pretty sturdy and can fit in your wallet. (You can cut construction paper to the right size if you don’t have an index card.) Draw and list your different positive coping skills so you can have a reminder with you wherever you are. Now decorate your card however you wish with doodles, stickers, and collage pictures that inspire you to connect with the part of yourself that is strong, hopeful, and resilient!

when do I need more help?

All of us get in over our heads sometimes. Life is long. Sometimes there will be really awesome stretches where things are just great—the sun seems to shine brighter, things go our way, and we just feel good. Then sometimes there can be really rough stretches that seem like they’ll never end, when the sky looks grey and nothing seems to go our way. So many things may come at us at once that we just can’t keep up with them by using our coping skills.

Here are some signs that you are overwhelmed and need more help:

• You feel hopeless.
• Your feel irritable or tearful a lot of the time.
• You wish you weren’t alive anymore.
• You want to run away or escape your life.
• You have started cutting or harming yourself.
• You can’t sleep or want to sleep all the time.
• You’ve stopped going to school or work sometimes.
• You’ve stopped doing things that you used to enjoy.
• You are using potentially dangerous coping skills, like:
  • Drugs more than you think is good for you
  • Alcohol more than you think is good for you
  • Sex in a way that you don’t think is good for you
  • Eating (or not eating) in a way that you don’t think is good for you.

If any of the above are happening and your positive coping skills aren’t working, it’s probably time to reach out.

where can I get help?

If you are reading this book, you’re likely to want to find some help that will be friendly to your concerns about gender as well as your other needs.

There are many options for getting help. Some of the most common are finding an online group of people who are going through similar things, finding an in-person support group of people going through similar things, calling a hotline, and seeing a therapist or counselor.

group support

It turns out, one of our core needs as humans is to feel understood. Often, it is easier for people who have gone through something at least somewhat similar to us to understand what we are thinking and feeling. You can find people like this in support forums and support groups. The easiest way to find both is to search online for what is in your area. Not all groups are good ones, though. You have to find one that feels like the right fit for you. Before you enter, you can usually contact the group leader and talk to them to see whether it will be a good group for you.

Going to a new group makes everyone nervous. But once you try a few and find one that feels right, it is worth that initial courage. So remember, use whatever coping skills work for you when you are feeling nervous, and get yourself there—whether it’s online or in person.

hotlines

We highly recommend hotlines such as The Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386, Trans Lifeline: 1-877-565-8860 (US) / 1-877-330-6366 (Canada), or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. Hotlines aren’t there just for when you are in an acute crisis or feeling suicidal. For example, about 80% of people who call Trans Lifeline are just looking for support or information about being transgender. So if you’re just feeling overwhelmed or want some more support, give a hotline a try. Calling The Trevor Project should get you someone who knows specifically about LGBTQ youth stuff, and calling Trans Lifeline should get you someone who won’t flinch at any trans-related stuff. You can find some other helpful information in the list of resources available at the website for this book.

therapists

Finding a therapist who can work with gender diverse people can be easy or hard depending on where you live. Often, a good place to start is by word of mouth. Do you have friends or family who know of a therapist who they think will be a good fit for you?

You might also call a local LGBT center or visit their website. They often have referrals to local therapists.

Other people start with the internet. GoodTherapy.org (http://www.goodtherapy.org/) and Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com) are national websites that list therapists who are knowledgeable about LGBTQ issues.

Finally, if you are going through an insurance company, you can call them and ask for referrals to local therapists that work with LGBTQ people.

Once you get some names, you should call the therapist and talk with them on the phone. You can ask them if they have experience working with transgender and/or genderqueer people and if they have experience working on the issues you might want to discuss in therapy. If they sound like they might be a good fit, then you can talk about fees. And if that seems to work for you, you can go ahead and make an appointment. If they don’t seem like a good fit or you can’t afford them, you can ask them if they have any other names for people in your area that you could try.

In your first few appointments, the person will probably ask you a lot of questions to try to understand what is going on for you and how they might help. It is also a good time for you to ask all of the questions you have about therapy. Just because you see someone once doesn’t mean you need to go back. You can use the first few sessions as time to test how it feels to talk to them. If it seems like it might be helpful, keep it up! If not, you can leave at any time. Keep in mind that talking to a stranger can seem odd or even scary at first. We encourage people going to therapy for the first time to try to stick with it and give it a chance, even if it feels slightly uncomfortable.

In that first phone call, you can also ask about your rights to confidentiality. If you are under eighteen, you might be concerned about whether the therapist might tell your parents or guardians something you don’t want them to know. The point of therapy is to have a safe space to confidentially talk, so therapists as a rule take confidentiality very seriously. They can even lose their license if they break it. However, there are exceptions where therapists need to break confidentiality to make sure everyone is safe. These exceptions to confidentiality are a little different depending on what state you live in and how old you are. So don’t hesitate to ask your therapist about this (and any other concerns you have) before starting therapy.

when to seek emergency care

Obviously, you know that if you just broke a bone, you should probably go to the Emergency Room (ER). But a lot of people don’t know that if they are feeling really desperate or unsafe, they can also go to the ER. What does really desperate or unsafe mean? If you think there is a real chance you may seriously hurt yourself, harm someone else, or do something that could result in your death, this is a time to either (1) call a hotline to have them help you figure out what to do and where to go or (2) go directly to the closest ER and explaining what is going on.

Some people are afraid of how they will be treated at the ER because of their gender identity or expression. If this is true for you, please consider bringing someone you trust with you. Alternatively, you can call either The Trevor Project or the Trans Lifeline and problem-solve with them how you might get help without exposing yourself to more minority stress.

summary

We hope this chapter has given you some extra knowledge and skills to equip you on your lifelong Gender Quest. We bet that if you journal, you will end up describing some amazingly wonderful experiences as well as some hard times. This is all part of any quest. We hope you will remember that not just us but many other people are by your side on your journey. You can check out what’s out there in the list of resources at the website for this book: http://www.newharbinger.com/32974. Our best wishes for your continuing explorations!