Author: Meaghan Ray

How Dysphoria Contributes to Burnout and What You Can Do About It

WHAT IS BURNOUT?

I have struggled with cycles of burnout for many years now. For a long time I felt like I was making it up, or being lazy, or finding an excuse to avoid the mundane but challenging parts of everyday life. Very little of what I was feeling matched the symptoms of depression but that was the closest I felt like I could come. Until I heard about burnout.

When I’m in a state of burnout, the thought that keeps going through my mind is ‘I just don’t care’. I know I should, and usually do, but I can’t muster up the emotional energy to engage with almost all aspects of life. This is not me. In this state, I don’t feel like myself. And because I don’t have the energy to care, it is very hard to make myself do the things that will help me get out of the state of burnout.

I feel numb, heavy, and drawn to escapism. It feels like the world is happening around me and I’m just going through the motions. I don’t keep up with house chores, I eat less and more poorly, I socialize less, I exercise less (usually not at all), I am often late, and my productivity at work decreases.

If this sounds like you or someone you know, I highly recommend the book ‘Burnout’ by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Not all of it resonated with me but the parts that did have been very helpful by giving me language to discuss my experiences of burnout with others, different ways of thinking about and noticing how I’m functioning, and practical strategies to prevent and recover from burnout.

HOW DYSPHORIA CONTRIBUTES TO BURNOUT

I have found that dysphoria is a large contributor to my burnout. There are three reasons for this:

  1. It takes a lot of mental effort to ignore the buzz of dysphoria in order to focus on what I’m supposed to be doing. It takes mental effort to check in with myself, identify what aspects of dysphoria I’m feeling, and use appropriate management strategies. It takes mental effort to identify and avoid situations that trigger my dysphoria (as much as possible). And it takes mental effort to reframe the dysphoria or fight it’s effects by using positive self talk and affirmation. So yah, lots of mental effort.
  2. Dysphoria is constant. It goes up and down depending on the day, my emotional state, my physical state, who I’m around, and what situation I’m in, but even at it’s lowest it’s still there. So lots of constant mental effort.
  3. Generally, there is a lack of understanding from others about what dysphoria is and how it affects me (or how it can affect people). The situations where my dysphoria is triggered the most and which are unavoidable are also the situations where I’m surrounded by and interacting with people who do not understand dysphoria. So lots of constant mental effort that is invisible to or misunderstood by the people around me.

WHAT BURNOUT FROM DYSPHORIA FEELS LIKE

For me, certain symptoms of burnout are specific to dysphoria. Three main ones are:

  1. Decreased attention/focus. So much of my attention is taken up by ignoring, managing, avoiding, and fighting the effects of dysphoria that I have less mental space to spend on other things. It is harder to stay on task, perform multiple step activities without getting derailed, maintain momentum on a task, block out distractions, and remember details.
  2. Irritability/easily frustrated. Dysphoria is an internal irritant that is constant and unavoidable. No matter how good I am at managing it, it will never be zero. So I already have a baseline irritation that I am working to ignore. That means that I have less patience for other sources of irritation. Less patience leads to more frustration. The more dysphoria I have, the more easily frustrated and irritable I am.
  3. Physical, mental, and emotional fatigue. The constant mental effort I talked about above is exhausting. The feeling of being misunderstood and invisible and at odds with myself or how people see me is emotionally exhausting. We feel our emotions in our bodies so I end up with a feeling of heaviness and lethargy that means I don’t feel like I have the physical energy to exercise or do any extra tasks (even though that is what would often help me the most).

WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

Over the last few years I have developed a number of different strategies to help manage my burnout. After reading the book I recommended above, I have some more language to explain it and some practical strategies to suggest.

Prevention

Identify the sources of dysphoria for you. Develop strategies to decrease as much of the dysphoria as you can (more posts on this in the Related Posts list below). Where possible, avoid situations that trigger high amounts of dysphoria or repetitive situations that trigger even small amounts of dysphoria (such as getting dressed in a room that doesn’t have a mirror).

As much as possible, make these dysphoria prevention, management, and avoidance strategies automatic. Restructure your environment, schedule, or routine so that you don’t have to spend mental energy on remembering to do things in a different way. The goal is to decrease your baseline mental workload, not increase it.

Protection

In psychology they talk about protective experiences that may be completely unrelated to the harmful experience but help build resilience and emotional capacity or offset or heal some of the negative effects. There are a few protective experiences that I have found to be important in decreasing the burnout caused by dysphoria.

  1. Euphoria. Notice moments of gender euphoria and seek them out. Avoiding dysphoria is helpful to tell you what doesn’t work for you but moving towards euphoria tells you what you should do. Moments of euphoria can pass us by or be overshadowed by dysphoria unless we notice them, focus on them, and celebrate them. In this way, they can be a beacon of light to look forward to and to remember when we feel overwhelmed by dysphoria.
  2. Support. Whether through therapy, social support groups, online groups, friends, or family, support from people who understand what you are experiencing and can give you a sounding board to process and strategize with is important. Your support person/people can also help bring your attention to the symptoms of burnout you are experiencing and provide some external motivation to socialize, exercise, or engage in whatever other activities are necessary for you to recover.
  3. Affirmation. Dysphoria is constantly telling us that something is wrong, that we don’t fit in our body or in society, that we don’t look the way we should, and that maybe we’re making this whole gender identity thing up. Finding sources of affirmation, whether from your support network, from positive social media influences, or a personal journaling, self-talk, or meditation practice can be extremely helpful in offsetting the negative thoughts and feelings associated with dysphoria. The more the affirmation comes from an outside source, the less mental work we have to do to provide the same level of protection and, often, the more likely we are to believe it.
  4. Activities and Interests. Part of burnout, for me anyway, is a lack of interest in things that I would usually enjoy. The frustrating thing is that engaging in things I enjoy makes me feel better. The trick is to find activities and interests that do not trigger any dysphoria. This allows you to engage in your activity or interest with less mental effort so that it doesn’t make the burnout worse which results in a net gain of positive emotion and energy.

Process the Stress

This concept is directly from the book I recommended earlier. The gist is that we experience our emotions in our bodies as a chemical and neurological process. When we are under constant stress (as with dysphoria), our bodies are constantly in ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ mode. Even if we get a burst of euphoria or a period of relief from dysphoria, our bodies still have to complete the chemical reaction or neurological pattern that was triggered by the stress. If we don’t engage in activities that encourage this completion to happen, our bodies remain in the stress state which only gets stronger the next time we experience stress (five minutes later).

So while we can’t necessarily get rid of the stressor (dysphoria) and stop it from triggering a stress response in our bodies, we can do various things to move through the stress response in our bodies, complete it, hit the reset button, so that the responses to this continual stress don’t compound as much. For me, the most useful activities are physical activity of any kind, breathing, affection, positive social engagement, and creativity (writing, painting, and crocheting). With so many options, it is easy to engage in at least one per day, usually more.

One of the tricks to making this as effective as possible for me is to do these activities mindfully. To focus on the calming effect it is having on my body, mind, and emotions. Or, if there was a specific situation that was stressful that I am ruminating on (because my body is still stuck in that stress cycle), I focus on that situation at the beginning of the activity, think through it, feel the emotions that I felt at the time (or didn’t allow myself to feel at the time), and continue the activity until the emotions and the associated physiological response dissipate. The amount of relief this brings in a very short span of time is pretty incredible.

Tl;dr

Burnout sucks and makes us feel numb, exhausted, and irritable. Dysphoria can lead to burnout due to the constant mental effort that is invisible to or misunderstood by the people around us. You can help yourself avoid repeated cycles of burnout by preventing as much dysphoria as possible, protecting yourself against the negative effects of dysphoria, and processing the physiological stress triggered by dysphoria (and any other sources of stress).

I hope this helps you. It is what I needed to hear five years ago. Leave a comment below or send me an email with your thoughts and experiences of burnout. Maybe your experiences are similar to mine and maybe they are very different. Either way, your experiences have value and I would love to hear about them.

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RESOURCES

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Baby Haircuts and Gender

My baby was born with lots of hair. That was always the first thing people commented on. It was dark and long and made them look a bit like a hobbit. At first I loved it. It was cute and made them look like a mini toddler. But when they started squirming and rolling, the hair at the back became matted on a daily basis. Combing it either took over an hour or led to a lot of screaming. So we decided it was time for our baby’s first haircut.

As it turned out, the hair underneath was a lot lighter. The before and after pictures look like completely different babies. It took some getting used to. But it wasn’t just that they looked different. My perception of their gender was also different.

They suddenly looked like a boy.

My general feeling on this is ‘Ugh. Why does my brain have to gender my baby based on their hair?’ But of course, just because I’m nonbinary does not mean I’m immune to the gendered programming I am surrounded by and grew up with.

For me, haircuts are one of the biggest sources of gender euphoria I can reliably get on a semi-regular basis. This is because having my hair short helps me express my masculinity and helps me see my masculine side when I look in the mirror. But just because short hair feels masculinizing for me does not mean that short hair indicates masculinity or male gender for everyone.

Especially babies! Most babies have no hair or very short hair. It was only because I was used to my baby’s longer hair that my brain registered the short hair as a gender indicator.

Then I began to wonder – does everyone automatically gender babies as male because of the short hair unless there is a female indicator such as pink clothes, frills, or a flower headband? Is this one of the reasons why baby clothes are so overly gendered?

In the two weeks since the haircut, with a steady stream of corrective self-talk, the gendering effect has worn off a bit. But regardless, I figure that if some people put flower headbands on their babies, I can too. Creating a genderful experience for my child means using clothing, accessories, toys, and language from all parts of the gender spectrum. It also means doing things to trick my brain out of gendering them based on their sex assigned at birth or their short hair.

What experiences have affected your perception of your baby’s gender? What things do you do to create a genderful experience for your child? Tell me in the comments below!

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Postpartum Update: 5 Months

We’ve all seen the representations of postpartum people in media who are frustrated with not being able to lose ‘those last five pounds’ when they’re five weeks postpartum. Let me tell you now, this is not reality. At least not for me.

My body did a whole lot more during pregnancy and birth than just put on a few pounds. Therefore, my body finding it’s way to a new, stable normal is not all about losing weight. Maybe I’ll get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, maybe I won’t. But more importantly, what is my body capable of doing and how does it feel?

PHYSICAL ENDURANCE AND MOBILITY

If you followed along with my pregnancy journey, you’ll know that I had severe pelvic and back pain that meant I was using a walker for mobility by week 14. Immediately postpartum I was able to start taking my regular medication and the pain improved quickly. But the impact of six months of limited mobility doesn’t go away over night.

I had a lot of joint stiffness and residual associated pain. I had significant muscle weakness in certain muscle groups (and still do to some extent). And I had extremely limited cardiovascular and muscular endurance.

I have been working on all of these as much as I can (giving the limited extra energy when caring for a baby). Initially I was mostly doing slow easy stretching and gentle movement and short walks. More recently I have done cardio exercise in the form of climbing the stairs while wearing the baby, using my rowing machine, and going for fast paced walks, strengthening exercise while playing with the baby on the floor or using the baby as a weight, and endurance exercise in the form of longer walks at normal pace. I even went skating for the first time today!

Each time I try another activity or try to push myself I come up against a very sudden limit in strength or endurance. I’m going along enjoying the feel of my body moving when suddenly I have no power. My muscles turn to water and my joints cease. I slow down or take a break to stretch, and try to continue. Often I can get a bit more out of my body but at much lower intensity or poorer quality. And that’s ok. That’s just where I’m at. Every bit counts.

Even if I wasn’t trying to improve my strength and endurance, just the act of moving my body and expending positive energy makes me feel less antsy, more patient, happier, and more connected with myself in a positive way.

HORMONE FLUCTUATIONS

At around two and half months postpartum I started having similar symptoms to when I was taking fertility drugs and when I was immediately postpartum. Wooziness, light headed, foggy, weepy, laughter easily becoming hysterics. Yes, apparently this is normal.

There is a hormone shift at 2.5-3.5 months postpartum and again somewhere between 6 and 9 months postpartum. My hormones were taking the next step in leveling out. Ugh. Not looking forward to going through that again but hopefully the next wave of this will be the last.

OTHER SYMPTOMS

  • All birthing trauma has healed (I had nothing severe and no C-section).
  • Despite having low milk supply initially and now decreasing lactation, my period has not yet returned (yay!).
  • I had some increase in hair loss around the time of the hormone shift but nothing extreme and it seems to have leveled out.
  • My belly is still round in a more pregnancy like shape than my typical body shape but is down to about my early second trimester size.
  • I had many many stretch marks that have somewhat faded into a soft, saggy, pouch of excess skin below my belly.

EMOTIONAL EFFECTS

As I am now trying to figure out what being a parent means and often exhausted from caring for my baby, I am definitely not in the same place emotionally as I was pre-pregnancy and never will be and that’s fine. Becoming a parent changes you and I am embracing and navigating that change.

But there are emotional effects from the experience of being pregnant and giving birth that stuck with me for a while. A few weeks postpartum, when the extreme fatigue had worn off a bit, I started having mild panic attacks when I was lying in my bed trying to go to sleep because I would be transported to the moments when I was waiting for another contraction to happen. That lasted for a few nights but, with the help of my husband talking me through it, wore off and hasn’t returned.

Looking back on being pregnant, remembering how it felt, is extremely surreal. Even when I see pictures of myself when I was pregnant. I know that it happened to me, I can remember that it happened, but I have a very hard time actually feeling what it felt like at the time. My body just felt so different than it ever had before and than it does now.

I can remember little things, like what it felt like when my baby had hiccups, what different stages of contractions felt like, and what my baby helping along my contractions felt like. But the overall experience of being pregnant? What it felt like to move around? It is very vague and very surreal. And maybe that’s ok.

So have I ‘recovered’ from being pregnant? No. I don’t even know what that means. Pregnancy doesn’t feel like something I need to recover from. I’m not trying to re-create my pre-pregnancy body. And as debilitating as my pregnancy was, it wasn’t a negative experience.

I am five months postpartum and very happy with what my body is capable of doing these days. I will continue to be curious and fascinated by all the changes just as I was during pregnancy. It is a continuation of the process that began with pregnancy. It did not end at my baby’s birth and will not have reached a conclusion for many months yet. So here’s to the journey.

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Discovering My Identity as a Parent

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my identity as a parent. Yes, as someone who has a child I am responsible for, I am automatically deemed a parent. But what does that actually mean for me as a person? What does it mean to identify as a parent? How does this new part of my identity mesh or clash with other components of who I am?

As a queer person, I have an understanding that identity is fluid, multifaceted, and individual. I have had the experience of exploring new aspects of my identity as a gay person and as a nonbinary person. In drawing parallels with my new experience as a parent, I had a bit of an ‘aha’ moment that I wanted to share with you.

STAGES OF QUEER IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT

For me, discovering and exploring aspects of my queer identity followed a similar process: from unaware/baseline, to awareness, resistance, exploration, acceptance, immersion, and finally, integration. My process of moving through these stages was different when I was discovering my sexuality vs my gender.

Before figuring out I was gay I was assumed to be straight but really I didn’t have much sense of my own sexuality. Figuring out I was gay involved very little resistance for me because of the liberal environment I was raised in. I went from awareness to exploration to acceptance very quickly. I was still in early high school at that point with little autonomy for accessing the queer community. But as soon as I went to university away from home, I entered the immersion stage and became involved in the queer club, went to all the queer events, hung out with primarily queer friends, and went to queer bars. I always had something rainbow on, hung my rainbow flag on my door, and talked about queerness every chance I got. Over a couple years, this faded to being just one component of my identity (integration).

Figuring out I was nonbinary went through the same stages but at a very different rate. Despite having a gendery experience in high school, I remained unaware of my non-cis gender identity for years after and probably would have said I was a woman. During my husband’s transition I became aware of nonbinary identities and developed an awareness of my own but did not feel like I had the energy to explore it or deal with the consequences that exploration might bring. I remained in the resistance stage for at least two years. By the time I finally got the space and courage to explore my gender, I already knew that I was nonbinary and had accepted it, I just didn’t know what to do about it. So I immersed myself in this part of my identity for six months to a year, figuring out all the different facets of my gender, how to explain it to people, and connecting with a gender diverse group of friends. This has slowly faded to a more integrated level but remains a larger part of my overall identity than being gay did.

The ‘coming out’ process started at different points for these two identities. I came out as gay immediately after the acceptance stage, before immersion. I am still working on coming out as nonbinary despite being somewhere between the immersion and integration stages.

HOW THIS RELATES TO MY IDENTITY AS A PARENT

Because of the external and concrete nature of being a parent, the first couple stages don’t apply as much. I wasn’t a parent, and then, suddenly, I was. However, the process of resistance through to integration is more about the emotional and personal relationship with this new aspect of my identity, so I think it still applies.

So where am I at in the process? At this stage of things, four and a half months in, I’m still not really sure what it means to be a parent. I’ve been resisting my new parental identity because I didn’t want to lose the rest of who I am. If I lose who I am, all my emotions will be tied up in how well I feel like I’m doing as a parent. And since there are many aspects of this parenting thing that I have no control over, that seemed like a dangerous game.

Then I realized that ‘losing who I am’ was part of the process – the immersion stage. I had been too scared of what that would feel like to allow myself to move through the stages of exploring this new identity. Since making this connection, I have quickly moved from exploration to acceptance and, a bit nervously, into immersion.

It definitely feels different to allow myself to become immersed in an aspect of my identity and existence that is so strongly dependent on something external to myself. I feel like I have less control over my exploration process (and therefore, how it will integrate with the rest of my identity in the long run) than I did with the queer aspects of my identity. Add to that the fact that we are in the middle of a global pandemic and therefore have limited access to the social activities and groups that I might engage in as part of the immersion stage.

Needless to say, exploring my identity of being a parent will be different from exploring my queer identities. Regardless, I can’t jump straight from acceptance to integration. But maybe, since the identity of being a parent is a more external one, so too is the immersion process. Who I am internally, all those pieces I have fought to understand and accept, can stay where they are. I’m not going to ignore my experience as a nonbinary person while figuring out what it means to be a parent. I’m going to figure out what it means to be a nonbinary, queer parent.

What stages did you go through in exploring your queer identity? How did you feel in your role as a new parent? Leave me a comment to share your experiences. I’d love to know how you navigated these transformational experiences.

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Gender in Isolation

In the time of the COVID 19 pandemic, many of us are living in physical isolation. We have significantly less social interaction, especially with strangers, and the majority of our social time is over the internet using video chat. Depending on your situation, this time of isolation may have been helpful or harmful as it relates to your gender. For me, it has been a bit of both.

My experience of isolation, in general, has been positive. I live with a supportive spouse, I have job and housing security, and I haven’t had any major medical incidents (other than giving birth to our baby). I know this is not the case for everyone, especially queer and trans people. Many are isolated with family members that are not supportive of their identity or even abusive. Many have lost their income. Many have had major mental or physical health crises. If your experience differs from mine, I would love to hear about it. Please share in the comments or send me an email. However, I will stick to my own experiences for the purposes of this post.

HELPFUL ASPECTS OF ISOLATION

Separating Physical and Social Dysphoria Triggers

When I am home alone, or with only my spouse, the majority of my dysphoria goes away. This has made it even more obvious to me how much of my dysphoria is triggered by social interactions and how important it is for me to build a life for myself where I am predominantly in supportive environments. The flip side of this is that it also has shown me what aspects of my dysphoria are present regardless of social interaction. These are physical and part of my experience even when I’m by myself.

For example, I always assumed my dysphoria related to my chest was triggered by having other people see me as female as a result of the shape of my chest. Turns out I have almost the same amount of dysphoria even when I’m by myself, it’s just easier to ignore because it’s not compounded by all the other socially triggered parts of dysphoria.

Decreased Social Dysphoria

About 75% of my dysphoria is triggered by social situations. This includes being misgendered, hearing female language used to refer to me, and being expected to look and act a certain way. Since being in isolation, I have had so much less exposure to these triggers that I have way more energy and emotional bandwidth to spend on other things, like taking care of my four month old!

Seeing how much of a difference this has made has given me incentive to try to be open about my gender when interacting with new people and even work on coming out to other people in my life. Hopefully over time this will shape my social environment into a more supportive one that has fewer triggers for dysphoria.

Space to Experiment in Safety

Though I haven’t felt the need to experiment in the last few months as I have done a fair amount of this already, I have found isolation necessary to experiment in the past. Trying something in private has always been the first step in seeing how I feel about it gender-wise. If it feels good, I’ll try it in a queer inclusive space next. If it doesn’t, I’m always glad I tried it on my own first.

The isolation isn’t just good for the experimentation but also for the process of building up courage and taking care of myself afterwards. Sometimes this means laying out what I want to try and just holding it up to myself or feeling it before trying it on. Sometimes it means having time to take pictures or look in the mirror. Sometimes it means changing into comfy clothes and working out or cleaning afterwards to get rid of excess energy and re-ground myself in my body. Almost always, it means having time to journal about the experience either immediately after or a day or two later. Having to interact with others while feeling vulnerable and confused about the experience is extremely taxing. So doing the experiments is always easier during a period of isolation.

DIFFICULT ASPECTS OF ISOLATION

Testing Public Reactions

Often when I make a change to my appearance or behaviour I am doing it in an attempt to influence how other people see me and interact with me. Seeing how the change influences others can’t be done without social interaction. This means that while I may find ways of being that I am very comfortable with for myself, it may not have the effect I’m hoping for when I’m out in public or at work. This stage of experimentation will have to wait for when the social isolation has ended.

Coming Out and Reinforcing the Change

Being in isolation may have given me the bandwidth to build up courage to come out to more people and shown me how necessary it is but it doesn’t allow me to reinforce the changes that others have to make as a result. Coming out as trans or nonbinary requires a bunch of work from the other party. For me, this usually includes changing the pronouns and language they use to refer to me. Most people can’t do this without significant practice. And most people need to be corrected when they get it wrong before they start to correct themselves or get it right on the first try.

Without the regular social interaction following coming out, I can’t do this repeated correcting and reinforcing. Sometimes this means the change in how they refer to me happens slower, and sometimes it stalls and doesn’t happen at all and I have to repeat the coming out process at a later date.

Separation from Queer and Trans Support

While the global pandemic has led to many support groups moving online and therefore becoming accessible to me even though I don’t live in the area, it has also led to not having access to my in person, local group of queer and trans friends. There’s something different about meeting in person that I don’t get from an online group. I miss it and I’m looking forward to the days when I can get it back.

How has isolation influenced your relationship with your gender, either recently or in the past? Leave me a comment or send me an email with your thoughts and experiences!

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When Caring for your Child Triggers Dysphoria

When we picture having a child we think of sleepy cuddles, bonding while feeding, and being an expert at diaper changes. The reality is not always so rosy. Maybe our baby has health struggles, we struggle with mental health postpartum, or, in my case, dysphoria gets in the way.

There are multitude of ways dysphoria can be triggered when caring for your child, depending on how you experience the most dysphoria and what your child care roles are. Personally, I found nursing to cause the most dysphoria, then later, pumping was causing less but was still building up over time, as well as all the sensations in my chest associated with lactation.

I noticed it was getting in the way of being able to bond with my baby the way I wanted to and stopping me from being present in order to notice the small daily changes my baby was making. I couldn’t pay attention to my baby while nursing. I had a spike in dysphoria when holding my baby against my chest. And I was dreading the time I had to spend pumping which made me irritable and easily frustrated.

So I developed a number of strategies to use depending on the situation to decrease the interference of dysphoria. Even if the trigger for your dysphoria is different, I hope these strategies will help you navigate caring for your child in a way that minimizes your dysphoria and maximizes your ability to bond.

BE HONEST

Be honest with yourself, your social supports (partner, doulas, close family or friends), and your medical supports (midwife, doctors, mental health professionals, lactation consultants). As much as we are taught that it is, it is not shameful to feel dysphoria, even when it is triggered by something like caring for your baby or child. The only way to make the situation better for everyone is to be open and honest about it.

This will also help narrow down the trigger. Often, I would be feeling irritable, fatigued, or burnt out and not recognize it as dysphoria related. Then, once my husband and I realized it was likely dysphoria, it still took a bit of conscious awareness to figure out the trigger which for me was nursing. Upon further discussion, observation, and testing, we figured out what would need to be modified to decrease or eliminate the dysphoria. There is no way I would have been able to do all this on my own.

ASK FOR HELP

Sometimes you need someone to take over the dysphoria-triggering task, even if temporarily, to give you a break and build up some reserve. But this isn’t always an option. My husband couldn’t take over lactation for me. So instead of taking over that specific task, even having them offload other tasks can give you more energy to deal with the dysphoria and still have enough left over to bond with your child.

For example, my husband does as many feedings as he can each day as they typically coincide with pumping times. This allows me to pump without the stress of wondering when the baby will wake up and scream for food or delay pumping in order to feed the baby resulting in increased chest discomfort.

FIND OTHER BONDING TIME

If dysphoria gets in the way of bonding with your baby during typical bonding tasks, prioritize bonding at other times. Carve out some play time or snuggle time when it is less likely to trigger dysphoria. Find a snuggle strategy or style of play that is more comfortable for you. I look for the times when the baby is alert and playful and drop what I’m doing to play on the floor, read a book, sing and dance, or go for a walk. This takes time away from other things but getting extra housework or personal stuff done doesn’t make up for the lack of bonding time at the end of the day.

I also found I was missing little changes and new behaviours my baby was doing because I was too busy trying to ignore or deal with the dysphoria. So, on days when I felt particularly dysphoric and disconnected, I would use my journal to write down my own personal challenges and triumphs for that day (to disconnect it from the baby) and some of the new things the baby was doing or a fun moment we shared that day. Just taking the time to think back on the day in order to write it down helped bring those moments into focus through the haze of dysphoria.

ADJUST YOUR CHILD CARE STRATEGY

Sometimes, despite all your efforts to manage it, the dysphoria is too strong or is getting progressively worse. As much as you would like to care for your baby/child in the ‘optimal’ way, that is not always what’s best for you and therefore best for your child. Sometimes we have to compromise on our preferred style of care in order to take care of ourselves and minimize dysphoria.

This could mean using disposable diapers instead of cloth to make diaper changes faster. Or switching to bottle feeding instead of nursing. Or switching to formula and stopping lactation altogether. Or having the baby in the stroller for walks instead of the carrier. Or doing ‘skin-to-skin’ time with the baby lying on your lap instead of your chest. There are always other options.

For us, this meant switching from nursing to pumping and bottle feeding after two weeks. I had the goal of feeding my baby my milk for the first six months but once my supply increased to >75% of my baby’s intake, the amount of sensation from my chest started increasing my dysphoria much faster. So we decided to decrease lactation earlier and slowly switch to formula. This may increase my baby’s gas. This may not be my preferred method of feeding my baby, or what society tells me is best. But it’s what’s best for us.

What I’ve found is that, even though it’s not my preferred method of care, the next-best option that results in less dysphoria feels significantly better and allows me to engage in the care a lot more, resulting in a much better experience for my baby as well. There is no harm in trying different things. You should never rule out options based on preconceived ideas from society. If it’s the best option for you (and still meets your baby’s basic needs), it’s the best option for your baby as well.

What baby/child care tasks trigger your dysphoria? What strategies do you use to deal with it so it doesn’t interfere with bonding with your child? Leave me a comment below or send me an email! The more strategies we share with each other the better!

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How to Reprogram Yourself Out of Binary Gendered Thinking

The majority of the world’s cultures are structured around the gender binary – male and female. Everyone who grows up in these cultures is automatically trained to see everything around them through the lens of the gender binary. We are trained to associate almost everything around us with gender. Similar to prescribing human traits to animals, a lot of these associations are fake.

Even when we ascribe gender to a person, it is often based on many aspects that, while related to gender, are not synonymous with gender. As a nonbinary person, this leaves little space for me to exist unless I constantly fight for it. So I’d like to share some strategies you can use to reprogram yourself away from seeing the world through the lens of the gender binary and build yourself a new, clearer lens that is at least gender neutral, if not gender expansive.

GENDER ISN’T BINARY, AND NEITHER IS SEX

The first step is to recognize that gender isn’t binary. Often people assume it is because we base gender on sex when a baby is born and we see sex as binary. But, as it turns out, sex isn’t binary either. Sex is made up of many factors including chromosomes, hormones, hormone receptors, gene expression, internal and external genitalia, and secondary sex characteristics.

Some of these can be tested for, some of these are known from birth, but some of these fluctuate throughout life, especially during puberty. Often, if someone has external genitalia that we have ascribed to a binary sex, that is the category they are assigned to. If they have other aspects that don’t match that category, they may not find out until puberty, or through fertility testing, or even later.

So no, gender isn’t binary, and neither is sex.

DICONNECT BODIES FROM GENDER

If gender and sex are separate traits, then our gender is not based on our body. Our gender is in our heart and our mind. So no matter what body I have, for me it is a nonbinary body. All parts of this body are nonbinary. Even parts that are typically used to determine a person’s sex. Because I am nonbinary, those parts of my body are also nonbinary. So why assign a gender to any part of anyone’s body that isn’t their own gender?

This takes a little more work, but try to disconnect bodies from gender. Especially genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. Anyone of any gender can inhabit those bodies and anyone of any gender can have any physical characteristics.

DICONNECT GENDER FROM CLOTHING AND OTHER PRODUCTS

The commercial industry would have us believe that certain clothes are for certain genders. Almost every product aisle has separate products for men and women. This, too, is fake. Buy whatever clothes suit you, feel good, and look the way you want to look. Wear whatever colours you want to wear. Use whatever shampoo and razor you want to use. Read whatever books you want to read.

Better yet, when you see someone else wearing certain clothes, colours, or jewelry, don’t assume their gender as a result. Don’t give into the training of the commercial industry!

DICONNECT GENDER FROM PERSONALITY TRAITS AND INTERESTS

The differences between boys and girls has been widely studied. It can be speculated how much of this is nature vs nurture but it is impossible to disconnect a child from the environment they are raised in. If society teaches us that boys are energetic and rough and girls are quieter and more social, then we will subconsciously train children to act that way. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Anyone can have any personality traits and interests. There are no traits that are strictly male or female traits (again, what about nonbinary people?). So next time someone has a particular interest or acts in a way you’re not expecting, check your expectation. Was it based on their gender? Would you have had the same surprised reaction if they acted in a way that you felt ‘conformed with their gender’? Try to train yourself away from assigning gender to personality traits or associating certain interests and traits with certain genders.

GENDERING STRANGERS

So if you’re not supposed to assume someone’s gender based on their physical traits, their clothing and presentation, or their behaviour and interests, how are you supposed to address them?

As it turns out, you don’t need to know someone’s gender to interact with them. You can refer to anyone using they/them pronouns until their gender is specified to you. This isn’t to say you are assuming everyone is nonbinary. You are using the neutral pronoun of they/them as a place holder. And if it turns out they use they/them pronouns, you’ll have been gendering them correctly the whole time.

This takes practice and requires the use of other neutral language such as person, customer, participants, attendees, friends, folks, or y’all. If you want to point out someone specific who’s gender you don’t know yet, use a physical description such as ‘that person in the yellow skirt’ or ‘the person in the Blue Jays cap’. Try to avoid ‘that woman in the yellow skirt’ or ‘that boy in the Blue Jays cap’. Unless you know this person and their gender, those are the gendered assumptions you have been trained to make that are unnecessary.

RECOGNIZE WHEN NONBINARY PEOPLE ARE EXCLUDED

Often, when referring to a group of people, the genders within the group are specified as men and women – ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, moms and dads. Nonbinary people are often left out due to lack of reference and lack of awareness. Again, this means we are forced to make space for ourselves in a way that binary-gendered people are not.

Try to recognize these times when gendered language is being used and is nonbinary people. It is easier to recognize when others do it but eventually the goal is to recognize when you do it yourself and correct your use of language to be more inclusive and less binary.

Some of the ways this happens are more insidious. Research is often conducted on ‘men and women’ or sometimes, just men. It is assumed that everyone is cisgendered and binary gendered. Very little research includes a broad enough definition of gender to include nonbinary people. So when you hear a fact that is based on research, assume that it was conducted based on the gender binary unless otherwise specified.

Health care systems are based entirely on the gender binary. Legal systems including prisons and, until recently, legal documentation, are also based on the gender binary. The more you recognize this, the easier it will be to maintain your newly found gender neutral or gender expansive lens while engaging with these environments. If you are in a position to help correct this, please please do. Even if it is just at a local level.

Until you are aware of how and when nonbinary people are excluded, you will likely fall in line with the gender binary assumptions in these situations without realizing it, even if you are pretty good at maintaining a neutral and inclusive lens at other times.

IT TAKES PRACTICE!

Don’t be hard on yourself if this is a struggle at the beginning. It takes a while to realize how much of our daily experience we associate with gender when it really has nothing to do with gender. At some point you will be good at recognizing these situations but not yet be good at correcting your own thinking or language and you will feel overwhelmed. That’s ok! You are making progress! Keep practicing!

It helps if others around you are also trying to change their perspective on gender so that you can help correct each other and have someone to discuss specific assumptions with.

Reprogramming your brain takes time, energy, and practice! I am still working on this myself. The more people that do this, the safer and more welcoming the world will become for me and other nonbinary people. So I thank you in advance. Together, we can change the world.

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Gender Roles in the Family

As a queer family, gender roles don’t really exist. Traditionally, the man goes to work, earns the money, drives the car, does house and auto repairs, and plays sports with the kids. Traditionally, the woman stays home, takes care of the kids, keeps the house clean, does the shopping, and cooks meals. This is all based on societal norms that are harmful and unnecessary.

When I met my husband, we both identified as women. We fulfilled the roles that we were each suited to – my husband likes to cook and drive so that’s what he does. Because he cooks and drives, it’s easier for him to do the grocery shopping as well. We have pets and because my husband has asthma, I do the litter and vacuuming. We each do our own laundry.

Then my husband transitioned and now identifies as male. From the outside, we are assumed to be a cisgender heterosexual (cishet) couple. When we’re doing tasks that fall into the traditional gender role that an outsider would classify us as, I find myself slightly uncomfortable, like it’s suddenly harder to tell if we’re doing things that way because society expects us to or because it’s what we’re suited for.

Then throw a baby into the mix. The majority of baby care can be done by either of us and therefore, we split the tasks. When my husband is working, I’m taking care of the baby. When my husband gets home, he takes over for a bit so I can pump or cook dinner or do a workout or have a shower. On his days off, we trade baby care back and forth throughout the day depending on what is happening and what each of us wants to get done.

By not assuming tasks based on societal gender norms we end up filling roles that we are suited to and are more likely to enjoy. As a team, we become more resilient and more adaptable. All roles are up for negotiation and as situations change, the roles we fulfill can change too. For example, while I was pregnant, my husband cleaned the cats’ litter, despite the fact that he needed a mask and goggles to do it without having an allergic reaction. As soon as I could, I took over again, not because I’m expected to, but because my system can tolerate it better.

How do you determine who performs which roles in your family? Is it by suitability and interest, what you were trained to do as a child, or societal expectation? Leave me a comment below and tell me how your familial roles work!

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Making Sense of Myself by Writing Poetry

Back in 2008, a few years after my initial gender questioning experience but many years before I actually figured out my gender or heard the term ‘nonbinary’, I wrote a poem for an LGBT publication at my university. I was going through boxes of notebooks and found the one I had written it in. Reading through it, I found it incredible how accurate it still feels. I don’t even think it was chosen for the publication but it means a whole lot to me so I thought I’d publish it here.

Both

Neither boy nor girl.
Not neither, both. 
Sometimes one more than the other, 
But always both. 

Gender is fluid, always changes.
It's not black and white, 
not static, 
not for me. 
Gender fluidity.

It's not visible like race. 
It's who I am and part of all I do. 
The way I walk,
the way I talk,
the way I punch your shoulder. 
The clothes I wear defy gender, do not conform,
instead show who I am. 
And the way I sit - have you not noticed?

Of course not. 
I use the women's washroom
(every time glancing at the men's sign).
I check the 'female' box on forms
(wishing it didn't matter).
It's in the language:
Masculine, feminine, he, she, him, her. 
It's defined, as it should be, 
as it needs to be,
for society. 
But not for me. 

I'm not butch, that's just an image. 
Don't call me a tomboy, that's just a name. 
I don't need a category, 
I don't want a label. 
I'm me and will forever be
neither boy nor girl. 
Not neither, both. 
Always both.

There are some parts of this that I’ve changed my perspective on or have a deeper understanding of. I now understand that race can be as invisible as gender, just as difficult to navigate as gender, and is absolutely as inherent to someone’s identity as their gender. I also do appreciate labels as a way to communicate who I am in a variety of ways depending on who I’m talking to and what the situation is. But the labels typically given to me by society feel just as wrong or irritating now as they did when I wrote this poem.

Even without accurate language to describe it, much understanding of it, or much experience exploring my own gender, I was still able to communicate the emotional experience of living as a nonbinary person in a binary-gendered society.

If you’re stuck on a strong emotion and keep going around in circles no matter who you talk to or what advice you hear, try writing it down as a poem. I have relied on this as a tool of expression, communication, and self-discovery many times over the years all the way from elementary school into adulthood. Even if you’re not the poetry type, or don’t think you’re good with words, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be eloquent. If you start from a place of strong emotion and use words that represent that emotion and the experience that triggered it or what it feels like to sit with it, you may be surprised how powerful your words can be.

Give it a try and, if you’d like to share, post your poem in the comments or send it to me in an email. I’d love to read it.

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Goal Setting 2021

If the year 2020 taught us anything, it was that anything can happen and we need to be flexible in order to survive. One of the ways I failed in this was when I set my goals for 2020.

Every year in December I set up my bullet journal for the next year. This includes writing down my goals and deciding how I’m going to track them. Having goals that work for me helps me keep my sense of progress and growth. The act of goal setting forces me to decide what I feel is most important to focus on. And having a way to track my goals and a timeline for when I’ll check back keeps me accountable and shows me concretely how I’m doing.

Last year I picked five goals for the year and broke them down into four parts, one for each quarter of the year. I planned to update the tracker at each quarter to see how I’m doing but life got in the way in a big way. Three out of five of my goals were no longer feasible after the first quarter and another by the end of the second quarter.

So this year I’m picking three goals and only writing them out for the first quarter. At the end of the quarter I’ll revisit my goals and if they’re still accurate, I’ll write them out again for the next quarter which will reinforce my commitment. If not, I have space to adjust the intensity of the goal or pick an entirely new goal.

I’ve tried a number of different goal setting strategies and found one that I like the best. It includes five sections: topic, goal, why, how, and tracking. Here’s what goes into each section:

Topic

This the area of your life that the goal relates to. Ideally, each goal should relate to a different area of your life so that if one area is greatly affected or changed, you won’t lose all your goals; the goals from the other areas of your life sill hopefully still work for you. Examples: Health, Creativity, Work, House, Money, School, Fitness, Sport, Relationship.

Goal

What exactly do you want to accomplish? Is it a finite goal (finish something, achieve a certain level or score) or habitual (complete an activity a certain number of times each day, week, or month)? State the goal and the target. Chose things that you have control over. Examples of finite goals: Finish my novel, run 5K without stopping, save $12,000. Examples of habitual goals: Exercise 3 times/week, write in my journal every day, vacuum the house every week.

Why

Why is the goal important to you? What will you gain by having it as your focus? What benefit will you notice from completing it regularly? Write a list of the top 3-5 benefits that are most important or the strongest motivators for you. Examples: More energy, less stress, clearer mind, financial stability.

How

How will you accomplish this goal? How will you keep up your motivation or find the time you need? Who will you need to coordinate with? If you respond well to rewards, how will you reward yourself? What other habits will support this goal? Examples: Get dressed in running clothes before breakfast, write for 30 minutes before work, plan housework into weekly schedule.

Tracking

How will you measure your ongoing progress? Will you keep track on a calendar, a spreadsheet, or right next to where you’re writing out your goals? Will you use stickers, check marks, or colouring something in? Is the completion of each milestone a yes/no or are there levels in between? For finite goals, I like to break them down into weekly targets but if biweekly or monthly works better for you, use that. Habitual goals are easier – if it’s daily, track daily, if its weekly, track weekly, etc.

I can’t stress how important it is to track your progress towards a goal on a regular basis. Seeing good progress can be motivating. Being aware of poor progress quickly allows you to adjust your strategy, build in new habits, or redouble your commitment to your goal. There’s nothing worse than getting to the end of the goal period and having to do a bunch of work to find out if you have accomplished your goal only to realize you didn’t keep track of some key information.

I hope this helps you set motivating goals that are important to you and help you maintain a sense of progress and growth in your life. Share your goals in the comments below! Or if you have a completely different goal setting strategy that works for you, I’d love to hear it. Send me an email or share it in the comments!

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