Category: Personal

My own gender identity and exploration process

My Hero’s Journey, So Far

Here is how my gender journey lines up with the Hero’s Journey. Missed my previous post about Gender Transition as a Hero’s Journey? Check that out first and then come back to read my story.

ORDINARY WORLD

When my husband started being identified as a man by strangers, their ingrained heteronormative views told them that I must be a woman. I started getting treated as more feminine when we were together and this didn’t sit right with me.

I had never been comfortable with the term lesbian, and instead had always called myself gay or queer.

In grade 10 I had a gender fluid experience where I would feel like a boy named Ray for a few days every few weeks, shifting back to feeling like a girl named Meaghan in between.

I grew up in a very liberal and supportive environment but at the inception of my gender journey I had moved away and was working in a more conservative and very hetero- and cis-normative environment.

CALL TO ADVENTURE

Part way through my husband’s transition, I realized that I was definitely experiencing dysphoria as well. We had been attending local PFLaG meetings and had been listening to people describe a range of identities and experiences. Some of these, especially the more androgenous, gender neutral, gender fluid, and nonbinary ones, really resonated with me.

REFUSAL OF THE CALL

However, my husband was still in the middle of navigating how to get top surgery, how to change all his legal documentation, and what to do about continually being misgendered at work, months after coming out. From witnessing his experiences and hearing about similar experiences from the community, I knew that exploring your gender and clarifying for yourself who you are and what you need to feel authentic can make not having those things feel a whole lot worse.

Knowing that my husband still needed a lot of my support and I was not working in an environment that would be condusive to coming out as nonbinary, I decided to put off all gender related self-discovery for the time being.

MEETING THE MENTOR

As soon as my husband felt fairly stable in his transition, he encouraged me to do my own gender exploration work. As a result of his transition, he finally felt ready to be a parent (being able to picture himself as a dad instead of a mom) but also did not want to be the one to be pregnant. This meant that, if possible, I would be the carrying and birthing parent.

There is so much unknown and out of your control in the process of trying to conceive, pregnancy, and birthing. I didn’t want gender related feelings to be one more. So I started to explore what felt not so great, what felt awesome, and how my gender felt on a daily basis.

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

Turns out I am nonbinary. I discovered that I have both female and male genders which balance out to an overall experience that is a mix of the two or ‘somewhere in the middle’. I discovered that I do have some physical dysphoria during which times I feel better if I wear a binder (if my body can tolerate it). I discovered that I have significant social dysphoria and feel much better when referred to using they/them pronouns and neutral language.

The physical dysphoria I could manage pretty well with some practice. The social dysphoria was a whole other story, especially at work.

TESTS, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES

Partly as a result of constant social dysphoria, I started expriencing periods of burnout that would last 1-2 months and re-occur every 4-6 months.

I had a few new colleagues at work that were queer and super supportive and a few others that I slowly built friendships with and eventually came out to. These allies, especially at work, were a major help on bad dysphoria days.

I had a colleague who was also a friend come out as nonbinary. Unfortunately, the support from the management team was not in place and did not appear when they needed it. There were very few allies around them and they were continually misgendered, had repeated conflicts with coworkers, and ultimately moved to a different job. As an example of what it would be like for me to come out at work, it was a pretty clear one.

Navigating the world of fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum as a nonbinary person is extremely difficult. There were times I found community and resources and felt like I could belong. There were also times that were nauseating and traumatic that I will carry with me for life.

APPROACH TO THE INNERMOST CAVE

While I was on parental leave (for a whole year – go Canada!), and in the middle of a global pandemic, I had minimal interaction with the outside world unless I reached out for it. I had significantly less dysphoria and significantly less burnout, despite being a new parent in a pandemic. This told me that my burnout was indeed primarily dysphoria related and in order to feel more comfortable in my life, and have the emotional reserve I wanted and needed to support my child, I would need to make some changes. I would need to find spaces that I was comfortable being out in. And I would need to be out in as many spaces as I could.

This was especially true around family. I wanted my kid to grow up hearing people refer to me using the correct pronouns. This meant I would first have to explain my identity to everyone my kid would be interacting with regularly (namely family) and train everyone to use my pronouns and preferred language. This would take time and my kid was growing up at a steady pace. I had to come out to family before my kid started understanding what pronouns meant and remembering and repeating phrases from those around them.

THE ORDEAL

The first step I took was to apply to a graduate school program using my preferred name, pronouns, and gender identity. I was open with my supervisor from the beginning and made it clear in my application that my identity and lived experience was a big part of why I wanted to do research work. This meant that in September, when I started school, I had the foundation and backup to expect that everyone refer to me correctly. When they don’t, I have significantly more confidence to correct them than I ever have in other environments.

When my kid was about ten months old, I bit the bullet and came out to my in-laws (who live near us) and my parents (who live across the country but were coming for a month-long visit). I did this via email with the hope of some reply, either of support or questions or concerns that I could respond to. Mostly, there was silence and confusion. I had a brief follow up conversation with my in-laws and, after a period of awkwardnes and tension, saw some awereness and progress. My sister had many follow up conversations with my parents on my behalf but I had minimal expectation that they would be able to/willing to follow through and change their use of pronouns for me during their visit.

However, their visit happened to coincide with work I was doing to develop inclusive training material for a health professions college. They were curious about my work which gave me an opening to talk about many of the issues trans people face in health care settings (mostly related to ignorance and being misgendered). The materials I was developing included a ‘bad’ version of a health care interaction and a ‘good’ version. I sent them both versions and we had a few conversations about why the ‘bad’ version was ‘bad’ and why it was important to interact in ways that were depicted in the ‘good’ version. They were able to grasp these concepts significantly better than the information my sister had attempted to explain, perhaps because it wasn’t directly about them and thus did not make them feel as defensive. They almost immediately started making an effort to use my correct pronouns. While they weren’t great at it, and they will likely back-slide between in-person visits, this was more progress than I expected and I took it as a positive sign.

REWARD

It’s an increadible feeling, being seen. It’s even better when you don’t have to fight for it first. I now have numerous allys who actively step in to do the educating and, if necessary, fighting, on my behalf. I am better at advocating for myself (or getting better at it slowly), and better at identifying situations where having an ally would be useful and then recruiting one.

Confidence, euphoria, authenticity, and visibility are pretty good rewards. Do I wish I didn’t have to fight for them? Sure. But it’s still worth the fight.

THE ROAD BACK

I now spend the majority of my time working in an inclusive environment with my name and pronouns displayed correctly on my zoom screen during ‘meetings’. I have more bandwidth to apply to my work and family. I have not had a period of burnout in over a year despite having a baby during a pandemic. I am able to exercise despite the accompanying dysphoria because, for the majority of the time, I experience more euphoria than dysphoria. I can recover easily from the few days I spend in my previous work environment where I am still not out (and likely will never be).

I am using my unique experiences and perspective to help others make their work more inclusive. I am being recognized for the value of my experiences and identity rather than ‘supported’ or ‘accommodated’.

I am thinking about the future and what I might want for myself in my transition. Are there ‘next steps’? I have a long road to recovery from pregnancy related body changes and have chosen to focus on this prior to pursuing anything further related to transition. Though, likely, at some unknown point in the future, I would like to have some form of top surgery. Will this be my ‘Ressurection’? Who knows! If you stay tuned, you’ll likely find out when I do!

RELATED POSTS

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Gender Transition as a Hero’s Journey

The heroes in our favourite stories all start out as ordinary people. Their journeys often follow a similar pattern as they face trials and tribulations, discover their inner strength, and return triumphant. Joseph Campbell orginally described this story arc using 17 stages (and fairly problematic language). It has since been revised into 12 stages, most recently by Christopher Vogler.

As it turns out, these stages match the emotional stages of a gender transition pretty closely. Which means trans people are all heroes or heroes-in-training!

Here’s how it looks:

There are three parts: Departure (the beginning), Initiation (the middle), and Return (the end). These are broken down into the 12 stages.

The journey starts with the hero in the ordinary world living in a harsh and unforgiving external light in a state of unhappiness, stress, ignorance, and/or confusion.

They move to a new, extraordinary, or special world during the Initiation phase. Here they move through darkness as they struggle to discover their own internal source of light.

They then return to the ordinary world in a state of triumph and rebirth, having learned how to shine brightly from withinwith. They now have a new perspective, skill, or, in our case, identity.

As I was thinking about the steps in the Hero’s Journey and lining them up with the experience of gender transition, it was interesting how easy it was to see. Some of the original wording even makes sense without changing much except the context.

Let’s break it down and look at each of the twelve steps:

Stage 1: Ordinary World

Classic: The hero is uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware. They are living a life at the mercy of their enviornment, heredity, and personal history. The hero feels pulled in different directions and is stressed by the dilemma.

Trans: You are living with confusion and discomfort, just trying to get by with no language or understanding of why you feel different, that there is a way to relieve your distress, or what path your life is going to take.

Stage 2: Call to Adventure

Classic: Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change.

Trans: You discover that your discomfort might be gender related by meeting a trans person, seeing a trans person represented in media, or learning about language, labels, or experiences that feel right for you.

Stage 3: Refusal of the Call

Classic: The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly. This uncertainty may be voiced by someone else rather than the hero themself.

Trans: You have immense fear about the enormity of what this would mean for your life. This fear takes over and you ignore what you have just learned, bury the knowledge deep down, convince yourself that you don’t need to transition or don’t need to think about this. You try as hard as you can to fit in with what is expected of you or numb/ignore this awareness.

Stage 4: Meeting the Mentor

Classic: The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives them training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey. Or the hero reaches within to a mentor from their past or an internal source of courage and wisdom.

Trans: You meet someone who sees you for who you are and encourages you to delve into yourself. This could be a trans or queer person from the community who is living their best life and provides the experience and support you need, a therapist that starts helping you unpack your gender identity and dysphoria, or a close friend or family member who is no longer willing to let you hide from your truth.

Stage 5: Crossing the Threshold

Classic: The hero commits to leaving the ordinary world and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.

Trans: You come out to yourself, accepting yourself for who you are, accepting your true authentic gender identity. You are flooded by understanding, fear, excitement, confusion, discomfort, and determination.

Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies

Classic: The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the new, special world.

Trans: You now know why you’ve felt uncomfortable your whole life and being able to point to and name dysphoria makes it so much bigger, louder, and more constant. You search the internet for trans information and find a huge community on social media platforms and many local and national organizations that offer support. At the same time, you start recognizing all the transphobic and cisnormative language around you and feel like no one in your life will accept you for who you are.

Stage 7: Approach to the Innermost Cave

Classic: The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the special world.

Trans: You collect information from allies about coming out and navigating transition which helps you clarify for yourself what you want/need. This intensifies the dysphoria which gets harder and harder to deal with, especially when you haven’t told anyone yet. The internal pressure of knowing what you want, who you are, and how you want to be seen builds, pushing against the confines of the closet until…

Stage 8: Ordeal

Classic: The hero enters a central space in the special world and confronts death or faces their greatest fear. Out of this moment of ‘death’ comes a new life.

Trans: You decide that coming out is worth the risk, worth the loss of those that don’t support you, worth the potential harm in order to be who you are. You take the first steps to telling others who you are, breaking down that wall one brick at a time, or by driving a bulldozer straight through it and coming out to everyone at once.

Stage 9: Reward (Seizing the Sword)

Classic: The hero takes possession of the treasure they won by facing death. There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.

Trans: Some people you come out to start using your correct name and pronouns and you have your first real taste of gender euphoria and what it could feel like to live as the person you are. Not everyone is supportive or consistent and dysphoria continues to fight it’s way in. You fight to hold onto your confidence in who you are and your resolve to seek what you need, using the bursts of gender euphoria as your guiding light.

Stage 10: The Road Back

Classic: The hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the special world to be sure the treasure is brought home. Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.

Trans: You learn how to integrate your new trans identity with your life at work, home, and school, with friends and family, and in social activities, hobbies, and sports. You struggle to navigate and access the medical care and legal services you want/need in order to be safe and feel authentic in your body and identity. You are desperate for the changes and progress yet they happen at a maddeningly slow pace.

Stage 11: Resurrection

Classic: The hero is tested once more on the threshold of home. They are pruified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level. By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.

Trans: You start to recognize the person in the mirror, be recognized correctly by people around you more often than not, and feel more comfortable in your body. You come up to and cross a milestone of significance for you in your transition (starting hormones, top surgery, changing your gender marker, bottom surgery, etc) with all the doubt, fear, excitement, relief, pain, re-learning, and celebrating that comes with it.

Stage 12: Return with the Elixir

Classic: The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.

Trans: You reach a sense of completion related to your transition or have found confidence and peace in the sense of an ongoing and lifelong gender discovery and evolution. You are living authentically, supporting others who are questioning their gender or know someone who is, expanding your society’s view of gender and authenticity, and maybe even advocating for trans rights. Huzzah!

What an epic journey! Can you see yourself, or the trans person you love, as a hero? What stage of your Hero’s Journey are you at?

I know everyone’s transition is different. Are there stages that line up differently based on your experience?

If you add in specific details that match your own experience, what story does it tell? Who were the mentor, allies, and enemies? What tests did you face? What treasure do you carry with you to this day? What final milestone did you face and overcome during your stage of resurrection?

What was the timeline of each stage, and the journey as a whole? Did it progress in a linear fashion the way it sounds like it would here?

Share your story in the comments or send it to me in an email! If you’re willing to share it, I’ll publish it here as a post! The more stories the better. We need more variety of trans experiences and we need more trans heroes!

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Gender Inclusivity in the Workplace: What it is and How it Feels

For the last five years I have worked in the same environment. During this time, my husband came out as trans and I discovered my identity as a nonbinary person. I recently cut back on my hours at this job and started a different job. These two jobs are wildly different environments, types of work, levels of inclusion, and effects on me as a nonbinary person.

For the last few years, I assumed that any workplace connected to my chosen profession would be the same in terms of it’s effect on me with mild variability in inclusivity. But since switching to the new job, I am realizing how much of the burnout I’ve been experiencing is from inclusion related factors, or the lack of inclusivity at my previous job.

A lot of these factors are within the control of my colleagues and management staff. But some of them are simply related to the nature of the job.

WHAT A NON-INCLUSIVE WORKPLACE FEELS LIKE

When going to work at my job that has minimal inclusion, recognition, or support for my identity as a nonbinary person, I have a nebulous feeling of resistance, anxiety, apprehension, disappointment, and risk. I carry this around with me to varying degrees throughout the whole work day. It is distracting and tiring. I feel like I am hiding, shrinking, holding myself in a small tight ball inside myself for the course of the day.

Every time I have a chance to show a part of this aspect of my identity I have to make a risk vs reward calculation. Every time I encounter something that directly relates to or impacts my gender identity, even if it isn’t directed at me, I have to decide if I’m going to hide or react which is again, a risk vs reward calculation.

This isn’t to say that everything about that work environment is bad and negative. There are lots of things I like about it or else I wouldn’t still be working there. But in order to engage with the things I like about that job, I have to bring the rest of this heaviness along with me.

I am not out to the majority of people in this workplace because it doesn’t feel safe or feasible (more on this below). When I am misgendered, it is primarily out of ignorance and assumption. But, because of many factors, I expect that the majority of people would continue to misgender me even if I did come out. This means that coming out is not worth the effort or risk.

WHAT AN INCLUSIVE WORKPLACE FEELS LIKE

At my new job, I am excited to get to work every day. I can focus and do my work efficiently. At the end of the day/week I am as tired as I would expect given the amount of work I did. I still have mild reluctance to engage with people who are not necessarily trans competent but I know that, should I need to correct them on my name or pronouns, I have the support to do that.

I entered this workplace using my preferred name, pronouns, and gender identity. Not everyone I interact with knows all of that information but I feel safe in providing it openly when I need to. I can share any parts of myself that are relevant without fear and with minimal risk vs reward calculation because the risks are much lower and the reward is more likely to occur.

Colleagues recognize the types of knowledge and expertise that my nonbinary identity affords me and come to me when they have things I can help with.

Overall it feels easy, affirming, and allows me to simply focus on my work.

WORKPLACE FACTORS THAT IMPACT GENDER INCLUSIVITY

Culture

This is the factor that we think about the most in regards to inclusivity and it is definitely the most complex one. You can think of cultural factors in three groups: policies and procedures, competence, and representation.

Policies and Procedures

Is there a policy in place that protects workers based on gender identity? Do their policy documents use gender neutral language? If they have a dress code, is it gender neutral? Do their application forms and other types of documentation such as ID and health insurance forms have inclusive fields (sex, gender, legal gender marker, legal name, preferred name, pronouns, neutral labels, etc)? Is the use of homophobic and transphobic language pervasive, ignored, discouraged, or penalized in the professional work spaces as well as the social spaces in the workplace? Is it commonplace to include pronouns in introductions and email signatures?

Competence

Is the management trained in equity, diversity, and inclusion to the degree they need to be in order to put the policies and procedures into practice? Do they know what to do if an employee or colleague comes out as trans or requests they use different language or pronouns for them? Is there positive, neutral, or negative regard for differences and diversity? Are there ‘safe space’ stickers on office doors? Is the messaging around safe spaces and being inclusive accurate to the level of competence of the staff?

See the end of this post for numerous other posts on this blog related to building basic trans competence.

Representation

Is pride month celebrated? Is diversity represented in the company/business promotional materials, staff support messaging, and among the workforce?

I’m sure there are more but these are the ones that come to mind from my experiences comparing these two work environments.

Physical Environment

This factor is a bit more straightforward but often overlooked by anyone who isn’t negatively affected by it. For gender related inclusivity, some of the questions that come to mind are:

Are there gender neutral/single use bathrooms and changing spaces (if applicable)? For places like gyms, yoga studios, and rehabilitation clinics, are there spaces that aren’t surrounded by mirrors? If asking clients about their personal or health related information, are these meeting spaces private (for both sight and sound)? Is the messaging that is visible at the entrance and throughout the space inclusive and representative of diversity?

Social Demands

This is a factor that is often overlooked and took me a while to recognize as important. My experience with it is more specific to gender identity (though I’m sure it applies to many other minority groups as well).

How many social interactions with strangers or acquaintance level co-workers are required throughout a day of work? This is important because, especially for nonbinary people, strangers, and anyone who we haven’t specifically come out to, will make incorrect assumptions about our gender identity and pronouns. No matter how inclusive the workplace is and how comfortable you are being ‘out’ in that environment, every interaction with a stranger requires coming out again.

Many of the components of the other factors make this significantly less onerous. For example if the company’s messaging is clearly trans inclusive, if employees have pronouns on their ID badges, and if the culture is supportive, affirming, and protective of trans people, I would feel much more comfortable introducing myself to a stranger using my pronouns (they/them). If the other factors are poor in terms of inclusivity, this one gets exponentially worse.

But, if the type of work requires very little interaction with strangers, it is significantly easier to get through the day in a workplace that has mediocre cultural and physical inclusivity.

  • What have your experiences been with gender inclusion in your workplace?
  • Have you ever quit a job due to it’s lack of gender inclusivity? What factors affected you the most?
  • How would you rate your current workplace on it’s gender inclusivity based on the factors above (or others that you’d like to add)?

Leave me a comment below or send me an email! I’d love to hear from you.

RELATED POSTS

Workplace and Coming Out

Surviving in a Non-Inclusive Workplace

Trans Competency

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Welcome! Who Are You and What Do You Need?

I have now been writing this blog for three years! I recently discovered that with all those posts, my blog was not very searchable (sorry about that!) I have fixed this somewhat but also wanted to provide a snapshot of what you might find here.

Depending on your situation, identity, or what brought you here, you will be looking for different things. Scroll through the section titles in this post to find one that seems like it fits. Check out the posts in that section (and maybe some of the related posts linked at the bottom of those) to get started.

You can also use the links in the menu on the left to find a list of posts under each category and an excerpt for each. One of the links in that menu is for Let’s Talk Gender – our podcast about our experiences with gender and transitioning and my experiences with and thoughts about nonbinary identity so if audio is more your thing, definitely check that out. The archive or timeline of when posts were written is on the left as well. You can quickly look through that menu to see if any titles jump out at you. Lastly, you can click on a tag or key word from the list on the left that relates to something you’re looking for to find the latest posts related to that topic.

Are you…

QUESTIONING YOUR GENDER OR DECIDING WHETHER TO COME OUT?

LOOKING FOR FTM TRANSITIONING EXPERIENCES?

LOOKING FOR NONBINARY EXPERIENCES?

LOOKING FOR TRANS PREGNANCY EXPERIENCES?

A QUEER OR TRANS PARENT?

LOOKING FOR MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT?

A PARTNER OF A TRANS PERSON?

A FAMILY MEMBER OR FRIEND OF A TRANS PERSON?

A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL, TEACHER, OR BUSINESS PERSON WHO WANTS TO BETTER SERVE TRANS PEOPLE?

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND NONBINARY IDENTITIES?

LOOKING FOR BIG IDEAS ABOUT GENDER?

I hope this list helps you navigate this blog more easily and find what you’re looking for. Let me know if you are looking for more information on a particular topic. I will point you in a helpful direction and/or create new content on that topic!

If you have different gender based experiences than I do and you are interested in contributing to this blog, please get in touch! I’d love to have more diverse stories and experiences represented.

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How to Manage Stress and Prevent Burnout Part 2

If you started with Part 1, you’ll already be familiar with my blue-yellow-green-yellow-red stress state system, what each state feels like to you, and have a variety of factors you can use to identify your stress state. If you’ve been tracking your state since last week, you may have already noticed some patterns in how your stress state fluctuates over the course of a day or week.

The next step is to identify what is making your stress state move away from the green zone (triggers) and what you can do to bring it back towards the green zone (relievers). Then we’ll put everything together to build a routine where you manage the stress you accumulate as it happens and keep yourself in the green zone as much as possible.

TRIGGERS

Triggers are anything we find stressful. Anything that changes our stress state in a direction away from the green zone.

Some are obvious – the ones that have already come to mind as you read this. Others you’ll have to discover by observing fluctuations in your stress state and looking for the cause.

Some are predictable and consistent – these are the easier ones to manage. Others are spontaneous or fluctuating in intensity and will take extra time, awareness, or effort to manage.

Types

There are lots of different types of triggers. The things that trigger a stress response in you is completely individual and valid. Here are some examples (but this is by no means an exhaustive list):

  • Personal
    • Health fluctuations, physiological stresses, pain
    • Security (income, house, car, work, finances)
    • Dysphoria
    • Addiction
    • Reminder of past trauma or loss
  • Interpersonal
    • Abuse, threats, violence
    • Discrimination
    • Worry or care for a loved one
    • Expectations
    • Deadlines
    • Tension in a relationship, broken trust
    • Loss
  • Societal
    • Political unrest or discrimination
    • Systemic discrimination
    • Sensationalist news cycle
    • Pandemics/natural disasters

This list is just to get you started and give you some ideas of where to look. Not all of these will be sources of stress for you and there are likely other things that are triggers for you that are not on this list. You can keep adding and removing triggers from this list as things change in your life. For now, let’s take the list you have and fill in some practical details for each one.

Effects

Some triggers have a consistent and specific effect on your stress state. For example, some triggers will always push you towards the red zone while others will always push you towards the blue zone. If you notice any triggers like this in your list, make a note of it.

Most of your triggers will have a more general effect of moving you away from the green zone in either direction. Which direction your stress state moves is not always predictable since we are complex organisms living in a complex societal system. We are not trying to create an equation or predictive model, simply look for patterns.

Intensity

Different triggers will have different magnitude of effect. Some cause a small amount of stress and might move you from green to yellow or yellow to red/blue (one step). Some cause a moderate amount of stress and could move you from green straight to red/blue or from yellow straight to black (two steps). Some may cause so much stress that you would immediately shut down or dissociate i.e. move from green straight to black (three steps).

Consider each trigger on your list and assign it a number value from 1 to 3. You can add a 0.5 value if there are some low level triggers that wouldn’t even move you a whole stress level. Or you can use whatever number system works for you (1-5, 1-10). Try to keep it as simple as possible. We want to be able to easily relate it to the fluctuations in our stress state and, as you’ll see in the next section, use the same system for our stress relievers.

Let’s take a look at those now.

RELIEVERS

Relievers are anything that decreases your stress level or shifts your stress state towards the green zone. These are not things that get rid of the cause of the stress (the trigger or stressor). They are activities that reduce the stress load on our system by helping us process or decrease the effects of the stress.

Types

As with triggers, there are lots of different types of relievers. I have grouped them into categories that I find practical.

  • Positive Interaction
    • A long hug
    • Intimate time with my partner
    • Positive social time with a small group
    • Exercising compassion by doing something nice for someone
  • Moving Your Body
    • Running or other cardiovascular exercise
    • Hiking or fast paced walking
    • Dance
    • Strength training
  • System Regulation
    • Deep breathing
    • Meditation
    • Yoga, stretching, Tai Chi, Qigong
    • Relaxation
    • Reading
  • Creative Expression
    • Creative writing
    • Art
    • Crocheting, sewing, or other fiber crafts
    • Singing or playing music
  • Productive Processing Time
    • Journaling
    • Therapy
    • Letting my mind puzzle through things, find connections, or clean up the mental clutter while doing housework, having a shower, or other mundane task
    • Doing a mundane task while staying focused on the positive effect I am having or the gratitude I have towards that aspect of my life

Some of these will occur over the natural course of your day. Some you will have to find time to engage in.

Effects

Some relievers will have a stronger effect towards relieving stress from specific sources. For example, I find exercise to be particularly helpful for acute triggers like an interpersonal interaction where I experienced discrimination and creative expression to be particularly helpful for chronic low level triggers like dysphoria, systemic discrimination, and typical daily stress.

Some relievers will have a stronger effect when you are in a specific stress state. For example, I find system regulation relievers to be more helpful when I am in the yellow to red zones and positive interactions when I am in the yellow to blue zones.

Some relievers will be effective no matter what stress state you’re in or what the trigger was. For me, this is productive processing time.

If you notice any of these specific effects, make note of them next to the relievers in your list.

Intensity

As with triggers, each reliever will have a stronger or lesser effect. Some will bring you one level closer to green, some will move you two levels closer to green. However, in my experience, triggers tend to be better at moving us away from the green zone than relievers are at restoring us to our green zone. So if you used the 1-3 scoring system for triggers, it’s likely that you’ll be using 0.5 or even 0.25 for some of your relievers. Even though it seems like an activity that relieves so little stress wouldn’t even be worth doing, it is important to have these relievers in your list. You’ll see why in a second.

Energy Cost

This is a really important aspect of relievers to consider. How much energy does it take for you to initiate or complete each relieving activity? You can use a number system again (1-3, 1-5, or 1-10) or a traffic light system (red for hard, yellow for moderate, green for easy), or any other system that makes sense to you.

The important thing is to know which activities you can do with little to no energy reserve, which ones will take a bit more energy, and which ones will take considerable energy. This shows you which ones to engage in when you’re in an extremely burnt out state (black), which ones you can manage in a moderately stressed state (red/blue) or slightly stressed state (yellow), and which ones you’ll only be able to engage in when you’re at your best (green).

For the most part, I have found that the higher the energy cost, the greater the intensity of the effect on my stress level. This means that the low cost relievers have the smallest effects. But sometimes, if that’s all I can manage, that is where I have to start. Don’t forget these effects are cumulative. Four easy stress relieving activities can bring me out of the black zone and back into blue/red. I then have enough energy to engage in slightly higher cost activities that have a stronger effect.

Now that you know all about your triggers and relievers, let’s design a practical strategy for managing your stress level and keeping you in the green zone.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

So far, you have:

  • Identified your stress states and described them using physical, mental, and emotional cues
  • Identified patterns in how your stress state fluctuates throughout the day or week
  • Identified your triggers, how they affect your stress state, and how intense that effect is
  • Identified your relievers, what types of triggers or stress states they are useful for, how intense the effect is, and how much energy they cost

Now you will learn how to use this information on a daily basis to manage your stress as you accumulate it. The goal is to develop a routine that is sustainable and helps keep you in the green zone. That way, when you encounter unexpected triggers or routine triggers are suddenly more intense, you have a buffer before you end up in the black zone and you have the energy reserve to engage in the most effective relievers.

Here is one example of a daily practice you can follow:

  1. Monitor your stress state (as discussed in Part 1)
  2. Make note of the triggers you encounter – type, effect, intensity
  3. Make note of the relievers you engage in – type, intensity
  4. Determine amount and type of unresolved stress
  5. Engage in appropriate and manageable relieving activities

You will see a pattern of typical triggers you encounter and typical relievers you engage in. If your day to day activities are sustainable and allow you to stay in the green zone, you will find you are engaging in enough relievers to match or outweigh the amount of stress generated by the triggers.

If your day to day activities are slowly leading you towards burnout (or other black zone state), you will find that your typical daily relievers are not sufficient to counteract the stress generated by your triggers. Are there triggers you can do a better job of avoiding or resolve altogether? Are there relievers that would be more effective that can replace the ones you are currently using? Are there relievers you can add to your routine that would be low cost or ones you can do while doing other things?

After a few weeks of assessing your stress state and the balance of triggers and relievers, you will figure out which relievers work easily into your schedule to most effectively balance the majority of the stress from your triggers. But at some point, you will encounter one of those spontaneous triggers, one that was suddenly at a much higher intensity, or a seemingly unending stream of small triggers that add stress faster than you can deal with it. This is when you’ll need to add something to your routine.

Determine which relievers you have the energy to engage in and of those, which would be the most effective based on the type of trigger or the stress state you are in. If you’ve been doing a good job of relieving your daily stress as it happens, you will be starting from a fairly stable place and it will not take nearly as much work to return to your green zone.

You can add extra relieving activities to your schedule a couple times a week to process any extra stress beyond your typical that you accumulate from those unpredictable triggers. If your stress is well managed on those days, these become bonus green-zone-reinforcing activities!

I hope this set of emotional processing and stress management posts has helped you! If you have questions, need clarification, or simply need a sounding board to work through some of these steps, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can send me an email or comment on a post.

If you have a different way to process big emotions or manage ongoing stress, I’d love to hear it! Please send me an email or comment below! My strategies won’t work for everyone. Maybe yours will be the strategy someone is looking for!

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How to Manage Stress and Prevent Burnout Part 1

In an ideal world, stressors would be concrete and transient – easy to identify and able to be processed to the point of relief. But in the real world, there are a lot of stressors that are nebulous and persistent. It’s hard to relieve your stress when you can’t identify or get rid of the source.

But that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. The stress is still there whether you acknowledge it or not. It is still affecting your hormones, behaviour, emotions, and brain function. It builds up and builds up until you are forced to remove yourself from contact with the stressor via sickness, burnout, addiction, or breakdown. While stress is not always the cause of these states, in my experience, unmanaged stress will inevitably lead to these states or something similar.

I have struggled with burnout for a number of years. During this time I have developed and refined a strategy for monitoring my level of stress and taking daily action to relieve as much of it as I can to prevent it from building up and causing burnout. In this post I’ll talk you through the monitoring component. In Part 2, we’ll work through the managing process.

You may be able to process and resolve some of the areas of emotional stress in your life. I have a different system for this which I talk about in two posts: How to Work Through Areas of Emotional Stress Part 1 and Part 2. The more areas of stress you resolve, the less stress you have to manage on an ongoing basis. And being good at managing your stress will help you stay as happy and content as you can while you’re working on cleaning up as much of your emotional chaos as possible. Both processing and managing stress are important. You can start with either one. The important thing is to put in consistent effort until it becomes automatic.

STRESS ZONES

The first step towards managing your stress is to identify what your different stress states feel like to you. I colour coded my stress states as follows:

Green: good, happy, relaxed, calm, confident, optimal, not stressed at all.

Red: anxious, irritable, angry, chaotic, antsy, hyper, spazzy, fight or flight.

Blue: tired, heavy, sad, numb, scared, avoidant, fatigued, freeze or flight.

These three states (what I think of as neutral – green, high – red, and low – blue) are the easiest to identify. But you don’t want to wait until you are all the way in the red or blue zones to recognize a shift in your stress level. So I include yellow zones – one between green and red, and one between green and blue. I also added a black zone beyond red and blue to indicate that spending too much time in either of those states will lead to burnout or sickness (or whatever your system shutdown mode is).

I laid out my page from top to bottom as follows: black, red, yellow, green, yellow, blue, black.

Now you are going to add as much detail for how those states feel like to you as you can. We are going to use three different indicators: physical, mental, and emotional. For each of these, start with whatever colour is easiest for you to fill in (typically green, red, and blue). Move on to the harder ones (typically the yellow zones). If you’re not sure what to put in the yellow zones, write down a gentler version of what you have in the red or blue zone. For example, if you put angry in red, maybe put frustrated in yellow, or if you put fatigued in blue, put tired in yellow. Don’t worry about filling in black – your system will tell you when you’ve hit that level whether you know what it feels like or not.

Let’s go through each of these indicators separately.

Physical

How does your body feel when you’re in that state?

How much energy do you have? Do you tend to sleep more or less than your average?

Do you have increased muscle tension or heaviness and fatigue? Does your body feel hot, cold, tingly, or numb? Where in your body do you feel these sensations?

Does your appetite change? Do you feel nauseous, queasy, or hungry?

Do you feel dizzy or lightheaded? Do you get headaches, body aches, or other types of pain?

How does your breathing feel? Is it faster or slower, deeper or shallower? Do you breathe more with your chest and shoulders or your belly?

How does your heartrate feel? Is it faster, slower, or erratic?

Mental

What thoughts go through your head when you’re in that state?

What words do you use when describing a situation such as going to work or attending a family gathering when you’re in that state?

What words do you use when describing yourself when you’re in that state?

How is your ability to concentrate? Are you able to shut out external distractions? Are you able to ignore distracting thoughts and emotions?

Are your senses heightened or dulled? Are you hypersensitive to any particular stimuli?

How easy is it to learn something new? Are you able to remember things just as easily as when you are in the green zone?

How would you describe the inside of your mind? Is it chaotic, filled with static, fritzing, dark, foggy, cloudy, bright, open, constricted, porous, etc?

Emotional

What emotions do you feel most often when in this state? To make this nice and easy, refer to an emotions wheel such as this one.

Don’t be afraid to write down conflicting emotions for the same colour. Each state isn’t always triggered in the same way so we can definitely experience a range of emotions.

You may find describing one of the indicators (physical, mental, or emotional) to be significantly easier than the others. We all experience stress differently and pay attention to different stress responses. I still recommend you try to write down something for each indicator in each stress state. Sometimes when we’re calm we can most easily identify one aspect but when we’re actually in this state it’s a different aspect that is most obvious.

MONITORING YOUR STRESS STATE

Once you have a list of physical, mental, and emotional descriptors for the five stress zones, you can start using it to monitor your stress level. You can’t manage something you aren’t aware of. Set an alert on your phone to go off at regular intervals or pick a few times a day to do a quick check in. Try to pick a few times a day when you are in different environments – when you wake up, when you’re at work, when you’re with family, before bed.

You can quickly answer the above physical and mental questions and pick out three emotions on the wheel and then see which state your responses line up with or you can refer to your descriptions of the zones and do a physical, mental, and emotional check in to see where you land. Whichever way gets the most honest and accurate response without taking so much time that you won’t stick with this practice.

The goal is to get familiar with your own stress states and symptoms so that you don’t have to consciously do the check in. You will notice when your muscle tension, energy level, or breathing pattern changes. You will hear a repetitive thought in your head and know that you’ve shifted to a different zone. You’ll realize your reactions to people around you are different, indicating a new emotional state.

I recommend documenting your stress state. If you’re monitoring it, why not track it as well? You can use a pocket calendar with coloured stickers (make sure you differentiate the two yellow zones somehow), an app in your phone, a journal, or even a series of sticky notes if that’s what’s handy.

You can track your stress for a few days, a week, or longer. It’s up to you. This information will show you any consistent patterns in how your stress changes throughout your day and throughout a week. These patterns will be very helpful when we work through the second step in this process: managing stress.

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How to Work Through Areas of Emotional Stress Part 2

You will want to start with Part 1.

How is everyone doing? If you have started working through steps 1 to 3 already you might be feeling a bit emotionally vulnerable, bruised, or drained. That’s ok. It’s part of the healing process. But make sure you take care of yourself. If you push yourself too fast and don’t let your emotions settle again before tackling steps 4 to 6, you will be too overwhelmed to use your analytical skills and too vulnerable to be as honest with yourself as you need to be.

In case you missed it before, here is a blank chart you can use as a guideline to fill in as you work through the steps.

Processing-Emotional-StressDownload

Now, let’s continue on to steps 4 through 6.

4. IDENTIFY THE SOURCE OR TRIGGER FOR EACH EMOTION

This is the hardest part in terms of thinking and detective work. The goal is to answer the question “Why do I feel this way?” for each negative emotion that you listed in step 3. Some examples of sources or triggers for emotions are:

  • Beliefs held by others close to you or society as a whole
  • Formative experiences
  • Influences of people who had an impact on you
  • Physiological factors
  • Dysphoria
  • Your own actions
  • Personal values or priorities
  • Personal beliefs or attitudes

Sometimes you need to work backwards a few steps. For example:

  1. Area of stress – feeling like I’m not a good parent
  2. Aspect of control – belief;
  3. Emotion – inadequate;
  4. Why? Because I can’t lift my kid due to pain (physiological factor). Why does not being able to lift my child due to pain make me feel inadequate? Because I have an expectation that in order to be a good parent I need to be able to lift my child when they ask to be picked up (personal belief). Why do I feel like being a good parent requires lifting my child? Because that is the model of parenting I am exposed to by society (belief of society – ableism).

Result: I am affected by the belief that I am not a good parent which makes me feel inadequate because society tells me I should be able to lift my kid when they ask to be lifted and I can’t always do that because of pain.

This process takes time. You have to sit with each answer to the why question for a little while to see if your mind is still searching or if that resonates with you as being the root cause. I have found that talking to a trusted friend or family member is very helpful at this stage. They often have similar experiences or insight into my own beliefs, thoughts, experiences, feelings, and actions.

During this process you may uncover a new influential or formative experience from your past that is the root cause of the area of stress you originally listed in step one. You can either work through this area of stress again by starting with the newly discovered cause or you can list this experience as a separate area of stress and work through it at another time.

Sometimes the root cause of an emotion is something that is within our control (matches something we wrote in step two) and sometimes it’s not. When it is, we can be reluctant to accept that this is true because it would mean we are responsible for some of the emotional distress we have been feeling. But be honest with yourself and fear not! The next step will help you use this hard-won accountability to your advantage.

5. TAKE ACTION

By now you have separated out your different areas of stress, identified what aspects you have control over, experienced the emotions that are triggered, and discovered the root cause of those emotions. Now you are going to decide what actions to take.

The purpose of taking action is to interrupt the link between the root cause (step 4) and the negative emotion (step 3). We can only act on things that are within our control (step 2) so for each emotion that you want to disrupt, you have to identify which link closest to the root cause is in your control and choose an action that will address that. Using the example from step 4, the root cause (societal ableism) is not within my control so I would back up to the link before (personal belief) and target that with an action plan.

Some examples of actions are:

  • Reframe the experience or adjust your beliefs through journaling, art, or a list of affirmations
  • Change your behaviour or adopt a new habit
  • Re-evaluate your priorities and values
  • Seek out community, connection, or support
  • Channel your personal experiences and strong emotions into advocacy
  • Talk about your experience or struggle and embrace the vulnerability
  • Confront negative influences
  • Set or re-set personal, emotional, or relationship boundaries

Be creative. Take actions that resonate with you and will help support you. Avoid actions that will drain you further or take more time, money, or willpower than you can give. You may be able to find an action that will break more than one cause-emotion chain.

Take small steps. No action is too small but most actions that you come up with initially will be too big.

Set short term goals (hour, day, week at most). Our brains are constantly measuring the distance to our goal, how much progress we are making, and how much effort it is taking to achieve that progress. If progress slows down too much or takes too much effort, our brain automatically shifts into stress mode (which we are clearly trying to avoid) or flight mode (I don’t actually care about this goal anyway, I’m fine). This is such a common occurrence for us that we are pretty terrible at noticing when it is happening. Thus, the reason for step six.

6. REVIEW YOUR PROGRESS

Don’t leave this step for too long! When you are working through hard stuff to get out of a stressful emotional loop, a month can feel like eternity unless you can tell you’re making progress. At the same time, this process can be so emotionally intense that you need to dedicate a week to working out the root cause of each emotion for one area of stress.

So pick a timeline that works for you – two weeks, a month, three months. I would say six months is too long no matter how slowly you have to work through your areas of stress.

You can start your timer from when you initiate your action plan or from when you started with step one. It depends if you are reviewing your progress with one specific area of stress or the whole process for all areas of your life. You can set different review periods for both of these if you’d like.

When the time to review comes up, look back through your notes from step one through to step five. Do they all still resonate with you? Have the emotions that you experience when you replay the event or delve into that area of your life changed? Do you have new insights into the root causes or triggers for those emotions? How have you done with following through on your action plan? Did the actions you took help the way you wanted them to or do you want to try something else?

If a lot of the stress from an area has resolved, try working through the steps again as though it is the first time. If there are aspects you still need to work on, this will make those clear. If you’re happy with how well it has resolved, consider that area of stress complete!

WHAT IF THE CAUSE OF THE STRESS IS ONGOING OR OUT OF MY CONTROL?

Not all areas of stress can be resolved by processing them. Sometimes we process the parts we have control over (challenging our negative beliefs, adjusting our priorities, finding community and support) and it is still a moderately high source of stress.

I have a different system for managing stress that I share in another two part series: How to Manage Stress and Prevent Burnout Part 1 and Part 2. It is visual, practical, and straightforward. There are lots of ways you can adapt it to create something that will work for you.

As always, reach out if you need to.

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How to Work Through Areas of Emotional Stress Part 1

My experiences have taught me how to work through intense situations and process emotions so that I’m not holding on to negative sources of stress and being influenced by them in ways I don’t like or can’t control. I wanted to share my strategy in the hopes that it will help you do the same.

This process is based on the belief that we can, for the most part, control what is in our own heads and are responsible for our own emotions. We can absolutely be manipulated, traumatized, abused, gaslit, or have a chemical/hormonal imbalance but my hope is that working through this process will help separate the manipulation and influence of others or physiological causes from what is genuine to ourselves and under our control.

This process has six steps:

  1. List areas of emotional stress
  2. Identify which aspects are within your control
  3. List the emotions
  4. Identify the source or trigger for each emotion
  5. Take action
  6. Review your progress

In this post, I will explain steps 1 to 3. In Part 2 I will cover steps 4 to 6.

Here is a document containing a blank chart that you can use as a guideline to fill in.

Processing-Emotional-StressDownload

Now, let’s look at the first three steps in detail.

1. LIST AREAS OF EMOTIONAL STRESS

What takes up space in the back of your mind that nags at you, wears down your emotions, or takes energy to keep it pushed to the back of your mind? When you’re having a day where you are stressed, tired, irritable, numb, or teary, what negative things does your brain say to you? What aspects of your life make you feel stressed when you are forced to think about or focus on them?

These can be a variety of things:

  • Past experiences that were traumatic, difficult, or had a lasting negative impact on you
  • Negative beliefs about yourself
  • Broken relationships
  • Components of your life that feel like a constant struggle
  • A future event (though this is often causing stress because of a present or past situation or belief)

Still not sure what is specifically bothering you? Think through each area of your life: health, work/vocation, relationships, childhood, finances/security, identity, or anything else that is important to you. Do you frown, feel your body tense, or experience a negative emotion when you think about that area of your life? It’s a good bet that one area of stress relates to that area. Break that area of your life down into smaller pieces if you can and watch for the same reaction. The more specific you can be the better.

2. IDENTIFY WHICH ASPECTS ARE WITHIN YOUR CONTROL

Often when something happens to us we feel like we have no control over the situation or event. This naturally leads to the belief that we have no control over the outcome or effects of the event. In my experience, this is not true. We always have control over SOME components of how a situation is affecting us presently. For example:

  • Our current actions
  • Our current beliefs and attitudes
  • Our ability and willingness to adapt
  • Our willingness to seek out and accept support

Be honest with yourself. This isn’t about figuring out the truth of a past event. This is about identifying how that past event is currently affecting you and what parts of that effect are under your control. What you learn from this step will be important for building a useful action plan in step 5.

3. LIST THE EMOTIONS

This is the hardest part emotionally. You might want to pick one area of stress to focus on and continue from step 3 to 6 with that one area before you process another one to avoid being overwhelmed. You will likely want to work on this step in a private, safe space. I recommend having a self care plan in place in advance – when you are in emotional turmoil, what helps you regain a sense of emotional stability? Plan to engage in these activities or have a friend standing by for you to connect with as often as you need while working through this step.

The goal is to list all the emotions that are brought to the surface when you delve into each area of stress. Some ideas of how you can do this are by:

  • Replaying the experience in your head
  • Writing about that area of your life or that situation
  • Listening to the self-talk that relates to that experience or aspect of yourself
  • Talking about it with a trusted person

Don’t forget about the positive emotions! Often we focus on the negative ones and once we list the positive ones along side them we realize we have a more balanced experience than our brain has been telling us.

I recommend you refer to an emotions wheel (such as the one you can find here) to help you find appropriate words for what you are feeling. I have definitely had the experience where I feel something, or more likely many things, and it is overwhelming and difficult to find a word that describes it which leads to frustration. You can also use the emotions wheel as a prompt – work your way around the wheel thinking about each emotion separately, what that would feel like for you, and if that feeling matches something that came up while replaying or sitting with an area of stress.

If all the different areas of stress in your life seem to cause the same set of emotions or if you only seem to experience emotions from a narrow spectrum of the emotions wheel, consider the possibility that there may be an underlying physiological cause such as a neurochemical or hormonal imbalance. I am not a doctor. This observation comes from personal and second hand experience.

You are halfway there! Steps 1 to 3 are all about discovery. In Part 2 we explore steps 4 to 6 which are about analysis, action, and reflection. Take your time with this process and take care of yourself as you work through the tough stuff. I’m always here for you if you need community and support.

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Diastasis Recti, Body Image, and Gender

Postpartum recovery is typically portrayed as a rapid return to pre-pregnancy weight and shape. For many people, this is not an accurate representation. Many people never return to pre-pregnancy weight or shape. Some do but have to put in a lot of work to make that happen.

I have a short torso so when I was pregnant, I carried my baby out in front. I started showing early and was very round. I had many stretch marks from early on and still have them. At halfway through my pregnancy people were surprised I still had a while to go. I was asked many times if I was having twins.

At six months postpartum my belly had shrunk somewhat but I still looked about the same size as when I was halfway through my pregnancy. While I knew that the media portrays postpartum recovery inaccurately, this seemed particularly slow. So I tested myself for diastasis recti and found a 3-4 finger gap between my abdominals. This was soon after diagnosed by a physiotherapist.

I started doing specific core exercises and regained my core strength fairly quickly. But at just over nine months postpartum, I still look the same as I did halfway through my pregnancy. While out for a walk with my nine month old baby in the stroller, a stranger congratulated me on the second baby I have on the way.

Having a round, pregnant shaped belly is a difficult experience for me for a number of reasons.

  • No one should ever comment on another person’s body shape, size, or presentation without being invited to do so and yet pregnancy seems to be a socially accepted time to do this. Being perceived as pregnant invites these sorts of comments.
  • In most people’s minds, being seen as someone who is potentially pregnant puts me in the category of ‘female’ or ‘woman’ and negates any other aspects of my presentation that might suggest otherwise. I dealt with this while pregnant for the sake of having my child but was really looking forward to not dealing with this anymore. And here I am, still being perceived as pregnant.
  • While pregnant, having a large belly helped minimize my perception of the size of my chest by comparison. Now that I am no longer pregnant and would like to flatten the appearance of my chest, doing so would only accentuate the size of my belly.
  • In order to heal diastasis recti, I have to avoid slouching. Standing up straight makes my chest look and feel bigger, increasing my dysphoria for the sake of healing my abdominals.

I know that recovery from or healing of diastasis recti is slow and takes diligent work. Being constantly aware of my posture, movement, and muscle activation takes mental effort. Making myself do core exercises daily takes will power. I am trying but I’m not always successful on all fronts. And without noticeable change in my function or shape, it is hard to stay motivated.

In search of answers and community, I recently turned to the internet and social media. I found lots of good information but every single resource used female terms and pronouns throughout. Finding community and support for part of my experience that actively excluded and invalidated other parts was painful, exhausting, and overwhelming.

Here is yet another topic where gender neutral terminology would not exclude or invalidate anyone and yet at every opportunity professionals refer to ‘ladies’ and ‘mama’.

Throughout this whole internal struggle with post partum body image, I have tried to be aware of where my thoughts and feelings are coming from. I avoid and reframe any thoughts I have about my weight. I try not to judge my body in negative ways due it’s size or shape. However, I can’t escape how my shape triggers my dysphoria or interferes with my preferred strategies for managing my dysphoria. And I can’t ignore how others perceive me when they assume I am pregnant.

No two people recover from pregnancy the same way. Don’t make assumptions about other people’s bodies based on their shape, size, or function. Don’t make assumptions about other people based on their bodies. If you are a professional supporting a community, question your use of gendered language. Substitute gender neutral terms and use language referring to a specific experience wherever possible. If this is something you would like help with, please contact me.

Did you struggle with body image after pregnancy? Did you or do you currently have diastasis recti? Leave me a comment below! I’d love to hear from you.

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Trans Affirmations

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

My experience is real.
My experience, my identity, and my life have value. 
I deserve to take up space.

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I do not owe anyone an explanation of my gender. 
I have control over my own identity. 
I have a right to any label that feels right for me.

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I do not owe anyone an explanation of my transition process.
There is no 'right way' to be trans.
My transition is my own process and I don't need to compare to anyone else. 
I am proud of who I am and who I am becoming. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

While I am trying to avoid dysphoria, I will seek out gender euphoria.
I will seek out what feels right. 
I will do what makes me feel whole. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I love my body for being my vessel in this world. 
My body belongs to me and no one else. 
My body is capable of amazing things. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I am strong.
I am beautiful.
I am worthy of love.
I am enough.

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I can do this. 
One step at a time. 
I will go at my own pace. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I am allowed to be scared. 
I am allowed to let people assume I am cis.
Doing this does not make me a coward. 
Doing this does not make me less trans. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

There is a community out there that understands and supports me.
When I have the energy, I will advocate for myself and my community.
When I do not, I will find ways to protect, care for, and be kind to myself.

Because I am important. 
And my voice matters.

What words do you find affirming? What do you remind yourself of in the face of transphobic politics, family members, and workplaces? Add your words of strength, encouragement, and assurance to mine by leaving a comment.

I’d love to have you in my community. Receive new posts in your inbox, read about my experiences, reach out.

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