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criticalbread · 5 years

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body positivity & associated baggage

Just some thoughts and things I discussed with my super cool ex-therapist but-- body positivity is hard, y’all. We can believe one thing and feel another so easily, and then blame ourselves for what we feel. We can think, “I don’t believe anyone should ever be made to feel badly about their body”; “I believe every body size and shape is a good one”; “Every trans body is beautiful and perfect”; “Accepted beauty norms are not the only way to be”. Oftentimes, though, our emotional reactions seemed to contradict the things we believe. We sometimes feel bad feelings about our bodies, their sizes or shapes, we react to what we think they should be and aren’t, to those parts of us that don’t fit the hair-thin range of beauty represented in media. The entire body positivity process of trying to shift these things, what we believe and what we feel, shows quite clearly that belief and emotion are not the same thing, and that they don’t always shift at the same speed.

For me, a lot of body positivity seemed to imply the end goal of feeling, well, positively about my body. The fact that I haven’t been, and often feel negatively, can make me feel like I’m failing at the whole thing, especially as a trans person. There are some important points, though, that my therapist has walked me through that have really helped, and I thought to share them.

==Going from negative to positive in your thoughts and feelings can actually be pretty tough. It’s a huge leap from one end to the other. And why does it have to be? The first step in healing your relationship with your body is some times reaching neutrality. The body isn’t qualitative-- it doesn’t have any quality attached to it like goodness or badness, not until we ourselves attach it. Can you find ways to allow your body some neutrality? Can you try sitting in that neutrality when you find it and just experience it?

For me, I like to go on walks around my very beautiful neighborhood and park and try to focus on the sensory experiences of my body. I hear my feet on the sidewalk or crunching in mulch, grass, or gravel (pavements are for squares); I hear myself breathing; I feel the wind on my arms, or the sun on my shoulders; I hear wind in the trees, and birds. Another one I try is taking hot baths. I like to watch shows or read in the bath, but I also try to take a moment when getting in to really feel the comfortable heat and smell anything I put in like lavender and just exist in my body. (If I’m feeling really bold, I try to look down at my body exactly as it is and sit in some neutrality and, if I can, gratefulness. Like, “huh. this body is pretty okay.” or “hey there, leggies. thanks for taking me walking.”) In the end, it’s not a good or a bad body because it doesn’t have to be. It just is, and I’m in it and experiencing it. Neutrality is a much better place to try and feel out positivity from than negativity. The leap is shorter! And it feels a lot better than negativity, too.

==It’s one thing to be able to change your beliefs about your body or other bodies or all bodies. It’s quite another to change your emotional reactions. A lot of the time, our emotional reactions are not based solely on what we believe. They’re influenced by a lot of things: by experiences we’ve had, by things we’ve felt in the past, by what we have seen or haven’t seen, by how we weigh the worth of our own happiness and selves, even by habit. They’re reactive. My therapist would often remind me when I was distressed by my feelings, especially when they didn’t match what I believe, that healing begins in the body. Reconnecting to your body through mindfulness, showing it acceptance and finding neutrality, finding ways to appreciate or feel grateful, even the old “fake it til you make it” (”You’re good thighs,” I thought fiercely at my thighs about 300 times before I actually began to feel that they were maybe okay thighs)-- all go a long way to finally budging some of those stubborn knee-jerk bad feelings. So as they told me, “Be kind to yourself. When you have they feelings, treat yourself with the same kindness you give your friends.” As you work towards a more positive outlook, remember that your feelings may feel bad, but you’re not bad for feeling them. Even negative feelings are not qualitative; they just exist as a neutral thing that happens and, more importantly, like all feelings they end.

==Related to finding neutrality, but-- as a nonbinary trans person, I have periods where I go through intense dysphoria. Clothes that had been fine that morning I suddenly can’t stand to wear a moment longer, and I want to disappear from the public eye the moment these feelings hit. I am mortified to think people have been looking at me and gendering me a certain way all day. I feel mortified at the body under my clothes which, more often than not, is why people gender me a certain way. I would start to feel that I wasn’t “trans enough”, that I needed to somehow do more and do better to be REALLY myself, A Nonbinary Person. These times are super hard to deal with, and give me a very low mood.

A recent breakthrough that came from talking with Ex-therapist is this: as an AFAB person who doesn’t bind and has a noticeable hour-glass figure, who wears a lot of clothing designed for my body shape from the “womens” section, I felt keenly even without being able to describe it the gendering and disbelief of people around me at work who know I am nonbinary. In their mind, they were gendering my body as a woman’s body and my clothes (as well as how those clothes sit on my specific body) as a woman’s clothes. Even my “mens” clothes became "women’s clothes” by dint of sitting on top of a pair of breasts, or large hips. How, then, could I be trans? If body is A, shouldn’t clothes be B? I actually had people ask me why I still, “dress like a woman,” when in reality I heard the question under that one: “why does your body look like what I consider to be a woman’s body? and why are you okay with that? are you even really trans?”

My intense dysphoria, I noticed, usually started in a public place when I would catch myself staring at a mirror or my reflection in a window. Without thinking, I looked at myself and judged not from my perspective, but from an outside perspective. I became my own audience, complete with the midgendering that I had come to expect from my audiences. I was getting anxious and so mixed up by disconnecting from my own feelings about my bodies and clothes and focusing solely on “How would a stranger look at and see me? How would they gender me? Do I look nonbinary to the world?”

One way to deal with this, I found, was to Distract and Drown Out. The moment I catch myself staring and judging and spiraling, I look away and find something else to focus on, like my phone or a book. Next is to drown out the thoughts and feelings spiral by focusing on repeating to myself the things I actually believe: “My body is not inherently gendered. It is a body. Because it is mine, it is a nonbinary body and an awesome one at that. I like how strong and dense my lower body is, and how easily I build muscle. I like my long curly hair. I like my soft thighs. No clothing is gendered. I picked these clothes because they’re cute/they’re comfy/it’s laundry day and I don’t give a fuck. They’re good clothes.” Usually by the end of this monologue, I’ve at least stopped spiraling emotionally and I’ve stopped the flood of bad thoughts. The next step: Distract. I might open a word doc and write some fic, or read some fic, until I get home. Maybe I Just write down all of the above-mentioned beliefs. The final step is to do some self care. Usually this means going on a walk with a good playlist, then taking a bath while watching Critical Role and laughing my ass off, and if I need to not looking at my reflection for a while until I settle back into neutral. If bad thoughts and feels start to resurface, I go back through the steps.

**AS A NOTE, Ex-therapist ALWAYS needed to remind me: if all you can do to get through a bad feeling or low is to distract yourself, that’s good enough! That’s fantastic, even! It’s a very, very, VERY useful coping skill. It has its role just like every other coping skill. “But Leesh, I didn’t do any of the things I should have like studied or house work or-” But you did something very important, right? You had a need to cope with something, and you did so marvelously. You did what you needed to do. You took care of yourself. If all you can do to get through something is distract yourself with youtube videos or TV shows or video games or reading, then that’s good enough, and you’re doing good. Distract to take care of your mind, and keep some water and snacks near by to take care of your body, and know you’re doing your best and that’s more than good enough. There’s time later for all the things you think you should be doing now.**

As a final comment on this: my dysphoric periods can last a few days, or even just pop up randomly one morning while getting dressed. I’ll sometimes try on half a dozen different outfits and find myself unable to be happy in any of them. What to do then?

Well, let’s unpack. A lot of the times, I’m still working through some of the outside misgendering of my body that I’ve internalized. As I put on my more masculine clothes, in my head I have an image of how they “should” look and what I want them to look like when I wear them. This image is usually based on how flat-chested or people who are binding look when they wear these clothes, people who also often have significantly smaller hips than me: the more stereotypical or accepted image of masculinity. Inevitably, I find that the clothes don’t look like that on me, because of my chest and hips. By going in to things with an unrealistic and impossible expectation, I set myself up for failure. I wasn’t working with my body.

The method I’ve found that works best is this: I’ll take a step back from the tearing-apart-my-closet process and go, “Okay, I might not be able to like anything I put on my body today. I can accept that. It happens, and even though it sucks, I can get through it, and it will end. Instead of finding an outfit that I feel looks super good/perfect on me, and without deciding what I want it to look like on me before I try it on, can I find one that’s super comfortable for whatever activity I’m going to be doing? Can I just wear work clothes and let it be my IDGAF armor that I can just say I’m forced to wear and therefore don’t need to do The Gender Mathematics on? Can I find something I like on the hanger and decide to wear it simply because I like that it has Jeff Goldblum’s face on it or flower embroidery, and not try to compare how it looks on my body to some internal idea or checklist of how I want it to look on my body?”

Usually, this works out for me with some finagling. I avoid looking at my reflection until the mood has passed if need be. If I start feeling badly about how I look in the thing, I Distract: “This is such a soft shirt. I’m super comfortable right now. I love that this shirt has Jeff Goldblum on it. When I wear my work apron, it looks like he’s suspiciously peeking over the top of it and that’s fucking hysterical because everyone at work apparently can recognize him by eyes alone.” As you can see, I and Ex-therapist are huge supporters for the Distract method. Derailing a thought spiral or feeling is often the easiest way to get it to end and to move past it towards some self-care and the rest of your day. (And yes, it does take practice to be able to do this! Oftentimes, the first step to learning the Distract skill is to just work on noticing when you’re spiraling or ruminating. Sometimes we aren’t aware of when we’re going down the rabbit hole. If you struggle with this, just give yourself the homework of trying to notice when you are. That’s it; you don’t have to then successfully distract or derail. Just notice and be aware. Once you’ve got that down, you can work on a successful Distract method of your own.) Once successfully Derailed, Distracted, clothed, and comfortable, maybe even starting to feel good about my Jeff Goldblum shirt, I am ready to go about my day with my game plan and then do some self care after.

**And this isn’t to say this only works for dysphoria! Being able to derail a spiral also helps with my anxiety, and may be useful for other things as well. The sky’s the limit!**

****And as a final note: all these coping skills that I’m supporting? Sometimes I forget they exist. Sometimes I’m so successful with them that I go, “Depression who?!” Sometimes I try them, and I don’t get all the way through them before giving up, or I’m not successful in distracting/derailing even when I use them. Sometimes I feel guilty and gross for distracting myself all day because I wasn’t productive and haven’t I been taught that that’s bad? If I can’t find neutrality and be grateful to my body this week, am I failing when last week I did so much better?

The answer? No. The truth is, no one succeeds 100% of the time. No one feels neutral or positive 100% of the time, not even whoever is the healthiest most well-adjusted people in the world! Bad feelings are a part of life and always will be, just like the universal truth that they will always end. If you tell yourself, “I’m going to use this coping skill next time,” or “I’m going to notice when I am spiraling next time,” and then you forget the coping skill or don’t notice the spiral-- maybe you will knee-jerk react by feeling like you’ve failed. But not managing a thing every time is not a failure! It’s natural. It’s part of the learning process, no in is successful every time, and it’s just part of the process of forming new neural pathways in your brain. Brains are things of habit, a bit like cats; at time intractable, at times resistant to new and to change, and often difficult to teach new tricks to. So be nice to your brain-cat. If it doesn’t work the first time, try again. Keep working at it as well as keep being nice to it and giving it nice things. If you don’t catch the spiral, maybe think back, note some of the signs or things that maybe caused it, and try to catch the next, and the one after. Say all the fake-it-til-you-make-it phrases even when you don’t believe them because you’re digging the trench of your next neural pathway and, yes, it’s repetitive hard work and not terribly fun, but you’ll get there. Accept yourself when you have a bad day, or when you start to go down the “I failed” route. Always try to find that neutrality and make it your home base.****

This has gotten super long and I still have some useful tidbits I picked up with The Best (ex)Therapist Ever, but I think I’ll end here for now. This post is largely written for my own needing to think through some things and put them into words, but if it helps some folks and give you some new ideas, I’ll be happy C: cheers and good evening, y’all.

#coping skills #body positivity #body image #gender dysphoria #body dysphoria #anxiety #personal

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