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bisexualamy · 6 years

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hi ren! i think you're so cool and soft at the same time!! how do u do that!! teach me ur ways!!

I’m not sure what you mean by soft in this instance? I’m a little skeptical of soft as an adjective for trans men because I feel like it’s always used to infantilize us (like the uwu cute soft trans boy stuff).

If you mean soft as “in touch with my emotions/emotionally vulnerable” (which I think you do) that is something I can definitely touch on because it is an aspect of my personality I’ve really tried to cultivate. In terms of cool, I don’t really think I’m cool. I appreciate that you think I am! I don’t really known what cool means? Why is one cool? The best analogous thing I can see for it in my own life is “confident” and “does/makes interesting/fun/creative things.”

This is a lot of preamble to get my thoughts out, but I do actually have some advice in both of these instances! I’ll try and be brief, though I probably won’t succeed in that. And like, obvious disclaimer that I’m speaking from my own life experience.

EDIT: very long. All of this is now under cut. This was a good post and I’m happy I wrote it, so thank you! Feel free to reblog it!

IN TERMS OF “COOL”: the best advice I can give to you is put things into the world you care about. This manifests itself for me in the art and writing I produce. I became a lot happier and more confident creating work that I actually cared about existing. I get a lot of joy and drive out of filling voids that I see as necessary to be filled. A concrete example of this has been the work I’ve been doing (that I recently won an award for) in regarding to documenting and creating around the stories of different LGBT people of faith.

And this can be anything! This doesn’t even have to be necessarily “creative” work. There’s joy to be found in STEM fields, like building or doing math or science. It can be cooking or redesigning your bedroom! I find that always having a project to work on, no matter how small, gives me purpose that helps me do the other things in my life that I don’t want to do. Also!!! This doesn’t have to be “original.” I find that a lot of the hangups people get tend to center around filling a void that’s never been touched. My favorite professor I’ve ever had once told me: “don’t worry about doing something original. Just do something well.” I really like that and try and keep that in mind when I create.

I’ve noticed that when you’re working on things you care about it often creates drive, which looks like confidence. In my experience, people think I’m cool because I’m driven to do things I care about. I’m not like, cool in the sense of calm and collected, but I think I’m cool in the sense that I’m interesting. The other bit of advice I have for this is surround yourself with people who you feel safe and supported by. This also goes into soft as well, but your progress as a person is often hindered by unsupportive and harmful environments and people. Those two are often difficult to escape or avoid completely, but building up relationships in your life where you feel safe, where you feel supported, where you feel allowed to make mistakes, were instrumental in building my confidence and giving me the drive to stop settling for “this is the way things are.”

IN TERMS OF “SOFT”: Like I said above, a lot of this comes from being allowed to be soft in the first place. From being in environments and with people that don’t try to squash that softness. For me, I’ve made a conscious effort to be open, to be vulnerable, to be “soft” as you put it. I made this effort because I knew it helped people, and I get a lot of value out of helping people. I’ve been told that my openness about mental health, about emotional vulnerability, about LGBT things, has helped others when I see that I can be open and also succeed. That’s the reason I started this in the first place.

This mentality was very difficult for me to foster initially. I used to be very closed off and have many issues with trust, and I sometimes still do, but I’m working on self awareness. I started small and gradually adopted more and more emotionally honest practices and those grew into larger ones. The overarching theme to these is give yourself permission. Give yourself permission to be happy, to feel your emotions, to be in a world that makes you happy. Here are some of those specific things I worked on (not necessarily in this order):

When someone asks you if you’re okay, or how you are, answer honestly. Unless you’re speaking in passing to someone you don’t really know, answer truthfully. Don’t be afraid to answer “how are you” with “I’m feeling down” or “I’ve had a pretty bad day” or “I’m really angry.” This helped teach me that my emotions aren’t bad. I don’t need to hide them. I just need to be in control of them and know how to regulate them.

When you’re feeling a very intense negative emotion, stop. If you’re very sad, or very angry, don’t do anything. Stay still. Write down what you’re feeling. Talk to someone. Make no decisions in this headspace. Distance is important when assessing your own emotions. Distance will teach you what your reaction is saying. If you get very angry at a friend because they’re late, why? Did the situation hurt you, or is there something larger at play? If it was the situation, you’ll be grateful you didn’t over blow it. If there’s something larger, now you have the calmer headspace to figure out how to fix it.

Let yourself feel bad. I try to be a generally optimistic person, but acknowledging my negative emotions, and not shaming myself for them, really helped me get better control over them. Sometimes you feel shitty! It’s okay to feel shitty! Let yourself feel bad, acknowledge the badness, and then let it go when you’re ready. Don’t let yourself wallow, but don’t suppress your bad emotions. Letting myself feel everything helped me gain confidence in being vulnerable.

Tell someone if they hurt you, even if they didn’t mean it. This is not supposed to be an accusation, but being an open communicator has changed my life. If someone upsets you and you don’t tell them, it may fester and turn into something nasty. I tell my friends that if they have an issue with something I did or said, I want them to tell me so we can talk about it in a calm, open, non-accusatory way. I feel much better once I’ve talked through something that hurt me, because I usually learn the other person’s point of view and it feels less like a slight.

Be upfront about your expectations. People can’t read your mind, and expecting people to is wrong. For example, one of my biggest pet peeves is having my time wasted. There are many people who view meeting times in flux. For them, it’s okay to shift appointments around, to double book, to be a little late. That’s another way of viewing the world. So, if someone is historically late, I might say “I really need you to be on time to this specific event” or set a precedent of “it’s okay if you’re late, but you have to let me know ahead of time that you think you’ll be late so I can account for that.”

Trust your gut. Don’t doubt yourself. Self doubt has always bit me. You can typically get a sense of when something is awry. Don’t be afraid to trust your instincts.

Lay out healthy priorities. I try and prioritize my health and well-being above everything else. If a topic is triggering for me to discuss, if an environment is a significant detriment to my mental health, if someone is hurting me, I try and fix the situation, and if it won’t fix, I leave. From there, my priorities are in flux. Sometimes I prioritize people, sometimes schoolwork, sometimes self care. It depends on the scenario and the time. Prioritizing your health is not the same thing as not doing anything that you dislike, or that makes you uncomfortable. We have to do things we dislike all the time. You know within yourself what’s unhealthy and what’s just unpleasant or annoying.

Learn how to fail. Admit when you’re wrong. I used to have a terrible time admitting I was wrong. If you’re in a healthy environment with decent people, you won’t be shamed for admitting your mistakes. In this way, change your behavior if you’re wrong! I often have unrealistic expectations of people. When that’s been brought to my attention, I’ve adjusted my expectations. Also, I’ve tried to remove “I told you so” from my vocabulary. I don’t shame others for failure. And, understand that partial successes are not failures. 50% successes are okay! Anything is better than zero. Sometimes, you will hit zero. Sometimes, you will fail. Learning how to learn from failure, from not seeing failure as a reflection of my self worth, gave me more freedom to try my hand at creating things I care about. First drafts are supposed to be awful! Just start! Once you start, you can often work off of momentum.

Take time to be introspective and understand yourself. What are your values? What’s important to you? How do you typically respond to certain scenarios? What is something that makes you consistently happy? Sad? Angry? Journal, blog, talk aimlessly into your phone, talk to other people, talk to a therapist if you’re interested. Often, you need to get to know yourself like you’d get to know another person. Once you gain this sense of self, you’ll better understand a lot of what you do, say, and how you react out in the world. For me, this is an ever-evolving process. I change, I grow, and I need to consistently reflect. I think constructive and position self reflection is very important.

I know that was a long list. This took me years and years, and I’m still working on these. The path to emotional softness and regulation is often not linear. Learning to forgive myself, learning how to understand myself, learning to be gentle with myself, was hard. I see a lot of “be gentle to yourself!” positivity on here without any concrete steps are principles. These are a bulk of mine. Employing these steps helped me to foster those safe communities, and be safe in my own vulnerability. Softness tends to follow work and action.

#hailing frequencies open #advice ask #you may reblog #feel free to send follow up questions!#Anonymous

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