YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

It's so hard to get a grasp on what I'm feeling right now.
Through my whole life I've been suffering from derealisation but now that I've been going to support groups and starting to accept who I am I've come to realize that I might have been suffering from depersonalisation as well.

I've spent so much time looking in the mirror and I realize it's because I don't feel how I look, if that makes sense.

Right now I'm struggling to feel what gender I am, is it possible that I am non binary or even trans?

My sex addiction always sexualised my body as a female body that was supposed to be attractive for men.
I know I had fantasies about both men and women when I was really young, I used to fantasize that I could take a pill and switch body from female to male depending on what gender I wanted to have sex with.
It never occurred to me that same sex intercourse was a thing as my environment was very homophobic when I grew up.

I'm just so confused right now.
I never really understood what I was feeling, it just was the way it was.
Now I'm struggling with what feels like the true me and what is just internalised sexism.

I still feel like I should be more feminine because feminine female bodies are good and masculine female bodies are not good.
Yet I see women dressing kinda "boyish" in public and admire them, I think strong women are the coolest and yet I can't bring myself to accept the same look on me.

Who am I?
What am I?

I have no clue.

Good for you for using your words. Well done.

Gender and sexuality much less binary nowadays. I encourage you to continue to consider who you are, and who you are becoming.

I accept you as you are.

Thank you so much Oak!
I really needed to read that.

I was never accepted for who I was as a child so now that I'm starting to make amends with myself these confused feelings come up sometimes.
I don't know if it will stay or if it's just a passing confusion.
Hopefully I'll find out more about who I really feel like I am soon enough.

Just trying to be ok with not being ok right now.

Very good!

The thing that helped me, that a counselor told me in the benighted days of 2004, as I remember it:

Sex is what the government stamped on birth certificate. In my case, male.

Gender is how I feel, what feels right, what is natural to me. This may or may not overlap with society's shibboleth of binary gender.

(Or maybe it is vice versa!)

My idol, Ira Glass, called himself "femmy", and that sounded like home to me. I am totally male, but fairly small-q queer.

What the counselor explained was that is a continuum: I happen to be super happy with my sex of male, but do not fit the cookie cutter mold of what men "do". Sexual orientation can be another continuum, another dimension.

That was pretty revolutionary to hear back then! Nowadays I understand that my gender identity is fluid, and I am basically whatever I want to be.

I encourage you to study more about sex and gender.

FWIW, maybe being not okay is the most deeply okay thing you can do right now.