What is Gender Expression and How can I navigate through my Gender Dysphoria ?

What is gender expression? How can I deal with my gender dysphoria? Dr Trinka Arora
Dr Trinka Arora explains to us what gender expression is. And, Dr Trinka Arora tells us more about Gender Dysphoria.
 

What is gender expression?

Gender expression is how you choose to present yourself in the world 

So this is the thumb rule: Gender expression is about how you want to present yourself to the world, including how you dress and what you want to look like in front of others and gender identity is how you feel about your gender.

Gender Dysphoria

Before confronting the issue and meeting a doctor or talking to others, especially a doctor we suffer in silence and second-guess ourselves throughout the process. In this case, how do we determine if we have gender dysphoria? 

Dr Trinka talks about how this is such a long process wherein you’d have to understand first and foremost that they are different from the others and that they cannot relate to the others. So sometimes it is not you who understands that there is something different about you but the people who do it. And so to understand that and then to accept it, then to learn more about the workings and finally to explain to your loved ones how it affects you- all of it takes a long time. In that, if you have to convince someone of who you are and you have to deal with constant turmoil, it will affect you and so you will be sad, and anxious and there will be a lot of negative thoughts that you’d have to deal with. So you’ll have to struggle with a lot of these things. In the midst of that, if you have people with whom you can share and talk openly without the fear of judgement then it will help a lot. So instead of keeping it to yourself and suffering, you should try and gain some knowledge about the same and then tell others and also support them completely. 

So if we want to open up, we want someone to tell us that it will be okay. We are in need of a safe person who would help us out in the process because otherwise, this will become impossible to deal with. 

So how can we find someone who is safe to talk to?

So if we look then we can find people who would understand us. For some of us, we can find comfort in our family members and our friends or even our teachers. So this is what we should aspire to have- we need to identify our people. So if you feel like you cannot say what you feel like saying to anyone in your life then there are professionals who would help you out. So please consider going to a mental health professional who would listen to you, who would hear you out, understand you and also provide you with support.