I’m 30, transfem, and to be quite honest, I feel my will to live slowly slipping away. I’m trying to find the willpower to finish my PhD thesis and to get into a better living situation after that, but I find myself frozen and wanting to curl up into a tiny ball of nothingness instead. And there are LOTS of reasons for that, mostly centered around trauma, guilt, and shame.
I don’t think I can fit everything I need to say in a succinct post, so if it isn’t against the rules, would any of you fellow girlies be willing to shoot me a DM and give some advice? I don’t think I can really explain without having a back-and-forth conversation… thanks in advance. 🏳️⚧️💜
I am writing this as a comment, because I am not sure if this applies to you, but also because other people should know about this.
What you describe sounds like a major depressive episode. I am - unfortunately - talking from experience there: Everything feels pointless and nothing seems worth living fear? All the pleasure has been drained from whatever you do? Seeing no reason to get up in the morning and do anything at all? Is your mind a merry-go-round of negative thoughts? That’s depression talking.
Unfortunately trauma and guilt tend to reinforce depression and so does living long years with gender dysphoria.
I am not telling you this because I want to make you feel more depressed, but rather because one of the first steps to get out of depression is to understand when and how depression is weighing you down. That doesn’t make the symptoms any better by itself, but it helps to keep you focused on the things that matter rather than obsessing about the negative thoughts the depression throws at us.
The ultimate problem of depression is the depression tells us that there is no way to get better and that every effort to get better is pointless. There is no sugar-coating it: Every way out of the depression is hard.
Therefore I strongly encourage you to seek professional help. Anti-depressants can offer relief even if they are most often no golden bullet by themselves. Therapy can also help.
If those things seem out of reach to you, try smaller stuff: Making a short daily walk, particularly when the sun is shining can already be a first step. And do not be hard on yourself! That is also the depression. If you are truly suffering from depression, you should consider yourself to be affected by an honest-to-god serious illness. You are not as productive and resilient as you usually are. So don’t torture yourself for not being able to do as much as you are used to.
I wish you all the best to get through this! 🍀 Feel free to DM me if you think what I wrote is useful.
This is a very excellent comment.
Seconding this! I’ve been living with depression long enough that the coping mechanisms are automatic (for better or worse), so it’s easy to forget that not everyone may have had the time to learn them. (I’m guessing I may not be the only one?)
There’s a big overlap between ‘coping with dysphoria’ and ‘coping with depression’, but because I learnt the latter long before I became aware of the former, it never even occurred to me to offer advice on that topic!