TRANSGENDER
Trans and Overwhelmed
A side effect of testosterone I wasn’t quite ready for
Too many things to do and they all need to be done right now! Overwhelm used to sneak up on me. It would build, stack, and then, the addition of one more little thing would tip me over the edge, and once I was tipped, I went into a state of burn everything! But overwhelm hits so differently now than I am on testosterone. Now, I can still feel the overwhelm, but instead of bursting out of me in an emotional tsunami, it’s stuck under my skin, and I’m not sure yet if that’s a good thing. Is this an opportunity to finally learn new strategies? Can I learn to backburn and save myself before I break?
Overwhelm before T
Once upon a time, before I began correcting my hormonal imbalance, a complete state of overwhelm would leave me in tears, destroying all the things out of mere anger. I don’t just mean physical things either, for those who knew me best could always tell when I had spiraled into one of these overwhelmed breakdowns because suddenly, all my latest posts on social media would disappear. I don’t know why I did that. I would just delete them. It was almost like I didn’t want anyone having a piece of me anymore. I wanted to remove my existence from everyone else’s reach. I didn’t want them to know my thoughts. I would become so internalized that I needed everything around me to move away or disappear.
I didn’t want anyone having a piece of me anymore. I wanted to remove my existence from everyone else’s reach.
Everything that I was overwhelmed about, I would eliminate; I would make it no longer exist. Burn it all to the ground! And a few days later, I would pull myself together. I would brain-dump out all the things that were still important, that still needed to be done, all those things that weren’t completely incinerated by my wrath, and I would start again. It was a pretty predictable routine and I went through it roughly every six months. It was emotionally draining but at least I knew what to expect.
Overwhelm on T
Today, I am in a state of extreme overwhelm. I can feel it. I should be a complete mess. I should be currently burning at all. I shouldn’t be able to sit at my computer and write this. I shouldn’t be able to think straight. I should have tears pouring down my face. I should be ripping out pages from my notebooks and screwing them up. I should be throwing things in the bin just because having them near me is too much. I should be eating immense amounts of sugar because I so desperately need to feel good.
But I’m not doing any of that. None of it. I’m sitting here with the familiar sense of overwhelm heavy in my chest but it’s not coming out. It’s just, crawling around under my skin and I’m not sure how I feel about that yet. There is a peace and a relief in it; it’s nice to be able to manage it — if that’s what I’m doing. More so, it’s nice to not melt into an emotional mess whereby I can’t even interact with other people, let alone do the things that give me any kind of joy. Having said that, I feel like my body doesn’t know how to handle having those feelings stay within me.
Overwhelm is heavy in my chest. It’s just, crawling around under my skin.
I almost feel like it’s being bottled up but it’s not by choice. I don’t want to bottle up emotions. I don’t want to hide them and yet, for some reason, they’re sitting there under my skin not quite able to free themselves. I’m not sure I like this part. I can feel frustration crawling over me and though I’m not in a state of anger, I can certainly feel how the growing frustration and the piling on of this overwhelm could easily take me there. I definitely don’t like that part. I don’t want to go there.
Learning to Backburn
So, now my challenge is to take this newfound awareness (for want of a better word) and use it to dissolve that sense of overwhelm. Perhaps, learn new techniques and ways to allow myself to release the emotion and whatever else may get pent up in there. This might be the time to find a new outlet. It also makes me wonder if this is an opportunity to learn how simply backburn instead of burning it to the ground, instead of destroying everything and starting again every time.
My first step is to try something, anything, to manage this before the weight in my chest grows too heavy. In fact, I have already started. I brain-dumped all the tasks I need to do into two To-Do lists.
- All the things I can think of banging around in my head that need to be done; those bigger things, or those things that aren’t urgent, that I can’t forget about.
- All the things that need attention today (or in the next few days); those more urgent matters.
Between these two lists, I only have 12 things but in my state of overwhelm, it felt like so many more. Now that I have those 12 things written down, I don’t have to keep trying to remember them and keep them in a list in my mind, which frees me up to now focus on one thing at a time.
What if I could build a better me
I always sensed that my body was inherently missing something and now that I know what it is, the last thing I want to do is blame T.
I’ve always struggled with staying on top of tasks and getting things done. It’s a pretty standard neurodivergent trait but I feel like this change in my physical and mental ability to respond to overwhelm is an opportunity that I can’t ignore. I always sensed that my body was inherently missing something and now that I know what it is, the last thing I want to do is blame T. It’s an adjustment, but what that means is I can start building new beliefs and new management systems. I can start from scratch but I won’t have to do that every time from now on. How cool is that?
What if I could look at all my tasks with more logic and remove those things that don’t matter, remove those things that aren’t important, to give myself that gift of calmness and structure without placing too many expectations on myself? What can I backburn? How can I be more efficient and what tasks am I allocating to myself that are nothing more than expectations and pressure placed on self? I think it’s time to re-evaluate.
It may have taken a clarity I could only find once my body was prompted into the hormonal balance I was always lacking, but that doesn’t mean there is no work left to do. It’s just the beginning. I get a fresh start; a do-over! It’s time to build new habits, strategies, and beliefs, without the learned behaviors and without the associated trauma. It’s time to learn how to backburn instead of burning everything to the ground. It’s time to stop letting overwhelm decide when I deserve to give myself a break. Does any of this resonate? Is there anything you can backburn now to save yourself from overwhelm in the future?
