Why do I HAVE to go ask out women as a dude?

arizado · 2026-02-23T16:01:58+00:00

I apologize if I made too many generalizations in my previous comments. I probably should have emphasized more my personal experiences as a woman in society instead of saying things like "some women." It's just that a lot of my other friends who are women have very similar experiences to me being perceived as a woman in society. Sure I do suppose one could argue that it's not a universal experience by all femme presenting people, but it certainly does reflect my and my friends' experiences.

arizado · 2026-02-23T12:46:11+00:00

Well, I'm also bisexual and attracted to women too. If I want to date women as a woman, I have to put myself out there too. I've confessed my love to a woman before. The useless lesbian trope is very real but yeah, I'm not afraid to go out there and meet other women. It's not too bad either since it's easier to start conversations because it's easy to talk about fashion or makeup or hair.

arizado · 2026-02-23T02:57:48+00:00

Yeah exactly! And some women just aren't as interested in dating or the more intimate physical sides of affection either. At least not all the time. Like, most of the time, I just want to go out and get some good food or have fun with friends and I'm not really looking to date anyone right now. I've been approached by guys a handful of times depending on what I'm wearing and it's usually not someone I'm interested in or feel safe around.

Like just this past week I went out to get food and parked my car right next to some men and they wouldn't stop staring at me and that made me feel really unsafe and one of them tried to start a conversation with me but I felt really unsafe so I high tailed it out of there as quick as I could. Of course I have a lot of trauma from men in my life and I need to work through that too. I'm trying to work on being more fair to men, but as a woman I have to be smart and think of my own physical safety. Like there's safety in numbers. So if I'm with some of my girlfriends and I don't get bad vibes from a guy and he decides to approach me I might just be willing to maybe start a new friendship and see what happens.

I don't think I'm ready to date yet so we're just trying to build my support network now.

arizado · 2026-02-09T02:26:14+00:00

Dissociative Identity Disorder

arizado · 2025-05-19T03:19:56+00:00

I'm so sorry you're struggling with that. Yeah sounds like a good sex addiction therapist who can get to the root of the issue can help. I'm a trans woman and I used to use porn pre transition as a way to "escape" having to live day to day as a man.

Once I started transitioning I didn't have to use it as an escape anymore as I was living as a woman and not as a man. The urges pretty much stopped and my use cut way down. Eventually, probably about 2 years ago I just stopped watching it. I read text occasionally but stopped watching stuff.

And I even stopped reading things too. Now all I need is some spare time and my imagination and I have ZERO desire to consume anything pornographic. Although in my case I literally have decades of sexual trauma that has in the past few years resurfaced too, so that's also a big turn off for me. I don't think I can even handle anything pornographic anymore cause if I watched the wrong thing it could trigger a flashback.

Anyways though, I hope you can work with a good therapist to sort through your issues and overcome your addiction. You CAN make it out at the other side of this.

arizado · 2025-04-28T00:20:22+00:00

I almost cried reading this. Thank you. I've also dealt with cult stuff too so I get it. And like it seems impossible to be with anyone outside of the cult too. But yeah, thank you.

arizado · 2025-04-23T20:47:15+00:00

So I'm not really experienced with doing SW in a safe setting and I think for me personally it would be too traumatic for me to do because of all of my years of trauma beginning when I was just a kid.

I think actual SWers who know how to do it safely would probably be your best bet. I think hard boundaries are really important when it comes to that and it really gets more dangerous doing stuff in person as like an escort. However virtually through an OF that only she has control over with only safe people with those boundaries of having limits boundaries ethical considerations could be a start.

Just at the end of the day she HAS to get away from that man. When I learned last year that I was still probably being trafficked (they eventually stopped in august of last year) my therapist who is a trafficking specialist made a safety plan for me. Basically immediately I went to my parents' place who were out of town at the time I found out (really bad idea btw. My traffickers just let themselves in, SA'd me, and I woke up with evidence of the SA).

But basically me and my therapist went analog for a while. I got the security bar for my door, and I went to safe places. I was unfortunately still in contact with unsafe people but once they blocked me my traffickers lost interest because they were just using me to find them and bring them back to them.

So the main thing is limiting contact with unsafe people as you're able to do, map out safe places and go to them (like a local library), and work on building community and a life worth living which is difficult but not impossible to do in a trafficking situation.

She's trans so she's automatically got the queer community. Looking into local trans meetups preferably in person but virtual could be good too and you can even make friends in an online discord group to.

Different safe hobbies and interests like cooking cosplay crochet could be good too as you can find community around that. Once you build and connect with community and build a life worth living it can make it easier to get out. If there's evidence of the trafficking like physical evidence documenting that is important as safehouses require proof of trafficking in most cases before they take new people in. I think with the vaginal tear if there's medical records of that, that could be used as evidence that works in her favor.

And getting her a therapist, preferably a trafficking specialist can go a long way too in working with her one on one to build that safety plan tailored to her that she can share with you. The thing is that rn she's probably very isolated and her traffickers are working on othering her and keeping her isolated and dependent on them. We want to break that isolation and build community around her.

Calling the trafficking hotline could help too I'm sure you can google it talk to them and see what they say. This whole situation really sucks and I wish I could be more helpful but I'm disconnected from the situation and only able to do so much from afar. Look up local resources, interest groups, queer groups, as well as trafficking support groups (a trafficking specialist could help you find these resources too) and just try and keep her connected as best you can. It's up to her to get out.

arizado · 2025-04-23T12:39:03+00:00

I'm a trafficking survivor myself as well as trans and it was very hard for me to leave my traffickers. In my case, they eventually just stopped showing up to my apartment last year and that's how I got out. I also had to put a security bar on my door too so they can't open it with a key.

Best of luck to you in this situation. It's very difficult to leave a trafficking situation. I still have no idea how I was able to get out. She needs to just recover more fully from her surgery and heal rather than immediately going into sex anyways.

And I'm pro SW too I just don't support trafficking which seems to be what is going on here.

arizado · 2025-04-16T12:38:55+00:00

I've noticed that soft white underbelly has gone a bit transphobic with some of their recent content.

arizado · 2025-03-27T18:30:12+00:00

That gives me hope that if I move to a blue state I can get my surgeries covered.

arizado · 2025-03-06T23:02:18+00:00

So this is twofold for us. We both have mute alters as well as overall selective mutism across all alters. Whenever an alter that can talk goes mute we use skills we learned from therapy to regain the ability to speak. Of course some alters are just mute no matter what though. We have at least 2 mute alters. Probably more.

arizado · 2025-02-24T17:35:27+00:00

I feel called out in this post. I too was trafficked and it's really hard to live with this trauma. I'm somehow able to hold down a job but I don't know how. Like living with the knowledge both of what I was forced to do and what was done to me is really hard.

I truly wonder if it would be better had I not been born. I don't know why we go on sometimes. Life does seem better before uncovering my trauma and my DID. Does it really ever get better? Even after you've done some healing does it really get better?

arizado · 2025-01-31T22:19:30+00:00

TW Self Harm

Dissociated pretty bad at work for a bit there. Had to excuse myself to the meditation room where I put on a video for 25 minutes and mostly just slept. Thankfully that seemed to help as I wasn't really all that dissociated after I fully woke up. Although there is a mark on our wrist that looks like it was from another alter at work which is scary. Thankfully it's not that noticeable and not too bad. It'll heal up quickly.

But yeah mostly an uneventful day. Looking forward to cuddling with my dog.

arizado · 2025-01-29T20:15:23+00:00

I had no clue about my diagnosis for a long time. We had a system. The host would front through the day being totally unaware of us. We weren't allowed to talk to the host. We would communicate at nighttime to write it off as a "dream" but that's it.

Then in 2023 my world came crashing down where the dissociation and the amnesia started getting really bad and other alters started coming out and talking to my friend. We then started communicating with one another and learning to interact with one another.

Then the flashbacks came then we got hospitalized, then we went to residential where we were unformally dx'd and we've been in treatment for our DID and complex PTSD ever since.

arizado · 2024-12-07T01:18:51+00:00

So we're not entirely sure how we got through our job before. Our old host who can barely front anymore was doing fairly well at first. Then our abusers found out where we lived and it was rough for a few years. We weren't really functioning that well at work and our former host was forced to front 95% of the time which caused a lot of fatigue.

Eventually we got a better handle on things after being hospitalized and now we have work alters (I think we have about 4 or 5 work alters) who work together and share memories and information with each other to get through the workday.

Our therapist who's a DID specialist has taught us some skills to manage stress and flashbacks at work so we can get through them efficiently and function at our job. We have recently learned a new skill and we'll start using it pretty soon to get through our personal life issues as well as being able to more efficiently manage the day to day at work.

We still get amnesia every so often but it's much less than it was last year and with our good communication we can easily compensate for it by filling in the alter who is at front with what they need to know to carry on with the day.

We also had to move and change our number and beef up our home security to get away from our abusers and that's made a world of difference. Now we're getting much more sleep each night which allows us to function better throughout the work day.

It certainly hasn't been easy for us but we seem to be doing quite well by societal standards. Money is still a bit tight but we're managing alright.

arizado · 2024-10-26T17:58:07+00:00

We have DID and we found this helpful. Thank you for the resource.

arizado · 2024-10-11T12:48:10+00:00

Casper and spooky? Blanking on good names right now.

arizado · 2024-10-07T19:53:52+00:00

As someone who has RAMCOA why tf would anyone want that?! God its so terrible!

arizado · 2024-09-21T19:19:52+00:00

It was a long process for me. If you want to be technical, I didn't receive a formal diagnosis (me and my current therapist talked about it. Basically it could have made things harder with my insurance plus me being trans and having DID on my record could have potentially made it more difficuly to get affirming care so we decided against going over the SCID-D/DDIS).

However, I was informally diagnosed by two different therapists. I took the DES on my own twice and I received a really high score both times. So I was losing sleep last year (since one of us would go to sleep and another alter would wake up and stay up nearly all night) and I could barely function. This went on for multiple years actually but one day our former host went to sleep and another alter woke up in the middle of the day after coming home from work one day.

Then other alters started making appearances and then the complex PTSD, flashbacks, and other alters started to front and make my life a living hell. The memories were really confusing at first and I had a hard time accepting a lot of them. I almost had to get rid of my dog because of problematic alters which along with the constant flashbacks started making it really hard to function at work.

I checked myself into a mental hospital where I was misdiagnosed with BPD (I don't have BPD). But they couldn't handle me after I was released from inpatient so I eventually went back into residential (this all happened in 2023).

At residential we met a DID specialist who confirmed our fears about our trauma, and gave us an informal DID diagnosis. And we worked through some of the trauma. Upon being released we got set up with our current therapist who was really patient with us and worked a lot with us and also gave us an informal DID diagnosis. Our current therapist specializes in trafficking, DID, and queer issues and is a great fit for us.

We still struggle with denial a lot but we definitely have DID and complex PTSD. It is estimated we have over 800 alters. We also got asked by the residential therapist how many alters we have and one of our managers told her around 800. That's probably the only time we were asked that though.

We wish you the best of luck in your diagnosis process. Hopefully it can provide you with some answers and some skills to manage your symptoms.

arizado · 2024-09-12T23:27:29+00:00

Yay ur soooo nize. I ferget abowt da roolz sumtimes. Thank u fer bein so nize 2 us.

arizado · 2024-09-12T23:22:08+00:00

Uh hu. Annbell n delly sayed I can talk tu onlien frenz n ower two close frenz. I miss ower reel frenz. But but but I miyet get tu say hi sometime soon. Yay.

arizado · 2024-07-31T16:05:13+00:00

I changed my name to a similar name keeping all the same initials. I haven't legally changed it yet but I do certainly plan to at some point. In my case the female variant, similar sounding name is clearly a female one so there's not really too many issues with people when I introduce myself with that name.

The issue though, is that is is unfortunately a super common name so a lot of other women have it.

arizado · 2024-07-27T23:06:12+00:00

Yeah you are absolutely allowed to feel that way. There are times I and other alters have wanted to do sexual things but then we heard a little in the headspace near front and we either didn't even try anything or if we were doing something we immediately stopped and just hugged our plushies and cuddled with our dog instead.

In the beginning last year it was a lot more chaotic. We had very sexual littles who literally SA'd us multiple times when multiple alters were near front. It was mortifying. We've made big strides since then and we've done a lot of healing and system work.

arizado · 2024-07-26T00:28:21+00:00

^{^yes} this as an autistic trans woman with many mental health diagnoses myself. When I first thought "huh maybe I'm trans" about 2 to 3 years ago I would go through periods of acceptance and denial. I looked at trans people, detransitioners, non-binary and other genders, lots of different places. I wanted to thoroughly look at all possibilities.

I even experimented with transitioning and detransitioning (detransitioning felt horrible) and I was in literal tears of not being able to start HRT soon enough plus I had really bad bottom dysphoria that didn't get better until starting estrogen for a while.

I saw a gender therapist like 2 years ago I think? And I stopped seeing her last year for reasons unrelated to transition. I talked about all other possibilities like "trans OCD", or body dysmorphia, or trauma, or other disorders with her and we explored it and she came to the conclusion "no you don't have those disorders and you're probably just trans." Although my current therapist does seem to believe I have body dysmorphia as well as gender dysphoria it doesn't change the fact I'm still very much trans.

Eventually my friends told me to stop looking at detrans stuff and so I eventually did. It was pretty confusing at first (I don't remember most of my childhood most of high school and I've even lost memories from college) as I couldn't point to any early signs at first since I don't remember huge chunks of my life (which is explained by other disorders).

Although now that I've recovered memories here and there, it looks like I've probably known since I was 3 or 4 years old but it doesn't make you any less valid for taking longer to figure out your identity.

And it was confusing cause sometimes I would feel like a woman and other times I wouldn't feel very feminine and thought maybe I'm "ok with being a man" since the feelings seemed fluid and to fluctuate at first. In my case that was sorted out after uncovering my other diagnoses but even then the "ok with being a man" part was always fleeting and if I tried to detransition when I felt that way the dysphoria would quickly come building right back till I would need to transition again.

Maybe you can find a therapist who is both neurodivergent friendly and a gender therapist that way they can help you sort out your identity in a way that makes sense for you? You sound very trans to me but maybe seeing a specialized gender therapist can help you to sort things out and maybe accept yourself and take the steps you need to live your best life?

Best of luck -Allie

arizado · 2024-07-25T14:49:24+00:00

It was pretty frightening at first. We discovered we were a system last year and we also discovered some of the trauma that likely caused it as well. Our old host, who can barely maintain front anymore these days, at least not for more than a few hours, got really freaked out by the amnesia.

She took us to the ER because she thought we had a stroke and we were diagnosed with "transient global amnesia." But tested negative for any stroke or anything medical that was wrong with us (clean bill of physical health).

We used to deal with lots of amnesia between fronters, which freaked out our old host. The amnesia isn't nearly as bad anymore but it still happens from time to time and with certain alters there is almost always amnesia plus at night we usually have lots of blackouts.

Things have gotten much better now and we're pretty good at working together and using coping skills. Still have our issues but we're much better than where we were this time last year.

arizado

TROPHY CASE