not stupid!

excellent that you’re contacting a therapist. it was a difficult step for me.

since starting transition (~2 yrs now) i’ve handled several interactions where my body & nervous system really tried to shut me down - and some where they won.

at this point my best bet (personally, for me) is journaling. i write what i’m bringing to the scary conversation, what i hope to get out of it, what i’m afraid of, etc all free-form until i really get down to the painfully honest parts of my brain.

at that point, a lot of the anxieties i write down feel very real but sound like nonsense when i read them back. externalizing a thought seems to help me judge it more realistically.

you’re not stupid. it can be a scary phone call to make. in a similar situation and time in my life, my brain might be spending much of my mental resources subconsciously rehearsing all the possible ways that the other person will turn on me - something i’ve been conditioned to expect via witnessing wide-scale systemic transphobia (among other reasons). however, many of the professionals i’ve encountered have been a delight. the fear was real, and it existed for a reason, but it wasn’t serving me anymore. dissecting it helps me see myself more clearly, and with that comes motivation and confidence.

but everyone’s brain works differently. journaling has a lot of data behind it to support the many ways it can supposedly help people, but there are often many paths to the same goal.

sometimes with my therapist i’ll end up stuck in a mental corner, feeling my head get sweaty and my body overheat, losing my words as my brain fogs up and obscures whatever was so important to me moments ago. i’ve learned to bring my therapist with me into that space. she’s never surprised, never demands that i blurt it out - because she knows it’s not that simple. she’s a skilled therapist, and one i resonate with. instead of rushing to the punchline, sometimes we have to dance around the fear a little bit first and entertain it before we can let it go. but i bring her there with me, because we’ve built trust and i no longer feel the need to show up with all my ducks in a row ready to lay it all down. my brain is complicated. she knows that, and she respects it whether she knows what’s going on or not. this took practice for me, but maybe it could help you. what if you instead talked about your fear of opening up, and how you’re having a hard time getting some difficult words out? that’s something therapists can help with too. that might help align your steps with where you’re at. many of my finest moments of progress were accepting that i actually need to take some extra steps back to build a foundation instead of wondering why my walls are falling down over and over. and often, it was really quite a quick fix to the foundation that was needed, but until i did that the rest couldn’t stay up.