awww yis

So, other progesterone users seem to use the amounts actually indicated by the Powers protocol. I should do this also. Which does mean I should start cycling again, deciding on a starting point. I want to invite women close to me also on gel dosable E2 and P4 to cycle with me. Get in touch if you know how to and we’ll actually seriously do it, period tracker app and all.

Discovering that, as I had somewhat suspected, now that trans alignment and dysphoria is mostly under control given I am quite a way into transition, I’m getting to the point where I can deal with whatever my emotional damages are. I don’t know to what extent they are impacted by the loss of my grandfather. I don’t know to what extent they are impacted by the breakups which made me afraid. I don’t know to what extent the self-alienation of dysphoria intersected with body desirability perception to make it vaster and stronger over the years. I don’t know to what extent there were any hurdles in my attachment (in particular perhaps, my being so early in language and social development might have meant I considered myself personally responsible earlier than is healthy).

Either way, it’s clear over time I have a pathological fear of rejection, that I expect it, that this fear is very easily triggered, and that it drives me to constantly crave relational validation as well as to scrupulously ensure I do all I must to maintain good standing. It emerges, by and large, almost but not exclusively in my romances (whether formal ones or those odd cases where we decide afterwards it really was a romance).

I think this is good. I can do exposure training on the fear, try to remember to be mindful within it – which is almost but not quite so hard as not zoning out when touched – and I can try to use my newfound peace and introspection to define the edges of this phenomenon better.

I’d do well I think to look to my friends with BPD in how they cope with what they experience. I don’t think this is the same – just as I am not autistic – but I can still make use of some of their wisdom.

In other news, I’ll prepare templates for SRS recommendation letters. This feels exactly as when I asked academic collaborators for recommendation letters and they asked me to write a template for them. I made slightly different versions for each so that they would not look identical when I needed to submit both. There is some beautiful cosmic humor in this.