Balance in life

[Trinity]

I'm struggling right now with balance, I have been for a while.  I also have an extremely addictive personality- which is under control, and it takes a lot of work, trust me, but I've had it under control for 35 years or so - but there's stuff that gets me going.

One thing I do have is the freedom to be myself at home, at the moment I am in a short dress, my body is transitioned and my face does not need makeup to be read as female. I am quite fortunate.  Took 5 years of hormones to do that.

But I do not have balance with money, work, the arts, my needs in being in the outer world as myself, as she.  I have a tendency to live too long in a specific presentation and it will boomerang on me, or social events will trigger me, expecially parties and stuff where women are being themselves and dressed to the nines, and I am not.  Its is after these that my dysphoria brings the most discomfort.  And when I get the most high risk.

The thread is about balance.

How do you achieve balance, or how do you live to stay at your maximum mental health and comfort levels?

I have not mastered this, I make progress, and then fall back.  Music is my outlet, and theater.  Music soothes me, playing it, listening to it.  It nurtures me.

I would say that is most important to mental health, is the music, and some excercize and down time.

When that is taken away from me, lately I am overworked and its a problem, but when I lose that, I am miserable.  And if I have to hide my gender, it really gets messy.  The most important thing to me is not hiding my gender from myself.  I can be a transperson of the female transition under the clothes, and thats no problem.  If I deny this or lose focus on my truth, then I really get unbalanced.

How do you live to stay balanced my dear ones?

[Ativan Prescribed]

I don't do anything to take the edge off of things so much as I move through them at a pace that works to figure them out.
Things that distract from it just make it worse than it was, so finding those things that do that for the sake of distraction just won't do.
Taking the time to take things as head on as I can seems to be the way.
I don't ever have expectations of any one thing helping a given situation, it's always going to take more than that to really help.
It's like the gender thing that I read on here so much, that if it was only this or that, happiness would instantly come.
I doubt it would, but it's a start, but there is always going to be more that it will take to get to where you think you need to be.
It isn't like life is one thing after another, it's all of it at once, all the time, good and bad, things that boost and things that take away.
So balance is important, but it can't be balancing one thing, the most major thing, the troubling thing, it takes more.
To really see it for what it is and see that the imbalances aren't separate things and that one affects the others is the way to achieve balance.
I know that is a duh kind of thing to say, but think about it, the apparent isn't always the answer to balancing things.
I dig a little deeper to find the things that aren't just there because they are, but the how did they get here to begin with and do I even need them...
There is so much crap in our lives to begin with, it's easy to just add more and not even realize we do, step away from it all and look.
I do find myself getting wound up on one thing only to realize it wasn't that, that was the result of yet another thing that I wasn't paying as much attention to, too busy with the first thing to be bothered with it, yet that was the thing gone wrong and it usually wasn't as bad, only in that it caused it.
In other words, attacking from the front isn't always a wise choice, knocking things down one at a time isn't always a wise choice, because so many of those things are dependent on yet other things that you won't get to for a while.
If you can't, then is the short term fix even worth it, or is it better to get to the root of it and then plan out the attack?
One of the key rules in warfare is to flank your enemy as much and as soon as possible, set yourself up to attack from the side, not head on.
It leads to a battle of wills in who can outflank the best, but that isn't ability so much as it has to do with all of the factors, weather, terrain, how much can you spare to do that while leaving the front strong, there are so many things that it sometimes comes down to shear luck.
But if you don't do it, then you'll be outflanked by the things that are out of balance and the more they are, the harder it is to get that balance back.
Achieving balance isn't a one thing to do, it's knowing how much you can take from here and put there to keep the balance.
Dwelling on those one thing kind of cures isn't going to get you where you want to be, if only life where this, if only I could be gender this, what ifs rarely come true and when they do, it's the result of taking into consideration a lot of things.
Just getting rid of those negatives that aren't worth hanging onto is the start, clean house, throw them out, always keep things as orderly as you can so that the chaos you create doesn't cause to much damage, and we all have a certain amount of chaos in our approach and philosophies in life, it wouldn't be fun if we didn't, and that's the point, if things aren't fun, then clean house and get rid of the things that you really don't need in your head that you perceive as a negative that needs to be fixed, most of them can be tossed because they aren't as real as they seem.
We get bogged down in trying to find those things for the stuff in our lives that we think are there that need to be something, because a lot of them are just carryovers from something else, sort things out better, take a more objective look, shut it all off until you can see yourself and your life as it is, not like you want, because if you can't see it as it is now, how can you decide what you need to do to change it?
We have the things that we fall back on to make it through the day, to soothe our wounded spirits, but sometimes those wounds have left, they just aren't there anymore, you got over them when you weren't looking, you already took care of that and didn't stop to realize you did.
So many things just don't need to hung onto when you have more heading your way, to hang onto the past as if you'd crumble without it, is to keep taking on more stuff until you can't see what you have and don't have, and a lot of things are gone and won't be back, emotional baggage holds us back.
Do what it takes to get rid of it, therapy is one way, but then don't use it as a crutch like you use the old as it is, just dump that shit and be over it, get rid of it, let go of it, figure out what isn't worth it anymore and just leave it behind because you really do have more important things to be doing.
You see those people who seem stuck in place and haven't moved forward? They hang on to old troubles as if they are still there, they are already gone.
The less you have to burden yourself with, the less life is going to weigh you down, you don't have to carry anywhere near as much weight as you do.
Seems like I have to just sit and go through the things in my life on a regular basis and decide if they are worth carrying along with.
I know there are things that still need a lot of work and that I can let go of and not do any damage to myself, not as much as those things still are.
There isn't anything you can do that will put things into balance because other things come right along when you do, you need to shed the BS and move forward.
Hanging on to things isn't worth it unless they have something to offer still. Just look at it all in the way that it is if those things weren't there.
Look at it from a perspective that you haven't tried, one that you used to that worked, someone else's perspective if you can.
There is nothing worse than getting bogged down in a collection of crap in life that isn't even there anymore, you already let go of it, let go of the effect it has on you then.
You've heard people say to others that they should get a life, my response is that I have one and that you need to get on with yours, but at times I just ask myself that, do I just need to get the things I really need and not keep on getting those things that are just repeating it over and over?
It's a process that we go through all the time, but if things aren't working, then go at it from another direction, and while you're at it, drop the stuff that doesn't have to do with your life anymore, get rid of the crap, no since in dragging a bunch of crap from one house to the next kind of thing.

[Becky]

For me, the greatest stress comes from being in the closet. As a strong extrovert, I like to solve problems by talking about them. Dysphoria is a pretty big problem, and if there's no one to talk to, my discomfort and depression can become really powerful.

I was highly out of balance a few months ago, and realized that I had to figure out a way to talk things out or I would be in really rough shape. I thought about a blog of my own, until I realized that was way too high profile. This forum became a major way for me to find balance. Talking out my challenges and my frustrations here has been a huge help.

I also try to work in time to express my femininity about 3-4 times per week. This can only be for a few hours at a time, but it seems enough to help me get my emotions on an even keel. I am so incredibly jealous of women who have a very feminine presentation, but I have to stifle the impulse to stare at them and sigh - that could easily be misinterpreted as creepy behavior coming from a guy! The occasional dressing at home helps control that impulse.

The final thing I do is remind myself that I am me, no matter what clothes I'm wearing. I can walk out in public, knowing in my heart that I identify as a demigirl. Even in guy clothes, I can retain my normal mannerisms and personality. It's probably perceived as a bit "light in the loafers" as my father-in-law would say, but it's not as provocative as wearing a skirt and a wig.

[Leena]

I don't really have balance in my life right now.

I was much better at balancing things as an employee, until they wanted me to basically work 24/7 and had to quit. Although I think I do have what it takes to run a successful business, I don't put nearly as much time into it as I would a "real job." I perhaps need to set up an actual schedule of working hours. At the very least, I need to be working in the morning. There's not even much to do that time of day anyway, so if I'm not working, I'm just wasting time on the internet.

I do think I have a fairly good balance with the gender presentation right now. I've recently rediscovered I actually sometimes like presenting as a feminine guy, and sometimes I like to push it more towards masculine trans woman. Pushing things further than that tends to make me uncomfortable, as does doing masculine guy, though I can still pull that off for a short time if I need to.