Tuesday, July 20, 2010

No tacos :*-( (Bex-yellow)

I've been getting really fed up with this whole adrenal problems, not sleeping, never feeling well bullshit. Finally ponied up my credit card (and I had finally paid it off too....) and went to see my Naturopathic Doctor.

Conclusion: the reason I am not getting better is because corn has gluten in it too. Not a lot, but enough that if you are super sensitive to GF oats, you will be sensitive to corn. Just last week I was telling my friends that if I ever moved out of San Diego I wouldn't be able to have tacos anymore and there would be no life after tacos. :-( I guess I spoke too soon.

So, i'm on a new adrenal support, a new corn-free diet, and a homeopathic detox/cleanse with gluten and casein enzymes. I'm not sure how to take this all, and process it. I LIVE off of corn. Corn, potatoes and rice. But, if it makes me better..... I'll give it a try.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Happy Pride weekend! (Bex-orange)

HAPPY PRIDE!

I went to the parade and had a great time. Unfortunately I didn't make it out to the festival or the clubs but my roommate and I strung up some gay and bi flags in front of our apartment. Not much else to say.

By the way... I LOVE my new transgender therapist. She is awesome. She has even worked with people who are bigender before. Somehow, that makes me feel more legitimate; that I'm not making it up. Its hard when I get tranny-hate mail messages on my blog here.

But on a positive note... my life is really starting to look positive. i've been through a lot these past 3 months with the trauma therapy. I feel like I am whole now and that I have control over my own life, AND a voice. I am what I make of myself and no one or nothing can bring me down like that again.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

what gives people the right? (Bex- orange)

What gives people the right to get up in my face and question me about having short hair (or facial hair) or having an unusual name or something else so intensely that I have to choose whether I want come out to them as trans or lie? And then when I come out, they still push the envelope and want to know what my genitalia look like or who I'm sleeping with. REALLY? Do I have to have this conversation with my professor in front of all of my classmates? Do I really need to answer those kind of questions when it is adequately explained on the same internet page the picture is on that you are confused about? Is confronting me at a party when I'm having a good time in front of people I am NOT out to really the appropriate situation? And when you haven't talked to me in 3, 4, or 5 years... what gives you the right to ask me such intimate things and then judge me? And what give people the right to think I am deranged and mentally ill?

I'm frustrated. I wish some people would grow up.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

What is Trauma Touch Therapy?

I only have one more session of Trauma Touch Therapy. People have been asking me, what is trauma touch? On a physical level, you are working with a therapist to reroute your nerves that go between your body and your brain and to retrain your brain to think in a way that is healthy and not misfiring from your traumatic past. Most people manifest trauma psycho-somatically if trauma has been left untreated for years via behavioral patterns and aches/pains/illness & disease. In addition, by going through skills sessions to learn boundaries and other important skills you build up a way to empower yourself and prevent trauma from impairing you again. It is essentially about waking up the systems in your body that protect you and make you feel good and help you be a productive person. Trauma Touch is about helping you help yourself, teaching you to do what you already know how to do, but forgot or may have never learned.

Anything can be trauma... even falling off a bike or an argument with a friend. We deal with dozens of "trauma's" every day. Think how amazing it is that we can deal with those every day, without even thinking about it! Its that .1% that gets through our defenses that can make us go haywire. Trauma hijacks the brain and the body and when unresolved the body is on the same "high alert" that it was in right after the original incident. It makes everything work off kilter and after many years, many things start malfunctioning in our bodies, brains, minds, emotions, and spirit.

After nearly completing the program, I feel like I used to have tunnel vision (and never realized it before) that tunneled right to the painful memories and emotions in an instant. Now they are just old memories, as benign as the last book I read. Lessons that I learned from and can finally move on from. I live more in the moment, the now and the future. I can enjoy things that I would give up my first born to avoid (like watching fireworks or being intimate with a lover). I feel stable and balanced and ready to enjoy each day as it comes. Aches and chronic pains and some food allergies are gone. Old injuries healed, bad posture corrected, and anxiety/PTSD symptoms are GONE too. Its mostly subtle inner changes though. My doctors say that nothing is different. But my dad says I'm "friendlier" and my moods have evened out. Addictions that I used to have I have no need for. I stopped and didn't realize I had stopped until long after. I feel wiser now. I can step back watch something with a small inner smile. I've stopped reacting to everything and now can plan and act.

For me, however, the deeper I got into the sessions, the more spiritual it became for me. I became much more connected to myself and I could feel my energy, my life force moving. I was so "stuck" before. Stuck in everything... from my view on life, to the way I moved by body, to being able to feel my emotions. Learning how to trust my body as it was adjusting and gaining skills and my energy moving around was challenging, but liberating. It started to change the way I interacted with the world. I started trusting providence to bring me what I need instead of always fighting. Listening to my body and what it needs led me to try doing the same with my energy, my spirit, within me. If that is driving all day to get to the beach or bringing home something at the grocery store that I've never seen before, I do, because it "feels right" and "feels like what I need". It has become a give and take. I let providence bring me what I need that I don't have and I go after the things that my body tells me I need that I can reach. It is crazy specific. I need money... I get money. I'm looking for the perfect roommate with a million specifications, and I get that perfect roommate. Sometimes its like a best friend that can fill in your sentences and I'm looking for something and I cant describe it or visualize it, but I can give a feeling. And the answer to what will produce what I want just shows up. I used this new process to design an exercise program... and its fun to do it! I don't have to think about "what to make for dinner" or mull over any decisions, even life changing one's it seems, because the perfect and ideal decision just happens. The more I practice with it, the more unbelievable it gets.

Ironically, as a chemist somehow all this crazy energy/providence stuff makes more sense than anything else I have ever encountered. The explanations, the whats and whys and hows, fit too perfectly into the models and atomic theories in my textbooks. Call me crazy.... but honestly, I feel like I have stepped into a whole new world. That is how much my paradigm has shifted.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Entering Summer (Bex-yellow)

I have been posting just as often as I used to.... but I have two blogs I update now, so I guess this one is only getting half the attention. Also, I'm finding a lot of balance in my life and have less need to work it out or share. My trauma touch therapy is over in just 2 more sessions. Trauma Touch has changed my life. I feel less stuck and have more vitality. I feel capable of active listening and feeling and observing the world; soaking it in and then responding, not just being in a constant reaction mode. I feel capable of speaking my mind and being more rational. I actually feel, both emotionally and physically and I am more sensitive and sensations and feelings are more nuanced. I feel like I am more connected with my body and have matured so much. Today's session was incredible, as was last week. Last week, I actually saw the chakra color of an area that is incredibly traumatized in me and we were working on. I didn't believe in chakras until that very moment. Today we were working on two other chakra energy centers and it felt like my organs were "coming online" as if the nerve connections were numbed out and suddenly I could FEEL my different organs. I have been experiencing a similar phenomenon with other parts of my body (skin, muscles, etc) for weeks now. As soon as my organs came "online" it was as if I were completely connected for the first time in decades and shortly thereafter, I felt like something shifted and a I felt like a "normal" person. I never realized that I didn't feel that way in the first place. It was if someone had cut open my stomach and my guts had spilled out and a doctor put them all back in and sewed me up and they shifted back to where they were "supposed" to be. You only know what that is when it happens, because suddenly it feels "right". With two more sessions left, I am curious to know what will happen.

This was also the first week of summer quarter. I have decided to present as a different gender for each of my three classes. I am also starting discussions with Mueller staff to design some sort of transgender policy. I am incredibly nervous about moving to a new campus this quarter (mid-way through). Apparently there are no gender neutral bathrooms like our current campuses have.

Tomorrow I am starting therapy with a transgender specialist. I am excited. This is starting a new, positive path for me. This is the path that will lead me to hormones and surgery if that is right for me. I find it interesting that of all the transgender people I have met.... none are like me. I am so unique. I find it interesting that even when I am something that is different, I am different even within that different group. Between my gender variance and trauma touch therapy... I feel like I have found my purpose and my calling. I don't know where I will end up or what I will be doing, but this is what I need to do. I realized today while doing my homework for business class that the only thing that will prevent me from doing this anything in my life is my own fear. I have over come so much, and I am building the tools to face pretty much anything else now.

One of my friends is also getting married tomorrow and I am giving her a massage in the morning after my transgender appointment. I hope I am Vickie tomorrow... because I don't have any clothes to wear to the wedding that are not Vickie clothes..... yet.