Last night I had a dream where I was socially interacting as male, had male anatomy, etc. - it usually disturbs me when I wake up and realize my unconscious is operating this way, it feels like I don’t see myself as a woman, which is true on a conscious level but it’s painful when I don’t even see myself as a woman in my dreams.
Sometimes even before transition trans women see themselves as women in their dreams, and I marvel at that. I think part of my denial was integrating every internal part of me that felt female as being actually authentically male, that all men are actually feminine in this way or that. So the authentically feminine parts of me still feel “male”.
Anyway, I just wanted to do a quick poll and see:
(if any transmasc folks or enbies are reading this, I would love your input too, even though I’m using gendered language, I don’t mean to be excluding)
- did you have dreams where you were a woman before you transitioned?
- what was the process like of your internal concept changing as you transitioned?
- when did you start appearing as a woman in your dreams post-transition? (did the frequency increase post-transition, what was that change like?)
- how do you relate to your self-conception, does it disturb you to be a man in your dreams, is it a relief to be a woman in your dreams?
I didn’t start seeing myself as a woman in my dreams until like 1.5 - 2 years in on estrogen. It also bothers me that I can’t remember ever dreaming of myself as a girl prior to transition.
Funny enough, the concept in my dreams is that I complain a lot about getting misgendered (thanks internalized transphobia) but I at least see myself as I look physically in my day to day. For those first two years or so my mental image of myself was my “male” me. 🤮
What do you think changed that resulted in seeing yourself as a woman in dreams? Did it correspond with seeing yourself as a woman outside of dreams, with passing socially, or other changes?
I think like you I struggle with not having dreamed of myself as a girl before transition, and with having a mental image of myself as male (which I still haven’t overcome unfortunately).
Any tips or suggestions would be great, but I wonder if it’s just a matter of time …
I can’t recall exactly what helped change but it definitely for strong after socially transitioning, which I only did after two years on e. It helped that people supported me and saw me as a women too when I came out. I guess I needed the outside validation to help me probably.
My advice would be try to dream journal and/or see if you can realize you’re in a dream and start controlling it, therefore allowing you to change yourself to as you should be. Whenever I have a dream I can control (which is rare) it was helpful to go “this body is wrong” and change over to how I actually was sometimes. I know that is like kind of hard to do and pretty soft as far as advice but it’s what I got . I wish you all the best! 💜💜💜