From Suppressed Identity to Authentic Self: DJ's Story

<cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>0:05</time> <p>Welcome to 90834. It&#39;s the weekly podcast where guests share the biggest lessons they&#39;ve learned in therapy. In each episode I&#39;ll pose two questions What were you looking to resolve by going to therapy, and what did you really end up getting out of therapy? I&#39;m Shannon Miller, a licensed clinical social worker and private practice who has the privilege of spending every day watching the therapeutic process lead to unexpected and beautiful places. This week we have DJ, a 29-year-old person living in upstate New York whose therapeutic process lasted approximately two years and nine months. Dj entered therapy to improve their performance at work and perhaps address a few depressive symptoms. Once in therapy, they realized an identity that was suppressed for over 25 years could no longer be suppressed. Let&#39;s just jump right in. What did you originally go to therapy for? What were you looking to get out of it? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>1:04</time> <p>So I went to therapy because I was experiencing some depression symptoms and not really performing well with my job or getting along with my family. So I was looking for ways to kind of manage that and also kind of improve performance in my work too. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>1:24</time> <p>Okay, If you wouldn&#39;t mind sharing what were the depressive symptoms that you were noticing. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>1:30</time> <p>So at the time, while also like looking outside of things, i was dealing with a lot of like idolatry, losing focus, like not being able to really like hold conversations well or stay on task, general neglect of self-care, so I was not showering as much as I should, not keeping my physical location and housing up as I should also, and then also I was like using more substances, so smoking a lot more weed, drinking more, and not necessarily the best manner. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>2:08</time> <p>Okay, okay. So then you started the therapeutic process. Share with us how things unraveled for you. What did you learn in therapy? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>2:18</time> <p>All right, yeah, so starting therapy, i learned like I met with my therapist, chris. He kind of sat me through things. I&#39;ve had therapy a few times before this, like as a child when I was younger, things like that But he kind of just listened to the intake And then what I ended up finding out was how much more things were attached to those simple sentences. So like, yeah, i&#39;m depressed. Here&#39;s all the reasons kind of going into it, all the multi factors of it. Hey, there are the symptoms I&#39;m experiencing here, the actions I&#39;m taking. Here&#39;s kind of like why I would seek that out as a person who is more depressive. Here&#39;s why it&#39;s a coping skill. There&#39;s more things I&#39;m getting out of it that I didn&#39;t realize were those maladaptive coping skills. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>3:09</time> <p>And could you share with us a little bit of sort of the symptom and then what was driving it Like, if you could give us the specifics of what was driving some of the symptoms? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>3:20</time> <p>Yeah, so ultimately it came down to is like really neglecting. Like the depression and some of the anxiety things I was experiencing to came down to all the things I was neglecting in myself to people please were to fit this image I have created to myself for myself artificially, so suppressing being a trans person and exploring that side. I was suppressing, being acknowledging like Hey, i don&#39;t like being a CPS worker, this isn&#39;t something I enjoy doing. Hey, i don&#39;t enjoy society all of the times. Hey, i don&#39;t necessarily enjoy blank, blank, blank. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>4:00</time> <p>So you were kind of denying a lot of yourself in order to what you thought was keep relationships stable. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>4:08</time> <p>Yeah, like all the kind of like cutting off pieces of myself to fit into whatever whole society wanted to put me in, or my family, or even myself. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>4:20</time> <p>And when you started to unravel this, i mean let&#39;s take it, because you listed off a bunch of things, so if you don&#39;t mind, let&#39;s just take them one at a time. Yeah, when you recognized you were suppressing, being a trans person, tell me about what opened up for you on what that was like. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>4:36</time> <p>All right. So like going into the story of like just my, my story of transness, we can say I really realized that when I was three or four years old. But I grew up in the South, but I grew up in the South Baptist family, military family. There&#39;s a huge expectation of what an assigned male person is in those parts. So a lot of it came into talking with my therapist, who ended up being like the transference kind of was like almost like an older brother, cousin sort of thing, where he was giving me a way to like a safe spot in masculinity to deviate from. So I was able to kind of be like yeah, i enjoy working with kids, as we know. For some reason we put that as a typical female activity. Hey, you know, i like my long hair. Hey, i want to like and I kind of just want to each thing. Another thing hey, i want to start taking hormones and then also to working through the things of like this is still me within my transness. So I still love paintball and other activities that would be considered more masculine, sports things like that And also a lot of things. Growing up too was and this is like an experience of being a non-binary person. I never felt comfortable with being like, oh, i want to become a woman, it&#39;s, i want to be more feminine. So working with my therapist was really kind of like bouncing off those ideas, working through mindfulness of things like hey, where do I see myself now, how do I want to express myself And also how I can just be self. I don&#39;t have to attach those labels. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>6:14</time> <p>And so, as you were going through that process and you were recognizing I can be me without labels what started changing practically for you in in the we&#39;ll say in the world outside of the therapy room? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>6:27</time> <p>Yeah. So around that time I hate to describe it as things kind of getting worse before they&#39;re getting better but made me look at my friendships, my activities. I was doing my work at the time at okay, why am I doing this? Why am I with this person? Why am I in like this relationship because it fits that image, And then realizing, like I don&#39;t have to hold myself onto it. What am I feeling inside? What are my feelings really Is what I was learning. So I was able to kind of like get myself quiet internally, realizing like, hey, I&#39;m uncomfortable in this situation. That&#39;s okay. Can I leave it? Do I have to tolerate for money or anything like that? Oh, I actually really enjoy this. That&#39;s great. I don&#39;t have to be ashamed of it. Oh, these people aren&#39;t meshing with me in a lot of ways, but they&#39;re the quote unquote good old boys. Let me go find, like let me confront them, figure out who my like, real friends are, who are going to accept me with whatever I like, whatever my interests are, And we can share it or accept those differences Or it&#39;s also okay, i don&#39;t have to hold on to them just because it&#39;s a friend and it&#39;s a person. It&#39;s like, oh, you&#39;re not a part of things or you&#39;re not healthy, that&#39;s okay to let go. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>7:50</time> <p>So there was a bit of grief work in there as well, of leaving behind the relationships that no longer serve you or perhaps never served you. Yes, for sure. Okay, let&#39;s go back now and tackle. I don&#39;t really like being a CPS worker. I thought you said And CPS, for those people that don&#39;t know, is Child Protective Services. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>8:12</time> <p>Yes, so I wasn&#39;t doing direct work with infants at the time, even though I did at the past. I was working a lot with teenagers and the big role they had me in is like oh, DJ looks like an adult male. A lot of these teenagers need an adult male in their life. And how it was like some ways like such a blessing and honor to provide that, like masculine guidance. But it&#39;s also like I was lying to those kids in a way like hey, I&#39;m not being genuine with myself, I&#39;m not growing in these ways that I need to be as a person And also to like giving myself permission, and this comes from my military upbringing where, like you, put your goal, your country, whatever, first, like I didn&#39;t have permission to be sad. Like my dad was deployed He served in America. So there was a lot of times I wouldn&#39;t give myself the permission to be like. I am very stressed, i am burnt out, i&#39;m not happy because like, oh, i&#39;m helping the community, i&#39;m helping these kids, and while that&#39;s important, if you&#39;re not getting the help yourself or genuinely growing it&#39;s, how could like? you can&#39;t pour it. You can&#39;t pour from an empty cup. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>9:23</time> <p>So you&#39;re saying that you ultimately needed to learn that it was okay to feel exactly what you were feeling? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>9:32</time> <p>Yes, my feelings aren&#39;t wrong. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>9:35</time> <p>And so, as you started to sort of embrace that my feelings aren&#39;t wrong, what changed in the world around you? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>9:44</time> <p>So that eventually turned into. I start like one thing I always wanted to do is go to music festivals, which sounds like a kind of silly thing, but, like, i always put it off, put it off, and last summer I started going to these festivals. So going to electronic music, grateful dead dead and co shows And I ended up meeting people who have that interest and love for music and also formed a pretty deep friendships. I was able to show up to these places as myself. However, i wanted to wear One day, if I want to wear a dress, that&#39;s great. Next day, if I just want to wear a hoodie and jeans, that&#39;s fine too. And because of that, i was able to meet these people who are genuine too, who were able to like accept me for who they are, i accept them for who they are and we can just enjoy things. When it came to work, i eventually did move away from the CPS role, started working logistics for a little while, something completely different. That&#39;s just like okay, let me make a little money, let me not have as much stress. And then like, eventually, recently I am back working in the field in a much different manner with much more boundaries. Probably the biggest thing is boundaries. I&#39;ve added So like okay you&#39;re telling me about that. So boundaries would be, instead of work, being the sacrificial lamb in ways of like, oh, i&#39;m doing this for everybody else. It&#39;s like all right, my case notes can wait. I can do those tomorrow if needed. I need to eat. Get some rest, hey friend, i&#39;m not going to let you talk to me that way. Let&#39;s work out our conflict. If not, let&#39;s get some space, and if it really gets that bad, i&#39;ll move on from you all. I also have love for you. Doesn&#39;t mean that relationship wasn&#39;t great at the time. I&#39;ll put your arm distance. When it came to family, it&#39;s like hey, this is who I am. I am a non-binary person. I want you to use like these pronouns for me and accept like hey, i will be showing up the family functions in a certain way sometimes, and if you&#39;re not about it, let me know beforehand So we don&#39;t end up in like a weird family argument barbecue. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>11:48</time> <p>And as you moved through that of having boundaries with people, what normally happens is where there was not previously boundaries And then you suddenly place them. People sometimes Lose their shit over it because that nobody likes having boundaries placed on them. Did you experience that at all? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>12:06</time> <p>Oh for sure, that definitely wraps into kind of like the grief process we were talking about too. So when it came to work. I started being firm with like, hey, i really need this time off. I&#39;ll make sure whatever needs for my clients or whatever are done, i want to go do this. And once I started like not asking permission And just being like, hey, i&#39;m taking this time off, people listened when it came to Friends and family, like sometimes it they would get irritated or even aggressive from the less healthy people and They either came around or they really stayed more distant And that was like the roughest part of setting boundaries was that pushback right away. And it took me a long time really realized like, oh, that&#39;s mainly their issue. Like I can be sad and have feelings about that relationship ending, but them freaking out over a boundary That&#39;s a pretty healthy, reasonable boundary, that&#39;s on them and were you processing this sort of at the same time with Chris, your therapist? Yes. So a lot of times I would be talking to him about The abandonment and grief side and just having that spot to feel I would be talking about Boundaries and sometimes even like set learning how to practice boundaries with him. Like, hey, man, i don&#39;t want to talk about that today. And having a safe person, the cuz, like a good therapist will Read the person be like, okay, let&#39;s not press this at this time. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>13:36</time> <p>So, chris, was a safe space for you to sort of try out these new things that you were discovering about yourself. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>13:42</time> <p>Yes, okay, definitely a new spot to figure that out. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>13:47</time> <p>Mm-hmm. And then to circle back going through this list, I can&#39;t quite remember. I wasn&#39;t writing them down fast enough. I think you said that family and relationships as well were working for you. Was that part of it might not remembering it correctly? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>14:03</time> <p>Oh no, you&#39;re remembering that. You&#39;re correct. Yeah, i always had a hard time with permanence with relationships. A Lot of it would come from like just being a very transient person through moving through military and family situations. So it came down to if I made a connection, i&#39;d want to like really cling to it just because there&#39;s a connection there, instead of being like, hey, it&#39;s this connection, it&#39;s a quantify about fruitful, enjoyable, just feels good and so You&#39;re exploring that in therapy, and then what changed in the world around you? </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>14:39</time> <p>as you recognize, like I kind of have this thing with permanence, i don&#39;t get much of it in other spaces And so I tend to hold on to things What, what started happening? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>14:50</time> <p>as you embrace that, So once I started embracing that I I started actually becoming a lot more grateful for the things that were sticking around, that were like, ultimately healthy and good. So I&#39;ve only been in the upstate New York area For this region of it for five years. So, instead of spending as much time on like everything I&#39;ve lost, focusing on the grief, i was able to be more grateful and mindful of Hey. I&#39;ve had this friend for four years. Yeah, hasn&#39;t been perfect, but they&#39;re sticking around, they&#39;re respecting things, and I started realizing the permanence around me. I stopped looking at what was transient, what was letting go and why. I had the death grip. It turned into This person&#39;s here and also being okay that they might not always be here. So it&#39;s okay if they do move. It&#39;s okay if I don&#39;t see them for a while because they&#39;re doing whatever in life, as long as there&#39;s like still some like, like a boundary is like hey, if you want to be my friend, you least got talk to me here and there, send some messages or even memes or something once in a blue moon. Really, except accepting that and accepting others boundaries and where they&#39;re at. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>16:05</time> <p>So throughout your therapeutic process, was there ever like anything that Chris, your therapist said to you that kind of stopped you in your tracks and was like the question that Sort of upended things or that you that really sticks out to you? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>16:19</time> <p>probably one the biggest things He ever stuck to me was like Like he did a lot of CPTSD work with and mindfulness work And so like a big part of it was like being like your feelings are okay and valid. So I remember he was going through Pete Walker&#39;s book I am fortunately I&#39;m blanking on the title right right now. I believe it&#39;s CP, like a specific CPTSD book. Okay but going through and acknowledging like, hey, you have had these traumas happen. Um, and this was before I came out to him. When I eventually did come out with him too, and I started like struck, like struggling with, like my identity and not wanting to be like a victim all the time. That was a big focus, like I didn&#39;t want that victim mentality. He&#39;s like, hey, you have to acknowledge like society is giving you a hard time, giving yourself, like Like you will go through so many microaggressions that a day DJ that you don&#39;t necessarily realize, because I&#39;ve been somebody who is so Emotionally shut off from things, especially bad feelings I remember a wave hitting me I&#39;m just like really acknowledging like, yeah, shit&#39;s hard, being trans is hard and it&#39;s okay to admit that and just sit with it. And that&#39;s what I consider one of the really big moments. Hey, your trauma has been hard, it&#39;s okay to be like they give yourself those kind gloves, that gentle touch for yourself. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>17:51</time> <p>How long did it take you before? sort of you learn these things in therapy. You piece them all together until it Translates into the real world. Was it almost instantaneous? Was there a time lag? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>18:04</time> <p>There is definitely a time lag. Part of that I put on to like I started therapy right before COVID and then three months in the COVID pandemic lockdowns happen and so through that I&#39;d say it took about a year of so of His therapeutic process of doing a lot of like mainly mindfulness work, human-centered approach, cpd, where I started seeing those things really sink in for me in life and I still now like have moments of just like, oh Yeah, i worked through that in therapy. So I&#39;d say about a year, but it&#39;s been a continuous process. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>18:42</time> <p>It&#39;s still a non winding of everything I&#39;ve been given so compare for me the beginning of the therapeutic process Till now, and I&#39;m not quite sure what stage you&#39;re in with therapy, if you&#39;re ongoing or not. How do you feel going into it versus today? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>18:58</time> <p>Okay. So where I&#39;m at now in the therapeutic process I&#39;ve actually been out of therapy for about six months, so, going into it, there&#39;s a lot of fear, to be frank, due due to the nature of my work, like working in the like CPS human services world I almost came in like a little cocky, like, oh, this is just gonna be a couple of things, we&#39;ll knock them out, clear out the cobwebs up there and compared to now, it&#39;s like there&#39;s so much depth in there that even I won&#39;t fully understand it And I&#39;m okay with not understanding it and maybe even a little ticked off at it at times. I can be okay with like hey, i will have depression moments. I do have like situations, especially during winter. I will experience it more again. That&#39;s okay. I have more tools to deal with it. It&#39;s okay to talk to people about it, give them a heads up and Find people who accept that. So, like, a lot of it has been like really making, like acknowledging the tribe of friends I have and enjoying that tribe, but, on all, like a pretty good person I do like myself. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>20:07</time> <p>So, just to sort of recap, you went into this saying you know, i&#39;m depressed and I&#39;m like I need to perform better at work. And then, once you got going, what you had uncovered was an identity that you had repressed for over 20 years And along with that, a lot of emotions, a lot of feelings, sort of sounds like you were reconnecting with your body, at the same time In a big way acknowledging grief. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>20:33</time> <p>That&#39;s a lot for saying I just, you know, have a little bit of depression and I need to perform better right, because that&#39;s kind of like the American way to handle things sometimes to really downplay your problems and just go through Like we live in a culture that&#39;s so half that that&#39;s peace, especially in the human services healing world. There&#39;s still a lot of stigma around mental health with us that, hey, you can be a healer too and go through your issues. You don&#39;t have to have everything figured out and still be able to help. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>21:06</time> <p>Thank you for sharing. Is there any final thoughts that you have for any of our listeners, or any sort of parting wisdom or anything you want people to know? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>21:14</time> <p>I&#39;m grateful they listen to my story and they&#39;re tuning in. I guess for some wisdom it&#39;s Loving yourself is a really long process And you will not love every part of yourself, but that&#39;s okay. Also to a VR, somebody who is part of the LGBT plus community and your closeted. Hopefully soon you can be in a safe spot where you can live your trip. Hopefully we can make this world where Everyone can be themselves and that&#39;s it. There&#39;s not a fight about it. Hopefully soon there won&#39;t be a closet. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>21:52</time> <p>Thank you. Thank you for sharing and for trusting us with your story. Hey, I&#39;m grateful to share and thank you to our listeners for taking the time to witness a story of claiming one&#39;s authenticity. Up next is a flagrant advertisement for my own private practice, apricity expat therapy. Wherever you go, there you are. That confused me when I was younger, but now I get it. You take your problems with you wherever you go And, as you might already know, a new location doesn&#39;t make things like depression and anxiety go away. If you&#39;re an expat that&#39;s ready to set down your emotional load and unpack what&#39;s going on, apricity expat therapy is here for you. Our therapists offer compassionate healing spaces for you to explore, grow to understand and heal emotional wounds. Connect with us today at apricity expat therapy to schedule your initial free consultation. </p>