I couldn’t tell you what triggers the need to dress. It’s a lot like… uh… herpes? Like it’s just bubbling under the surface for weeks and months everything’s going fine and then BAM IT IS TIME FOR SHOES AND MAKEUP OMG!!!11oneone etc. People have mentioned being triggered by stress, or dressing to relieve stress, but it’s not something I’d ever experienced before until very recently.
My last post talked about the death of my dad. We knew it was coming for 18 months, and while it was awful all the way through, it wasn’t unexpected. A month before he died, I flew back to London, certain that he would die while I was in the air. It seemed like it would only be a few days (in the end he stubbornly hung on for a month, classic dad). Many of my nights were spent laying on the bench that was awkwardly next to his bed at the hospice, trying to fall asleep, but knowing that any minute I might have to get out of bed to help him go to the toilet, or call the nurse because the painkillers have run out, or the machine doling out nutrition through the feeding tube is finished, or that maybe I’d find him dead. It was a very surreal experience. I felt trapped – not just physically, but emotionally – inexorably stuck on a path that lead to only one outcome.
Stress levels were so off the charts, that if I were actually tasked with making a chart that captured my levels of stress, it would certainly undergo gravitational collapse and form a black hole, causing me just a bit more stress to deal with. As I inevitably passed through the event horizon, I’m sure that I would be quite happy that this awful parade of doom was finally coming to an end (Plus black holes are cool).
And so I laid there, wondering when I would have to get up and take care of my dad again, knowing his time would come soon, wondering when his next hallucination would be, wondering if he’d been too quiet for too long, stressed out of my tiny mind. It might have been the first night I was there when the flare-up began. Generally when the need to dress arises, it’s much more of a “Oh yeah, maybe I can find time tomorrow to dress up”. This time, the flare-up was more of a solar-flare-up. It felt genuinely dire. My only recourse at that moment was to look at older pics I’d taken as a coping strategy (kids, don’t throw your old photos away), as well as sharing a bunch on my Instagram. It was as if I needed a defined comfort-zone to mentally fall back to as a way of dealing with the awful situation.
I’d never experienced this before, this dire need to dress borne of a stressful situation. But over the following week or so, I would dig through my archive and post anything instagram-worthy each night while laying in bed. And it genuinely helped. It was unexpectedly soothing, a balm for the crossdressing burn. I think we all have those moments where we look back fondly on our photos, and it makes us feel good. In this instance, in an elongated moment of duress, dressing up seemed like the only, frustratingly unavailable, option. Thank god I take photos.
I’d heard people talk about crossdressing as a way to relax and deal with stress. For me, it had never been that way. It was never a coping strategy, or a way to unwind and relax – sometimes it was quite the opposite! In general, crossdressing was, and is, just a way to be. But, for a long time before I was finally able to accept myself, crossdressing was nothing but guilt and shame and terror; A source of abject stress, wondering if I’m wrong or broken, wondering if someone will find out, worrying about all the ways things could go wrong if I step out of the house. Stress from how friends or family or coworkers might react if they find out. If your partner finds out, if your child finds out. You hear so many stories about people being verbally abused, or physically abused, or even being arrested under the assumption that they’re a prostitute. All of these things are real things that have happened, genuine concerns with real-world consequences. Being open about crossdressing has relieved a lot of that inherent stress. If I’m out and about and I see someone I know, I don’t have to cross the street to avoid them. I don’t have to panic now, wondering if they saw me, and worrying that my shameful secret is out. I’d say hi and continue on with my day ^_^
(Fun fact, a few years ago while I was out dressed, I totally saw someone I knew, and yes, I crossed the street to avoid them.)
That all said, living in a society that as a whole looks down on us is difficult to deal with. I’ve been able to move past a lot of that now, but I still worry. I stare out of the peephole in the front door each time before I go out to make sure the coast is clear. I probably don’t need to, but I still do.
After pain, or sadness, or stress, I think it’s natural to seek out things that make you feel better, whether it’s comfort food (Cauliflower and cheese!), or watching your favourite movie (John Carpenter’s The Thing :D), or looking at pictures of yourself that make you happy. I suppose crossdressing isn’t really an exception here, but instead just an extension to the list of things that make me happy (but I suppose I already knew that).
I’m not sure I would recommend crossdressing as a general strategy for dealing with stress, unless it’s something you already actively enjoy. If you’re stressed because you haven’t dressed in a while, or feel like you need to, I would recommend it highly! If you find crossdressing to be a stressful event (which I did for a long time, in the beginning), I might not recommend it, but instead recommend finding a way towards the path of self-acceptance first.
I love looking through my old pics and feeling happy about how I looked, but there’s no substitution for getting dressed, getting out into the world, and existing in the way that makes you feel complete. It’s OK to make time for yourself to be happy.
It’s October now. Dad died a month ago. I haven’t dressed since April. It’s probably time.
My experience with death of loved ones, stress and crossdressing to help relieve that stress has had way too many tests over the last several years. In a period of 13 months I watched my father-in-law, brother-in-law, wife and brother all die while I could do little more than provide some comfort, transportation and pretend to be a rock for everyone else who were falling apart. Getting back into my favorite things helped, at least temporarily, to build a wall around my injured spirit, allowing it to begin the mending it needed. That opportunity to retreat and ignore everything but getting my eyebrows just right and finding out which top worked best with which skirt was excuse to push everything else aside. What it really did was give me a block of time to let my subconscious work on where I was in the grief process. Some aspects of grief play out on the surface with tears, anger, denial and other behaviors. Others need to steep in the background while you do something totally unrelated.
I wish you adequate time to wind your way through the grieving process and if getting pretty is part of that, all the better.
*hug* thank you :) This is the first time I’ve had to deal with anything like this. I could hope that it would be the last, but unless we figure out a way to not have people die, that’s pretty unrealistic. I think you’re on-point about having other things to focus on while your brain rewires itself to deal with the new state of the universe. More than anything, I think I’ve been throwing myself into work, but the urgent need to dress while I was… waiting for my dad to die – that was absolutely a retreat into familiar territory.
Whatever works, I suppose
<3
Well flooding the interwebz with pictures is sort of asking for validation. “Look at me, I am a woman!” I know and I’m guilty as charged. It can be probably explained from the lack of dressing or validation. From my 5 year old post “Role model”:
The Soda Bottle
Having these transgender feelings is a bit like caring for a bottle of soda. It is under pressure and to prevent bursting you’ll have to open the bottle from time to time. The pressure build up can be caused by pretty much anything and differs from person to person. From not being able to be your pretty self to the genuine feeling you’re inside the wrong body to name it. You have to open it carefully though, as if you open up too fast there will be a lot of spillage and nothing left in the bottle. The spillage, depending on the pressure in the bottle can also create a mess on those standing near you. Keeping the bottle open is a solution too, if you don’t like the fizz in your drink. (but other people shouldn’t bump your bottle by accident, so you should tell them). But consider first if the fizz is essential to you before doing that approach, as a flat drink might be boring.
Looking back at this post from 2012 I find it still insightful and still feels very true for my own scenario. YMMV.
I kind of smirked when you mentioned the event horizon. when you fell through you probably left a static image residue for your observers that stayed behind while you where falling towards the singularity, maybe to be jettisoned by a white hole? Personally, the last couple of years I am thinking of the concept of the termination shock, me being this voyager probe started on this crossdressing trip a long time ago. The termination shock for me illustrates the moment that I’ll probably realise that this crossdressing is much more than a coping mechanism, that it who I am. That will be the moment I’ll have hit the termination shock and transition (bwuh, pun!) my journey in the unknowns of interstellar space. which might be weird, frightful and wonderful at the same time. But just as the voyagers have left the solar system multiple times on occasions so am I continuously re-evaluating how this termination shock looks like and how it will manifest itself.
Absolutely right about validation! Even with all of our various related circumstances, I think we all share that need for validation. “Look, I can do this!” or “Look, this is who I am!”. I’d love to not feel like I needed that, but there’s definitely an element of it in there every time I post a picture.
I love your soda-bottle analogy :D I think it hits all the major points for… well, probably everyone! I definitely opened it fairly slowly, but I think the carbonation was also pretty weak. I think maybe I’m stretching the analogy a bit.
I think my termination-shock happened when I decided to tell everyone – so far, out in the world / interstellar-medium I’ve been doing ok, but I do worry I’ll get hit by a wayward asteroid or something (i.e., be a victim of some kind of x-phobic person while out and about). I guess we’ll see.
<3
My spouse experienced several losses very close together on the last 4-5 years. He has been depressed, angry, started drinking and sending obscene text message to friends and family while drunk. I was out of town for 2 weeks and he came to the realization that for about a year he has questioned his clothing preferences. He thinks the drinking and texts were a result of suppressing these feelings. He and I wonder if he is suffering from a sort of PTSD due to the losses. Could this much stress result in his desire to cross dress for some relief?
I don’t know – it might be a thing that he’s had buried for a while and is coming back to the surface again in a stressful time, or it could also be that it’s just coming out of the blue – I don’t really know how common that is, but I have heard of it!
I used to say it to people it was stress relaxing dressing but it wasn’t. I’ve always enjoyed dressing regardless of relaxing or stresses. But it does feel different sometimes to just put or pull on a little something. So I wear something that helps my mind sing. My father died knowing I dressed but not the reason why I dress( it took 60 yrs for me to admit why) He had found my stash when I was 16.