Escaping comfort

I talked to my son yesterday about the anxiety related to his autism and in the process used analogies from my own life. He needs and is undergoing exposure therapy where you push yourself out of your comfort zone. I had to do the same over my life to learn to live as a transgender person in the world and used that analogy which helped him understand that ultimately we are our own best guide.

We all need to leave the safety of the nest which for me included escaping from the bubble that the gender variant community can create for itself inadvertently encouraging a kind of feedback loop. Yes, it is an aid and inspiration for people who feel stuck but it can also entrap and leave us wishing we could do more. 

Becoming ourselves means escaping cliques and forging our own path. We don't abandon others but we keep a safe distance so as not to fall back on old patterns. We resolve to always move forward towards a new plateau of enlightenment which celebrates our uniqueness. 

The biggest realization over the last decade was to understand that no one was going to help me better than myself to move beyond any remaining self-imposed mental barriers. Yes, it involved discomfort but ultimately it paid huge dividends in the well-being department regarding being transgender.