I want to talk about this because this has been a very major issue for me. I’ve suffered through various kinds of internalized bigotry for a very long time. I’ve had immense internalized racism due to the fact that I’m black alongside internalized anti-neurodivergent sentiment and internalized queer/transphobia.
It’s like every time I feel like I might be able to get rid of these ideas, they keep coming back. Unfortunately, these thoughts run very intensely too. My internalized bigotry is not mild at all, and it usually manifests in ways like being scared and/or uncomfortable around black people, feeling disgusted by trans people when I see them, and insulting neurodivergent people usually through snarky comments I make under my breath.
I even get really frustrated when I see stuff that supports people like me. Seeing “Black Lives Matter” posts on social media drives me mad, alongside things like “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” that just makes me cry. It makes me FURIOUS, and I really want to overcome this kind of thinking, especially for being trans.
I’d argue that my internalized transphobia is the strongest and harshest out of all my forms of internalized bigotry. It started from my family being extremely transphobic to the point of disowning me and kicking me out, but it exacerbated and reached its peak due to the transmedicalist tendencies within the trans communities I’ve visited online. I am non-binary, and even though I have gender dysphoria and am medically transitioning, I have been discriminated against by so many damn truscum that my mindset started expressing violent animosity towards trans people period. This eventually shifted my mind to believing that this is MOST (or maybe even all) of the trans community, and it makes me irrationally angry at anything that’s pro-trans.
This issue has been going on for so damn long, and it’s causing way too much turmoil, depression, and utter distress for me to no longer do anything about it and just leave it untouched. With that in mind, how do I ACTUALLY shift my mindset to not hate myself and other people over these characteristics? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
It sounds to me like you need professional psychological therapy.
I’m in therapy with a therapist who is a gay, white, and cisgender man. Although he is cis, he has transgender family members, and his specialty is in gender therapy. As a matter of fact, he works at the clinic I get my HRT from, so it works out for me.
Oh great! You’re on the right path then.
Give yourself some time.
You should seek out a professional to talk to. No one here can provide you with the help you need.
Fair response. They won’t provide me with the “help”, but sometimes other perspectives are very nice to have. I am currently in therapy and navigating it with my provider.
When dealing with the issues you’re dealing with, I don’t think having anecdotal input is wise, but you do you.
When I’m going through an issue this intense, anything is needed. I have been incredibly vague about just HOW BAD my internalized bigotry gets, and that’s because I don’t want people to get wildly offended. If I was a lot more blunt in this post, there would be no support. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to overcome this issue, and that includes reaching out to other trans people, because my internalized bigotry is so fucking rough that it has manifested to making life not worth living for as long as it continues. Just please be considerate.
They came here to ask for advice on what they can do. In that sense, plenty of people around here can provide that.
First you need to find out why you feel this way. These feelings are typically rooted in shame, and shame is often instilled by family and/or community, as it is in your case.
Once you have your first answer to why, dig deeper. You were shamed by family. Why did they shame you? Try to understand how their life experience might have led them to shame others. If it was something else, too, can you find out why that happened?
Keep follow the chain backwards. It usually extends far before you were born and beyond your control. I personally find that extremely therapeutic.
It’s not a silver bullet, and it requires plenty of work, but it can help you figure stuff out and set you up for getting past it. (This is where it might get annoying. The next part involves a lot of self forgiveness and positive reinforcement.)
I would also suggest setting aside time to do research into psychology, so you can understand the actual mechanics going on behind the scenes. Your therapist may be a great resource for self learning, too.
If this resonates with you, I can go further into detail, or even chat via DM. Let me know if you’d like that!
I know your asking mostly about the transphobia side of things and have already had some good replies, but I happen to have a couple of articles bookmarked about internalised ableism specifically in neurodiverse people (which can also impact not only how we think and perceive the world, but how we interact with it) that are quite helpful and I think a lot of the points can be applied to all kinds of internalised bigotry (they also link further to other resources):
https://www.autisticparentsuk.org/post/overcoming-internalised-ableism
https://www.neurodiverging.com/what-is-internalized-ableism-neurodivergent-people-need-to-know/
TL;DR: acknowledging you have internalised bigotry (you’re already there), be kind to yourself (and others like you) in unpacking it and understand we’ve all been socialised with these ideas, find people like you who are sharing their experiences or peer groups online or irl where others are going through similar things to you - to normalise being who you are to yourself, eventually if you’re safe and comfortable to do so - express who you are more openly and without shame (that takes time and hard work, but you’re working toward freeing yourself).
And don’t forget anti-bigotry, internalised or otherwise is life long work, that shit has been branded on our brains, also everyone makes mistakes, so there is no “perfect” or “pure” just “doing your best” and “being willing to admit fault” which you seem to be doing now so just keep going, you’ve got this.
I’m not an expert and I hope there are others better trained than I who chime in.
Asking and trying to start a dialogue is a really good start. Wanting to change is the most important foundation.
I think the best place to start is too try and understand where these emotions are coming from. These likely have different sources, but learning to stop and understand why you feel the way that you do will be foundational to finding solutions.
It’s really good practice to start doing this with all your emotions. Eventually it can become second nature.
Next is to practice empathy. What would it feel like to be in a body that feels so wrong to you that you’re willing to face social friction, bigotry and many other hardships in order to set it right? Try to imagine how it must feel.
Read accounts or watch documentaries of trans people sharing their experiences. This gives you a much stronger basis to continue to build empathy.
Eventually, it may be worthwhile to find and build relationships within the trans community and make yourself an ally, but never do this until you’re capable of understanding and regulating your emotions and capable of understanding their experience. You don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you could make things worse for others.
It’s courageous for you to ask and look to better yourself. Be proud of this step and celebrate moving forward.
I also think meeting some IRL trans people might help. I used to work with a transgender man who was the nicest soul on the planet and wouldn’t hurt a fly and only supported me through me being non-binary, for instance. I’ve never seen that kind of behavior reflected in some obscure, fucked-up trans spaces on the internet, though.
I ponder about the root cause a lot, and I truly do think it started with how queerphobic my family was to me, but in the larger scheme of things, it could have come from a wide variety of sources.
Trans people IRL are nothing like online. Not everyone is into computers or programming. People vary a lot.
That would make a lot of sense. I think meeting and relating to others is a helpful way of moving forward.
I don’t know if therapy is a financial option, but it would certainly be worth considering.
I’m so sorry to hear how much you’re struggling with this. I wish I had all the answers, but I don’t, this is something I’m still struggling with too.
I do have two small things, the first is to try to forgive yourself for having these internalised issues. I know this is hard, so goddamn hard, but it’s important to be able to look inward and see yourself as someone deserving of compassion. You are human, and it’s a very human thing to struggle, to get frustrated even to be full of self hatred. Every single person deals with all of these, but you have something to be proud of, you want to change. To be able to look at yourself and want change, to try to change takes a lot of courage. Self forgiveness is as much a learned skill as anything else, so experiment and see if something works. In all honesty I’m not sure how I do it anymore, it’s almost become a reflex. I think I just try to imagine someone else in my position, trying to have compassion for their struggles.
For me, overcoming internalised transphobia has been a very slow process. It’s mostly been about slowly sorting through my feelings and thoughts and realising that these aren’t really mine, they’re someone else’s. We are social creatures, and our internal view of ourselves is as much constructed by our own beliefs as it is the beliefs of those around us.
Something that has helped me with this, is exposing myself to other people’s experiences and thoughts. This has largely been through YouTube, and even reading posts on communities like this one. I found the part of the world that accepts and even celebrates this part of me, and it started to replace those old beliefs with new ones. You can take this kind of thing slowly, and it’s okay to have setbacks. If I could recommend just one video, it would be this one: https://youtu.be/AITRzvm0Xtg?si=NKQD1tM1clIUvtWp
I’m afraid my experience only runs as far as internalised transphobia, but at least on this one issue I want you to know: I understand how you feel.
Something that I might add if it helps, internalizing other people’s views is in some way a survival instinct.
If you feel like you’re still struggling for survival, then that might be making it harder. It might be that you need to change your situation in life, maybe cut out toxic people or move somewhere that’s socially safer. I cut out the worst person in my life and sought out the support of good people, and it made it possible for me to finally accept myself.
I can’t pretend to know anything about your situation, but it might be useful to consider. I also appreciate that this often just isn’t possible.
Since I live in Florida, it really does scare me a lot more so you have a fair point there.
On the subject of Abigail Thorn, watching queer BreadTubers has helped me quite a bit in these moments. I think the isolated feeling that comes with me not branching out enough exacerbates my self-hatred. Unfortunately, it’s kind of circular at that point because it’s led to this cycle:
- I don’t want to meet other trans people because I have internalized transphobia.
- I have internalized transphobia because I’m not meeting other trans people.
I think breaking free from that cycle may be a good place to start.
You know what, I can immediately see in the way you talk about this that you’ve started making good progress. That’s some really good self insight, and that’s something to be damn proud of.
For what it’s worth, I think you’ve already started breaking that cycle just by starting this thread.
I’m so sorry you’ve had so many negative experiences with discrimination and oppression. I can only imagine how hopeless it must have felt going through all these things.
I don’t have any concrete answers, besides that healing and settling my inner turmoil allowed me to grow past a lot of internalized bigotry. I’m still working on it though. It’s Not like one day it just is gone. It’s like every day I chip away more and more at it.
It sounds like probably have a lot of trauma. Have you received any care specifically for trauma? It seems likely that you have a traumatic stress disorder. Treating it may help you with controlling some of those extreme emotional reactions. For me it did, and I’m still working on healing from trauma and being the best person I can be today.
I’d also just like to add that Truscum ideology in any shape or form is a permanently bannable offense in this community. No exceptions either. If anyone here saying anything transmedicalist, please report them and they will be banned.
Not trans but had some experience with similar things.
There are couple of valid aproaches to this problem. But first you need to know the cause of this thinking. Does it come from emotion or from internalized belief?
If from emotion:
When you will take some form of thransphobic action or thought. Close your eyes and stop the music or a video. Eliminate all distractions. (1) Ask yourself how do you feel right now. Ask yourself how did you felt 5-10 seconds ago. (2) Accept that you feel that way. This is perfectly human thing to do. (3) Ask yourself why do you feel that way. What is a cause of this emotion. (4) How shoud you respond to this emotion. What is correct action to take here? YOU are in control. Not your emotions.
You are playing a long game here so don’t beat up yourself if you fail one, two or n-th time. If you notice something that is good thing.
If from belief:
Here I don’t have much experience but there are still things to do. I have heard that CBT therapy really helps.
Ask yourself where does this belief comes from. In the sentence “All trans people are […]”. “All” refers to all the people on earth or just the people that you interacted with or It is just what your figure of authority told you to generalize.
It could also come from religion and what your clergyman preached to you. (Assumption 31% confidance) Was it diffrent from what Christ told as to do? “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”
It comes from both emotion and internalized belief in a way.
Even when I feel like things are logically incorrect, my strong emotions override any sense of rationality. Thanks for providing that emotional exercise. It sounds like a very useful tool, and I will utilize it during more intense breakdowns, but at the moment, I feel fairly calm and grounded.
Also, religion plays a huge part in this, and I’m glad you mentioned it. I was raised in a Catholic immigrant family from a country that hardly acknowledges the existence of LGBTQ+ people. Homosexuality itself was legalized there in 2018, but it’s still highly socially unacceptable. My family made no room for compromise with me being queer, and told me that it was inherently wrong, evil, and that I’d automatically be banished to hell for engaging in acts like gender transition and engaging in romantic/sexual interactions with people who are the same sex as the one I was assigned at birth. To this day, I internalize a lot of their bigotry even though I’m an atheist now. They were highly ignorant, yet still so fervent in preaching their hate, and it hasn’t escaped my mind much.
