First week back
So, my first week back after half-term has gone by. I was dreading going back, feeling very anxious again, like I always do when I have to go back there.
As I mentioned, I've been trying to understand why I get so drained so I can avoid a repeat. To cut a long story short, I made some progress but I've still ended up completely drained this week. It's been an emotional roller-coaster of both extremely bad and very positive things. I wish that it were more balanced.
Monday I managed to hit the ground running. I had pre-printed some random things, including computing notices as well as some random XKCD comics which I feel are suitable for the sixth formers (not all are).
I also made a concerted effort not to talk about feelings and avoid any discussions about me. I've been getting quizzed a lot and I feel that I'm consistently trying to deflect people from talking about me. I keep trying to find things to say to fill up the void and I'm feeling this divergence between me and the persona I play at work that's reaching crisis proportions.
The way things are happening reminds me a lot of the Narcissism Personality Disorder stuff I used to have when I was pretending to be male and hence had to sell the surface personality. It's like that, only now I'm not really trying to sell a male one. I'm trying to sell a female one which works for my role and job and also helps keep me safe. The weird flip-side is what I always don't understand about NPD: how the fact that I don't want to talk about me means I'm always ending up talking about the surface me in order to deflect attention.
I get the impression people see this calm and confident me that's also full of bullshit and people aren't being very nice to me or finding me happy or restful company, while I've lost something precious that I have had for a while, with deep distress.
Anyway, I've tried to avoid talking about me where possible, without being obvious about it, or just avoiding questions about how I feel altogether quite rudely if I have to. As part of that, I also pushed back against the manipulative behaviour of the kids. I know they're pretending to be nice to me just to get various things out of me and it's a relief to be able to push back against that and call them on it.
By Tuesday, however, I was quite tired with the effort and had my day ruined when I printed out a student's Psychology essay on... gender identity theory. I looked up the theory they teach in the books now I knew what to look for and, under the Developmental Psychology section, they had the various ideas behind sex and gender. They would have been OK except for the opening statement defining sex and gender. They don't allow for cognitive sex. So no transsexuals. That made me feel bad. Really bad. And unsafe.
I soldiered on until Friday, where I had both my line manager's meeting and my first meeting to discuss trans issues. The line manager meeting went really well. I managed to gently stand up for myself a little more and remembered that some of my difficulties might arise from the fact that I report a bit too much negative stuff which may skew her view of me. I may think I'm an incompetent idiot, but that doesn't mean I am. That was really positive. On the behavioural management side, I got to tell her that I could generally cope on my own and her insistence that I call her in whenever anything bad happens was counter productive. She seemed really happy about that, because she's always worrying that I'm not using her enough. But she's happy with it. I also got her to cancel the tutorials I've been doing. They'll no longer be mandatory as no one has their heart set on enforcing them and it's impossible anyway. She also noted that I seem to be best as a resource that's just freely available in the library, which I've noticed and is true.
The other meeting was pretty horrible. The guy was very hostile and I didn't feel great. I responded with kind and only the fact that I forced myself to open up about certain things helped difuse the situation. The net result is that they want to go to the transgender awareness training run by Gendered Intelligence and see what happens. That will give them a better idea of how to manage me. It was a kind of win at the end of the day.
Afterwards, I felt pretty rough and not very happy. For some reason, all the kids were very nice to me because of it, though. One even came downstairs to talk to me and we had a nice chat about computer games and athletics.
As I mentioned, I've been trying to understand why I get so drained so I can avoid a repeat. To cut a long story short, I made some progress but I've still ended up completely drained this week. It's been an emotional roller-coaster of both extremely bad and very positive things. I wish that it were more balanced.
Monday I managed to hit the ground running. I had pre-printed some random things, including computing notices as well as some random XKCD comics which I feel are suitable for the sixth formers (not all are).
I also made a concerted effort not to talk about feelings and avoid any discussions about me. I've been getting quizzed a lot and I feel that I'm consistently trying to deflect people from talking about me. I keep trying to find things to say to fill up the void and I'm feeling this divergence between me and the persona I play at work that's reaching crisis proportions.
The way things are happening reminds me a lot of the Narcissism Personality Disorder stuff I used to have when I was pretending to be male and hence had to sell the surface personality. It's like that, only now I'm not really trying to sell a male one. I'm trying to sell a female one which works for my role and job and also helps keep me safe. The weird flip-side is what I always don't understand about NPD: how the fact that I don't want to talk about me means I'm always ending up talking about the surface me in order to deflect attention.
I get the impression people see this calm and confident me that's also full of bullshit and people aren't being very nice to me or finding me happy or restful company, while I've lost something precious that I have had for a while, with deep distress.
Anyway, I've tried to avoid talking about me where possible, without being obvious about it, or just avoiding questions about how I feel altogether quite rudely if I have to. As part of that, I also pushed back against the manipulative behaviour of the kids. I know they're pretending to be nice to me just to get various things out of me and it's a relief to be able to push back against that and call them on it.
By Tuesday, however, I was quite tired with the effort and had my day ruined when I printed out a student's Psychology essay on... gender identity theory. I looked up the theory they teach in the books now I knew what to look for and, under the Developmental Psychology section, they had the various ideas behind sex and gender. They would have been OK except for the opening statement defining sex and gender. They don't allow for cognitive sex. So no transsexuals. That made me feel bad. Really bad. And unsafe.
I soldiered on until Friday, where I had both my line manager's meeting and my first meeting to discuss trans issues. The line manager meeting went really well. I managed to gently stand up for myself a little more and remembered that some of my difficulties might arise from the fact that I report a bit too much negative stuff which may skew her view of me. I may think I'm an incompetent idiot, but that doesn't mean I am. That was really positive. On the behavioural management side, I got to tell her that I could generally cope on my own and her insistence that I call her in whenever anything bad happens was counter productive. She seemed really happy about that, because she's always worrying that I'm not using her enough. But she's happy with it. I also got her to cancel the tutorials I've been doing. They'll no longer be mandatory as no one has their heart set on enforcing them and it's impossible anyway. She also noted that I seem to be best as a resource that's just freely available in the library, which I've noticed and is true.
The other meeting was pretty horrible. The guy was very hostile and I didn't feel great. I responded with kind and only the fact that I forced myself to open up about certain things helped difuse the situation. The net result is that they want to go to the transgender awareness training run by Gendered Intelligence and see what happens. That will give them a better idea of how to manage me. It was a kind of win at the end of the day.
Afterwards, I felt pretty rough and not very happy. For some reason, all the kids were very nice to me because of it, though. One even came downstairs to talk to me and we had a nice chat about computer games and athletics.