Feeling simultaneously anxious and dumb over feeling anxious about this 🥺🤦‍♀️

Yes, we know logically that voice training has been a massive struggle for us and invokes a lot of complex feelings, where:

• we've had insufficient success with voice training, despite starting back in December 2021, to overcome voice dysphoria;
• our voice has been causing us increasing anxiety since we plateaued about 2 years ago;
• our RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) makes us want to just give up rather than try again, as anything less than perfection feels worthless and we expect to fail, so why even try;
• we feel like we won't ever have sufficient alone time to practice uninterrupted in quiet without anyone being able to hear us;
• we don't want the kind of stereotypical femme voice pushed by (mostly-US) trans fem voice coaches like TransVoiceLessons, whom we cannot stand;

etc., etc.

We know this all rationally, but we still feel DUMB that we're currently in fight or flight mode over the "Speech & Language Therapy" initial assessment appointment at 14:00 BST 😖

We know we should feel grateful that we're getting anything from the NHS related to gender-affirming care, as they only offer the barest minimum of care and it's taken us from late May 2021 to even progress this far through multiple layers of waitlists and gatekeeping  

Right now, we'll just trying to keep ourselves calm and trying to avoid overthinking about it, so we don't truly spiral 😵‍💫

#VoiceTraining #VoiceDysphoria #Speech&LanguageTherapy #RSD #anxiety #NHS #EOEGS #NCTH #trans #TransFem #transgender #transition #SilentlyScreaming

Already this week I have:

1. #Politely turned down #work because the contract took too long to materialise and it was stressing me

2. #Politely asserted my position when my flagging of an #AIGenerated reference list was deemed "forensic" and "perfectionist"

3. #Politely asked for understanding when being told what to wear to a friend's #wedding

Is it OK to spend the rest of the week un-biting my tongue now please, it is very very sore

#SilentlyScreaming

That feeling when you call the HMRC Self Assessment helpline, sit on hold for an hour, finally get through, to be told that you've reached the PAYE helpdesk not Self Assessment, but it's OK, they'll put you back on hold- at the front of the queue this time, and instead they cut you off....

#SilentlyScreaming
#SelfEmployed

Part and parcel of working in an organisational #research function is having to regularly justify your existence to people whose only idea of #value is revenue from selling widgets

#capitalism #publicsector #NewPublicManagement #silentlyscreaming