identity fixation thing as a trauma response??

I know it was exacerbated by my brother, and the spiral caused by youtube comments, but what caused it in the first place? culture shocks.



long story short he dismissed me as dumb ugly dramatic hormonal little girl going through a stupid phase that lasted into adulthood. when i think desperately wanting to become someone i am not is a way of dealing with trauma. emotional needs are met by identifying with something they are not, distress occurs when this identity or image is invalidated by anything.

first time i met him i told him about typology. at the time he was obsessed with arthouse films.

i can't remember much about his aesthetic taste back then, but ik for sure it started shifting bigly in spring 2024, that was when the bedrooms flipped and he started painting the walls purple.

i remember that every year, or every fraction of a year, i'd "cringe at my younger self". i'd go on and on about how ridiculous my x months ago self was even though they didn't believe it at all at the time.

late 2023 or early 2024 ish was when i thought "wasn't my past self extremely inauthentic and merely trying to make themselves more attractive to others?". he affirmed it. in like april 2024 i went through a phase of contemplating de-transitioning (maybe as a response to the nightmares I were having at the time) that was when i temporarily thought or seemed to think that being transgender was a phase, but I was so wrong. the last time i saw him in November 2024 was so traumatic.

he'd make random, unsolicited comments about how bad my clothes looked. or how something i said didn't make sense. or how "simlike" something i did was. it cut deep.



i can't stop thinking about him.



"the more you want to be that way the less you are that way"

with time, everything will de-ideal self you. you're too fat, stupid, emotional, needy, and/or normie. and you will get misgendered.



i find it triggering to be described as emotionally intelligent, because it violates my typedentity. i typedentify as 5w6.

He sounds rather cruel, and he's not necessarily right, about anything.

It sounds like you needed some source of validation, but your brother would just try to invalidate everything about you.

I think you're also right that this was a response to trauma.

Your brother sounds like an idiot. Tbh I'm convinced that if you cut contact with him it'll be easier to be at peace with yourself. Also I'm convinced that even if you had the opposite personality he'd still frame it as something bad and shameful. Some people are like that. They just resent you, no matter what you do and what you are like, because it's not about what you do, it's about them enjoying putting you down.

Another thing is that I believe that truly indifferent people don't exist. When someone "doesn't care" it either means they deeply care about something else, or they pretend not to, or they're severely depressed and gave up on life.

I havent seen him since November last year. Maybe im slowly slightly starting to heal. A little bit. after all this time

It's a great thing that you stopped talking to him but of course years of abuse don't just disappear. But don't let him define you. People who are truly chill don't waste their time putting others down. Also you shouldn't feel bad about feeling emotions and being affected by something because, again, no person is truly without emotions. We can combine strength and sensitivity, care and detachment when appropriate and when it makes sense in our lives. If you rage and cry it means that you're alive and that you've been hurt. It means that you react appropriately to suffering. Even the most detached person will become crying and fragile if put under enough stress, maybe even less stress than you've endured. It's all about your circumstances.

That's good

Hugs