I have a WFH job that involves constantly seeing/responding to/referring to myself as my deadname, and it’s eating me alive. I’m out in my social life except to my family, and I’ve discussed coming out at work this week with my therapist. This is already an incredibly busy workload period for me which adds immensely to the stress. I asked my manager late yesterday if we could move our check-in meeting to tomorrow morning even though I was worried about inconveniencing her because I need to do this.

I am not worried about my job in this because the company puts effort into getting ranked as an lgbt inclusive workplace (which may be all talk but at least it means they won’t want to be known for firing an employee for being trans) and when the subject of trans people has come up (we publish ob/gyn medical textbooks) the coworkers I work immediately with have been matter-of-fact making inclusive changes/not made transphobic comments so.

I have every reason to believe it will go well but I’m terrified. I don’t want to be vulnerable to people like this. Telling people I want to be called a different name and pronouns is just showing them easy spots to hurt me in. I want to trust that it will be okay but I’m scared because I was raised in a family where if you strayed from my parents guidance and got hurt it was your fault and you weren’t allowed to have emotions about being hurt because you should have known better than to risk trusting someone else.

I’m still gonna give trusting a shot tomorrow though.

**update: I talked with my manager and it went really well! She’s reaching out to HR to see what steps need to be done so I can transition to using my name and pronouns at work. She asked how/when I wanted to tell my coworkers and we’ll wait until my name and email are updated before I change my signature and add my pronouns so it’s all in one fell swoop. I was honestly one of the few people at work without pronouns in their signature so this will help me fit in more now lmao. I had an appointment with my therapist this afternoon too so I got to tell her the good news :)