One of the hardest adjustments a transgender has to make is in our comfort zone. Where we can go, who we can be around, etc., and still feel comfortable.
Human nature tells us to seek out places of comfort, so that's what we try to do. We look for situations where we are comfortable.
This is the wrong way to look at it. Instead of changing what we are comfortable with, we simply look for situations that match how we already feel.
Transgenders following this behavior pattern are headed down a dead end street. You will find that the more you express yourself, the fewer comfortable situations there are. You end up shrinking your world when you intended to expand it.
You need to learn to be comfortable with things that used to make you uncomfortable. Don't try to make the situation fit you, learn to fit the situation.
For me, it once was intolerably uncomfortable for strangers to see me and know I was trans. But one day I looked at myself from a strangers point of view. I saw a pleasant, polite, obviously trans person trying hard to be herself. I decided I could live with that assessment, even with the 'obviously trans' part. I was no longer uncomfortable, I expanded my zone.
Izza and I were having our afternoon coffee in a crowded Starbucks. Every tightly spaced chair and table was filled. We were engrossed in conversation when She casually uttered a phrase that I would only say to close friends or family. "Because I want to be pretty" , a phrase I have stated countless times, but never in public. She said it aloud in public where strangers could hear. Panic begins to invade me, I was out of my comfort zone. As I sat there I began looking at us from a 3rd person view, as if I was someone else in the crowd.
I saw us not as she and I, but as two trans women, talking to each other as friends, about things in their lives. Happy, normal, friends. And that was all it took, I was comfortable again. I could be happy being one of those friends..
So my zone just got a little bigger, ...again.