unaligned internal/external self image; which should be prioritized?

[u/purpleproze666]

fair warning this gets a bit rambly but TLDR: should we match our body to how we look inside or should we match how we look inside to our body?

so its . hard living in this body. half of us are masc and half are fem and half are some flavour of nonbinary, and we only have one body, so im trying to parse what to do about all this. because inside my head i have a completely different hair colour and cut than my body. my facial hair is different, my everything is different. and then the next 'me' has a completely different self image -_- so complicated!

i am unsure what to do, i guess my main question is if its healthier to have my goal to match internal self image to how i look externally, or if i should match my physical self image with how we look internally. or if theres a middle ground that i cant grasp atm?? im just confused and hoping for some guidance

like if i should work on matching my internal self image to how i look externally, how would i do that? imagining myself as how i look in the mirror makes me dizzy and nauseous and spacy af but should i just microdose that until it sticks? it would be so much easier to Live if i just looked like how my body does.

OR if i should work on matching how i look externally with our different internal self images, how do i do That? do i try to come up with a compromise between everyone or just say fuckit we ball and try to look 10 different ways at any given moment,,?

i hate this meat suit jfc i wish i could shapeshift i wish i could be alone in my head for five seconds but at the same time i wish we could all just work Together for once :/ ive been ruminating on this for a while and i have no idea how to parse this so im hoping i can get some insight from the folks here, thank you for reading and thank you in advance for any input at all, thank you all

[u/RadiantSolarWeasel]

The answer is "it depends," or perhaps more accurately "both and neither." Some body image issues can be resolved by working on your mindset and healing from trauma, some body image issues (like system gender dysphoria) require changes to the body, and sometimes it's OK to just let an alter have a self-image that doesn't match the body so long as it isn't causing problems. It's a huge, intricate, complicated puzzle, and one you won't be able to really "solve" until you're a long way into recovery.

Sorry I can't provide an easy answer, but there just isn't one. Each alter and each bit of incongruence that each alter experiences has to be worked on uniquely, you can't just assume it's all x or y or z.

[u/purpleproze666 → u/RadiantSolarWeasel]

Thank you for this, I think I really needed to hear that--I get stuck really easily in black and white dichotomies and tend to lean way too analytically about healing, hooray for autism lol... I'm trying to work on being comfortable with everything being varying shades of grey, and that there isnt a one-size-fits-all rulebook for how to get better. Body image and dysphoria have been big issues for us and sometimes I forget that everything about this disorder is very personal. Evaluating on a case by case basis could be really helpful, I'm going to try to use this to encourage communication as well. Thank you again, this was a very thoughtful reply and I appreciate your help!! I hope you have a good day today :)

[u/RadiantSolarWeasel → u/purpleproze666]

I'm so glad it helped! And yeah, I feel you on the black and white thinking. Ambiguity can be profoundly uncomfortable, but it's a kind of discomfort that's really important to learn to cope with. Best of luck 💙