- 1 year ago
#58486
It's something I struggle with, too. What you need to learn is how to stop giving a heck what other people think.
Think of it this way: you have your cute dress on and you're sitting alone in your house. No one is interacting with you, how does that affect you? How will that change how people treat you? It doesn't, so why should it bother you? You can worry about hypotheticals all day, but all that would accomplish is it would make you miserable, and for what end?
Going out to, say, the store and doing little stuff will be a lot more difficult. I'm transgender, and being visibly trans in public caused me a lot of anxiety. But I realized that most people just...don't care. They have their own lives and worries to think about. If I'm at Target, they're probably thinking more about how I'm being a jerk blocking the aisle than what I look like or what my gender is. If you wear a cute dress to the store, some people might compliment you on it, but no one is going to take the effort to tell you they don't like it. They'll think something mean and completely forget about you 5 minutes later. And since you're not a mind reader, you have no way of knowing that, so assuming their thoughts are negative to you only hurts you, which doesn't accomplish anything.
If you want to do something that is visibly incongruent with your biological age, like use a sippy cup at a restaurant, then this would be a lot harder. People are probably going to make comments or treat you differently. But I also imagine that isn't what it is you're trying to do.
Find time to regress in a safe space (like at home, in your room with the door closed) where you know you'll be alone for awhile. Like sometimes my roommate will go to her parents for the weekend, so I know I'll have all of Friday evening and the whole day Saturday, so I can go to the fridge and get a juice while carrying a stuffie, or I can watch whatever I want on the big tv and sit on the couch. And when you "come back" to big-thinking mode, think about the stuff you did and how nice it was. How much fun YOU had. Because doing this by yourself is all about doing it for your benefit.