You Deserve to Love Yourself:
A Guide to Building Self-Compassion as a Trans Person
Dr. Lauren Smithee

Let’s be honest- building self-esteem can sometimes feel like an uphill climb, especially if you’re navigating life as a trans person. Challenges like internalized transphobia, trauma, minority stress, gender dysphoria, or the everyday stresses of daily life can make that journey feel even heavier.
If any of this resonates with you, know you’re not alone, and it’s okay to acknowledge the weight you might be carrying right now. In fact, the good news is that self-compassion can be a powerful ally on your path to self-discovery. It’s not about being perfect; it’s about learning to treat yourself with the same kindness, patience, and understanding you’d offer to a dear friend.
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Through my years of clinical work providing gender affirming care to transgender clients, I’ve found that mindful self-compassion, a practice developed by Dr. Kristin Neff, is one of the best tools for building a better relationship with yourself. In this article, I’ll guide you through understanding common barriers to self-compassion, how self-compassion can help you, and how to begin using self-compassion to build your sense of self-worth.
What's Getting in the Way of Self-Compassion?
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Life as a transgender person often comes with unique challenges that can impact your self-esteem. Let’s address some of the unique barriers transgender people often experience that can make it difficult to build self-compassion. Recognizing some of the obstacles you’re facing that make it difficult to be compassionate toward yourself can help you to start working to overcome them:
Internalized Transphobia
Sadly, society’s negative (and frankly, inaccurate) messages about trans people are pervasive. Even when you can recognize that these messages are rooted in ignorance, they can still build up over time and lead you to doubt your worth or feel ashamed of who you are.
It can feel particularly painful when loved ones whose support you need are impacted by false information rooted in internalized transphobia, which can affect how they perceive and treat you. You have likely been exposed to transphobia to some extent throughout your life, regardless of when you started to explore on your gender journey. These transphobic messages can be internalized and can corrode your sense of self-worth over time.
Trauma
While I would argue that internalized transphobia is a form of trauma, you might be dealing with other traumatic experiences that have impacted your sense of worth. These can be related to or completely unrelated to your gender identity as a trans person.
Whether it’s rejection, discrimination, or threat of violence, trauma can leave you with deep emotional scars that deeply impact your self-perception and self-talk. For instance, being frequently misgendered by family members or feeling like your lovability and sense of belonging is conditional can make you feel hesitant to trust others or truly accept yourself. This can lead to feelings of unworthiness or fear of being vulnerable with others, which can increase feelings of isolation.
Minority Stress
Being part of a marginalized group means that you’re likely to be dealing with chronic stress in multiple areas of your life, especially with the political climate we live in. You might feel like you need to stay calm and collected when you hear transphobic comments at a family gathering or if you’re navigating a workplace that isn’t inclusive. For example, a coworker’s offhand joke about gender identity or having a transphobic comment pop up in your newsfeed might leave you feeling alienated or hyper-aware of how others perceive you. These stressors can accumulate over time and erode your self-esteem.
Gender Dysphoria
How gender dysphoria manifests and the intensity of this experience varies from person to person, but we can broadly define it here as distress that results from a feeling of misalignment between the sex that was assigned to them at birth and their internal sense of gender. Experiencing a disconnect between your gender identity and how your body looks and feels can be emotionally painful and discouraging. For instance, looking in the mirror and seeing features that don’t align with your internal sense of gender can trigger a spiral of negative self-talk, like, “I’ll never feel comfortable in my own skin.” This internal battle can make it hard to practice self-compassion.
Conversely, not all trans people suffer from gender dysphoria, especially among people with less binary experiences with gender. There are dominant narratives in the world about what it means to be trans, so experiencing a lack of gender dysphoria can also trigger feelings of self-doubt or imposter syndrome (e.g., “I must not be trans enough”). Regardless of how or if you experience gender dysphoria, your experiences and feelings are valid.
How Self-Compassion Can Help
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There is quite a bit of research on the effectiveness of self-compassion on building emotional well-being. While there isn’t enough affirming research on transgender people specifically and how self-compassion can be used as a tool, I’ve found self-compassion to be incredibly helpful within my clinical practice. Building self-compassion can be particularly empowering in counteracting some of the unique challenges you might be facing:
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It Fights Internalized Transphobia
Self-compassion helps rewrite those harmful narratives you’ve internalized over time that are rooted in transphobia. By changing your self-talk, you can rewire your brain over time and remind yourself that you deserve love and respect.
It Heals Trauma and Stress
By treating yourself with gentleness, you can soothe your nervous system and create a safe internal space to process and recover from painful experiences.
It Builds Self-Awareness
Practicing self-compassion can help you become more attuned to your thoughts and feelings. I often hear of folks who disengage with their emotions and disconnect from their body to cope with the effects of gender dysphoria and trauma. This can be particularly helpful for those who tend to suppress, compartmentalize, or dismiss their emotions.
It Reduces Loneliness
Recognizing that you’re not alone in your struggles and that you deserve kindness can help you feel less isolated and more connected to others.
It Builds Distress Tolerance and Resilience
The mindful component of mindful self-compassion can create space for you to notice and sit with difficult feelings without letting them take over, making room for moments of self-acceptance. With practice over time, this can help you to build more resilience to cope with stress and can increase your capacity to deal with emotional pain.
What is Mindful Self-Compassion?
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Self-compassion is about treating yourself with kindness and understanding, especially when life is challenging or you’re experiencing painful emotions like fear or shame. Mindful self-compassion boosts the practice of self-compassion by adding mindfulness to the mix—learning to observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment or getting swept away by them.
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Dr. Kristin Neff breaks down the practice of mindful self-compassion into three components:
Mindfulness vs over-identification
Mindfulness can help you to recognize and label your emotions and thoughts without judgement. They’re there, but they don’t define you. Mindfulness also requires that we take a balanced approach to recognizing our thoughts and feelings, so we neither dismiss and suppress nor exaggerate and over-identify with a particular thought or feeling we may be experiencing. Practicing mindfulness can help us to turn toward our pain with acceptance of the present moment without being overwhelmed by our pain.
Common humanity vs isolation
It's important to remember that even in the depth of experiencing suffering or pain, you’re not alone. When we struggle, there is often a feeling of being isolated, especially when you are experiencing shame or a lack of social support. Practicing a connection to common humanity reminds you that all people experience pain. While you may be experiencing unique challenges as a transgender person, everyone struggles, and there are others in the world who can compassionately relate to your experiences.
Self-kindness vs self-judgment
Be gentle with yourself, especially when you’re feeling stressed, discouraged, rejected, or alone. Being self-compassionate means recognizing that you deserve to treat yourself with warmth and support rather than criticism, even when you feel like you're failing or feel inadequate.
Practice replacing your inner critic with a supportive, kind voice, the way you would speak to a friend. Creating a gentle, kind internal dialogue helps us to better cope with challenges that we're facing and to make changes needed rather than triggering a fight or flight response due to self-criticism. Ask yourself, “What words do I need to hear right now to feel supported and cared for?”
How Can I Practice Mindful Self-Compassion?
Now that you know what mindful self-compassion is and how it can be helpful, let’s get practical and walk through an example of how to use it.
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There are many ways that you can begin to practice building mindful-self compassion. Today, I'll teach you one useful practice, which Dr. Neff calls the "self-compassion break”:
1) Think about an experience or situation you're dealing with that is painful and causing you stress or emotional pain
(Ex: I’m ready to and want to come out as transgender to my family but I'm afraid of how they will react.)
2) Notice how you're experiencing this stress or pain emotionally and in your body
(Ex: Part of me feels excited and part of me feels scared. My stomach is in knots and my chest feels tight.)
3) Practice using the three elements of mindful self-compassion to address how you're feeling and what you need. You can say this out loud or journal:
a) Mindfulness
Part of me feels ready to and excited about coming out but part of me feels really scared about being rejected and feeling misunderstood or alone.
b) Common humanity
It's really hard to feel this right now but I know that other brave trans people have experienced this before. Even though I feel alone right now, I'm not alone in feeling this way.
c) Self-kindness
I can be scared and brave. I'm strong enough to take this step. May I be kind to myself as I face my fears and move towards the life I want.
You've Got This!
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After reading this article, you might realize that your self-talk is already pretty positive, or you might have struggled with practicing the exercise above. If this is challenging for you, please be patient with yourself and remember that there is always room for growth.
Building self-compassion is a journey, not a destination. Some days will feel easier than others, and that’s okay. Regardless of where you are in your journey, the important thing is to keep showing up for yourself. Celebrate the little victories you have with your self-talk, lean on your support network when you can, and keep reminding yourself that your worth isn’t up for debate.
If you haven’t heard this today, I want to remind you that you deserve kindness, connection, respect—from the world and, most importantly, from yourself. Keep practicing building self-compassion, even when it’s challenging. You’re worth the effort!
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​With compassion and solidarity,
Dr. Lauren
Lauren Smithee, Ph.D., LMFT
Deeply Rooted Therapy, PLLC