The Internet
With talking to Clint over for the current moment, Natasha had only one more source that she wanted to use to help herself. On the next Sunday that she had free time and was experiencing dysphoria, she grabbed her laptop from where it was sitting on her desk. She sat down with it on the chair she had next to the window, which was radiating warmth from the sunlight. Researching wouldn't be too hard. Natasha already felt content with the solutions that she had gotten from Clint, and this was more of an obligatory search to prevent missing something.
Natasha found similar things in each article, which made it easier on her. She decided quickly that she didn't want to wear a binder or a packer, but there were some other suggestions that she thought could be useful. The next common suggestion was to talk to someone that she could relate to, which she was already doing. The next suggestion she found was something that she would be willing to try, though. It was to come up with affirmations about her gender and her body. She was skeptical about how well it would work, but she had also heard a lot about how changing your thinking patterns could affect you a lot, so she decided to try it.
Natasha stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself. she felt a little ridiculous doing it, but she didn't want her inaction to result in her missing something that would've benefitted her, so she did it anyway.
"My body doesn't define my gender. My gender is valid no matter what my body looks like."
As she predicted, Natasha didn't feel any different than she had before. She knew that would be the case whether or not it was effective, so she decided that she would incorporate it into her strategies and say it whenever she was feeling down or needed something to occupy her mind.
The next strategy that she wanted to try was to listen to someone that had similar experiences as her. She knew that she already had Clint to talk to, but the article also mentioned watching bloggers, and Natasha thought that could be something that could help. she decided to go to YouTube to try it out.
After a little bit of video-watching, Natasha had found plenty of videos from agender people. She found it comforting that there were other people out there that she could relate to. Natasha smiled to herself, it was really interesting to hear about other people's experiences and how being agender worked for them. This was definitely something that Natasha would keep in mind for later when she was feeling bad about herself.
The next thing that Natasha thought could be useful was distracting herself from dysphoria. From experience, Natasha knew that this was something that worked for her, but she made a mental note of it as something that had been recommended from multiple sources and that she knew worked.
Natasha decided to forego going to a support group or talking to a therapist, it wasn't really her thing (Clint would’ve called her stupid for saying this, but as they say, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him). That meant that the last thing in the articles that wasn't just the article reiterating what it already said in a different way was to cover up the parts of her body that made her dysphoric during mundane moments.
It was another simple step and one that could be employed casually and easily. When Natasha lay down to sleep that night, she hugged a pillow to her body to avoid curling in on herself and feeling her body shape in a way that she didn't like. She slept more peacefully than usual that night. The pillow acted like mental headphones, and the thoughts about her body and whether or not she was valid were dimmed to background noise.
Natasha woke up the next morning feeling good. She spent some time with Clint later in the day and hugged a pillow to her chest when she curled her legs up to further experiment. She smiled when she discovered that doing this also helped her. She had a lot of new strategies to help herself with dysphoria.
Natasha knew that these strategies weren't magical fix-all's. She would still have bad days. But she had Clint, and she had new coping mechanisms. She had ways to deal with it when she previously didn't. She felt content. It was going to be ok.