Knowing Your Body

It is important for folks to be familiar with their body, including their genitals, chest, and anus/rectum. Being familiar with your body, and feeling / looking at these parts can help you notice if something changes. This is important for keeping an eye on your sexual health.
That being said, looking at, touching, or thinking about these parts of your body can be extra challenging for folks who experience gender-dysphoria. People with gender-based body dysphoria are less likely to check in with the parts of themselves they find dysphoria-inducing.
Some things you can do to that may help increase your comfort when looking at or feeling parts of your body that bring dysphoria are:

• Wearing clothes, make-up, or other gear that helps alleviate gender-based body discomfort (aka gender dysphoria) or increase the feeling of comfort and connection to your body via your gender expression (aka gender euphoria).
• Planning self-care activities before or after.
• Combining a check of those body parts with an activity that already involves you thinking about them (like a shower) to get it all done at once.
• Having someone in the room with you who can talk to you or provide support around this activity
• Planning a distracting activity, or an activity that will make you feel gender euphoria right after.
• Writing down anything that you notice so that you don’t have to keep thinking about it, but you have a record to bring to a doctor.