Complete Suppression

[LeaP]

I've been wondering why identity issues have had such urgency over the last year. Why now? Why not 10 or 20 years ago? A recent response in another thread from Bree perhaps hints at an answer:

I didn't know I was transexual from a young age, but I did know a lot of other things.

I knew I didn't know how to be a boy. Being a boy didn't seem to fit right and I was ALWAYS studying other boys and mimicking how they would act. I hated this acting and would be alone as much as possible so I didn't have to pretend.

I crossdressed from a young age. I think with all the repression, it was the only outlet my inner-self could find.

I envied girls. I hated that they were able to be girls and I wasn't.

I knew I was hiding who I really was. I knew I would lose my friends if they found out.

I just didn't know WHAT I was hiding from until I got a reality check a couple years ago and had to face the facts.

What this triggered in me was the memory of envying girls, of hiding from my friends. I had totally forgotten what it felt like to look at girls like that, and it happened over decades from my earliest years. I STILL do it without consciously realizing it. How can you NOT remember something like that? That, plus other emerging, forgotten or suppressed memories makes me wonder if one starts having identity emergence problems at the point when you lose control of the memories, when, as a result, you can no longer actively track and channel your responses. In other words, when you lose control of your false front. I feel like a leaky vessel. Perversely, suppression may be the key to identity for some.

Just random thoughts.

Lea

[Rianna Humble]

I cannot speak for others, but my Gender Identity Disorder was not triggered by losing control of memories from my youth. It is possible that the dysphoria escalated in part due to depression that was also linked to other elements in my life, but the fact is that I had been increasingly unable to live with being perceived as the man I have never been.

In the past, when the need to express my true self had become acute, I would "reason" with myself that no-one would want to know an ugly woman. Over time I changed that to ugly old woman. I would then hide behind that lie to try to suppress the knowledge of who I am. Luckily for my sanity, the lie wore too thin.

I didn't so much lose control of my false front as lose faith in it's ability to keep me alive.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Lea,

You totally get it. Once the wall starts coming down, your ability to cope by repressing, supressing, lying to yourself just goes away.. I've posted before that I can't believe the crazy thoughts I had...how did I make it?

What Bree described is almost exactly how I experienced this, but I was in my mid forties...

Fwiw, I asked my therapist, who has exclusively seen tg patients for twenty years,about this exact thing

Her answer was she didn't know for sure, but it was very common in her ts patients. She said that our "arcs" are incredibly similar, with only the life details being different.

[ReineD]

Her answer was she didn't know for sure, but it was very common in her ts patients. She said that our "arcs" are incredibly similar, with only the life details being different.

I wonder why this happens to only some people (who previously thought they were CDers) and not others. And why, according to the distribution of posts in this forum, it seemingly happens to a small percentage?

And as Lea asked, why now and not when she was a child or a teenager? There are people who always knew?

I'd like to understand more about this too.

[EnglishRose]

I wonder why this happens to only some people (who previously thought they were CDers) and not others. And why, according to the distribution of posts in this forum, it seemingly happens to a small percentage?

Most people on this site are not transsexual, that's why.

As to your other question, entire books could be written on that subject! And probably have.

[ReineD]

Point taken. I should know better.

I always have a million questions in my head and this time I just typed them out.

[Kelsy]

Most people on this site are not transsexual, that's why.

As to your other question, entire books could be written on that subject! And probably have.

Point taken. I should know better.

I always have a million questions in my head and this time I just typed them out.

An unresolved Identity struggle from a young age through life seems to be a transsexual marker. It basically has nothing to do with sex or clothing etc.

Being careful with exclusionary language that tends to stifle those who are trying desperately to find answers to their own personal struggles might be construed as supportive!

[Kaitlyn Michele]

I wonder why this happens to only some people (who previously thought they were CDers) and not others. And why, according to the distribution of posts in this forum, it seemingly happens to a small percentage?

And as Lea asked, why now and not when she was a child or a teenager? There are people who always knew?

I'd like to understand more about this too.

Right..Great question...
and Kristin's answer is the right one...

of course, that doesn't help you with the question you always ask, which is how do you know which is which??

What are the best "tells" that a husbands dressing is a manifestation of her transsexuality. I don't think we can really ever know as Kristen points out.

That all being said, if someone is dressing up for "identity" and wanting to do it all the time, goes by a female name, socializes with friends as a woman, takes risks with being outed publicly, etc etc...no matter what he(she) says, there is a chance he(she) is going to leave the barn.

Lea's title for this thread is very wise.

COMPLETE suppression. I always called my suppression brutal because it tore me up so badly. I like the word Lea used....it implies that one little chink in the armor (sorry Jeremy) can have a big impact

[Asako]

....it implies that one little chink in the armor (sorry Jeremy) can have a big impact

The "chink" in my armor came in the form of a question from my sister. After I really started working it over in my mind, the revelations slammed into my mind. After that, I couldn't lie to myself any more. The biggest obstacle has been my fear of change but that is slowly being dealt with.

EDIT:I just remembered a memory as I was re-reading a few posts. I had crossdressed a few times as a child around the time puberty started. Only once did I stop to ask myself why. The answer chilled me, a child at the time, to the bone. "Because it's natural. It's right. More natural than being a boy." Needless to say, that was when my complete repression started. Repression became impossible once the "chink" described above happened.

[Bree-asaurus]

I wonder why this happens to only some people (who previously thought they were CDers) and not others. And why, according to the distribution of posts in this forum, it seemingly happens to a small percentage?

And as Lea asked, why now and not when she was a child or a teenager? There are people who always knew?

I'd like to understand more about this too.

I was in an amazing state of repression and denial. It wasn't until a friend of mine found out that I was a crossdresser that I was basically forced to look at myself in the mirror. Once someone else caught a hint of what was going on, it's like it became real. There really was something going on with me. I could no longer convince myself that I was normal.

"OMG I'm a crossdresser!!!!! ........ WHHHYYY?!?!?!?!?!?!"

And that very first question about why I am the way I am lead to another. And another... and another.

As Kaitlyn said:

Once the wall starts coming down, your ability to cope by repressing, supressing, lying to yourself just goes away..

[LeaP]

The nature of these memories is strange. They sometimes pop in like a normal memory - the typical "I never would have remembered that if you hadn't said ..."

Some feel like they were suppressed. My therapist had me reading "True Selves" and there was a story about a TS whose father would give her crew cuts as a child. That happened to me, too, and I always retained that memory, hating the experience. What I had forgotten, though, and what the story brought back was how desperately I wanted long hair. I would beg to be allowed to have long hair. And it was off to the back yard for the crew cut. That long hair memory feels like it was pushed away.

The particular memories triggered by Bree's post are different again. These are memories coming into focus, slowly returning. I can bring up scenes and feelings that include specific timeperiods and groups of girls. Childhood, High School, etc. Me observing, the girls typically in groups. I envied their closeness, laughing, touch, appearance, play, their relationships and felt completely outside - sometimes sad, but mostly chilled by the exclusion.

I may have been set up or more receptive to remembering this because of recent experiences. I've had the repeated experience over the last couple of months where I would pass a woman in a hallway at work, on the street, or at the mall (my office building opens into one), greet them and see their defenses go up. What I realized last week that *I* was doing that was different was looking at them as myself openly and to connect, rather than through my usual front, which would be cursory and cold (maybe formal would be a better word). Their reactions are completely normal, of course. My state of mind in these episodes is such that it triggers that same playground chill and subsequent sadness. Kudos to my therapist for telling me to look for times when I felt "connection." I subsequently wrote to her that I didn't have a clue what she meant, but I'm beginning to, and it was on my mind.

I never believed in real suppression except in psychosis cases. To find it in yourself is, as several of you put it (Julia directly) deeply disturbing. I'm also starting to get quite angry. Great - just what I needed ...

Lea

[Ally 2112]

I have struggled with this this question off and on for about 30 yrs before i was a teenager i wanted to feel what it was like to be a girl .In the 70's and 80's and living in a small community i repressed and supressed fought and clawed to try and stop these feelings .It was not until about 5 yrs ago when my wife and i split (yes the cding had plenty to do with it ) i was able to freely go on the net and to let Ally sort of out of the closet and on the road to self accepptance
I feel much better about myself and most of my self destuctive behavior has stopped .I knew this behavior was caused by my hiding and repression to me when i hid it was shameful and the x did not help either. Now im free at least in my own home to be me and eventually to go to a cd friendly group is my next goal !

[KellyJameson]

Hi Lea, You are fortunate in that you acknowledge to yourself that you are angry because unacknowledged anger causes blindness of self.

"Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem."
Jiddu Krishnamurti

[Hope]

And as Lea asked, why now and not when she was a child or a teenager? There are people who always knew?

I'd like to understand more about this too.

It DID happen when I was a child and a teen...

I am one of the "classic" girls who ALWAYS knew. I fell asleep almost every night of my childhood praying, begging, bargaining God to change me, to make me right, to make me the girl I knew I was. And every morning I woke up dismayed at my lack of results. How THAT experience mapped into my decision to become a member of the clergy I will likely never figure out.

And I can remember very distinctly the moment in 7th grade where, after shooting up from about 5'0"-6'1" in about 4 months time, and having suddenly woken up one morning with a radio announcers bass voice, (instead of the vagina I had been asking for) I KNEW without question or hesitation that I would never be able to be presentable as a girl. I KNEW that I would NEVER be able to be a girl. And I can't tell you how that knowledge crushed my soul. I am suppressed I survived the day - not because I would have taken my own life, but one's soul can simply not take that sort of destruction and continue... The fact that I didn't just stop living seemed like little more than a sick joke.

But I did keep living. And I knew that I wasn't ever going to be a girl. That door had been closed to me by my rebellious body. And so I started to build the appearance of a normal male life. If I couldn't have what I wanted, i would at least have something "nice." I closed the door on the girl and NEVER looked in that room unless I HAD to. Looking in there would only bring pain and longing, and it was easier to deal with if I never seriously considered it ever again. Testosterone helped a lot with that.

At one of my first sessions with my therapist she asked me a question that still haunts me to some extent. She asked me if I had any insight into "why now?" Why was I seeking her out at this point in my life? I didn't have a good answer, I told her I didn't really know, and I asked her if she had any insight. Her response has made a lot of sense to me in the last few years: "You have reached a point where you have the resources and time to deal with it."

Previously I had been in college, or grad school, or I was getting married, or I was starting my careers and trying to get my bearings. But in my early-mid thirties at some point... I came to the point where I could finally relaxant focus on something other than building that "nice life" I had been trying so hard for since Jr. high. And when I did that - along with relaxing and taking a breath for a second, came the shudder inducing, soul crushing, whole-body-scream-inducing, agony, of that day when I first knew I couldn't ever be who I was. Only this time I wasn't a scared adolescent without social or familial support (my mother had been particularly hard on me when I behaved in gender variant ways as a "boy"). I was an adult, an emotionally competent (more or less) adult, with a supportive wife, a set of car keys, and health insurance that could be used to purchase things like therapy. And so when I went to therapy to figure out what I was, and how to live with myself, and how to make the pain go away, I learned that my adolescent self had bought into a lie built on fear and fed by insecurity - two things in ample supply to every adolescent. I learned, very slowly, very timidly, VERY cautiously through experimentation, and through meeting some other girls that I COULD do this. That I COULD be the girl I knew I was. Even at 6'2", even with a bass voice, BIG paws, and a receding hairline.

And my soul sang. For the first time in 20 years I knew joy. There was light, and hope in the deepest darkest pit of my being, a place where all hope had been taken away for a very long time. There was no way I was ever going to go back, I survived it once, but if I had to do it a second time, it would kill me, there is no way I could endure that a second time.

[*Vanessa*]

.
I don't think the ability to cope has much to do with gender.

What I mean is this; I think there are more TS that repress memory and simply have not got to a point their 'inner self' is comfortable with release. Or to another point, their 'inner self' is busting out whether or not the body lives past the trauma that is sure to result from that action.

Memory or lack of control of it is not part of gender, so it makes sense that not all TS have repression issues. For me, I don't know why, at lest to all of the repressed memory issues, but I do know that, when the 'inner self' feels safe, more memories surface. It is work.. hard work, but I like having to deal with these types of memories when they surface. For me this means I am healing and it would be great if I get to heal all of them prior to dieing.

[KellyJameson]

The mind must become strong enough to accept the consequences of truth and wise enough to recognize truth when it finds it. Before this there must be the discovery that there is value in truth to make the effort of searching for it worthwhile. Suffering fuels the search but the mind is trapped between muliple and opposing forms of suffering with apathy and confusion the result.

Life is lived between a rock and a hard place and thinking is just so much static. Suppresion buys time and quiets the mind so the immediate task of survival can be met. The walk from sickness to health( movement toward truth) must be done within the limits of a minds capacity to survive (not become more sick, continued movement toward falsehood)
while being confronted with the paradox that much of what is called health is actually sickness and vice versa, (lies are truths and truths are lies) a confused mind is surrounded by other confused minds but each in its own way and all fighting to defend their idea of reality/truth even when it is based on falsehood.

Insanity (falsehood/sickness) and sanity(truth/health) are only opinions because there is a measure of both in everyone. The closer our opinions/behavior are representative of truth (reality) the healthier we become.

Great tension exists between those who live closer to truth/reality as opposed to those who live closer to falsehood because both defend their ideas of truth to protect their sensation of reality/sanity for them. To discover truth you must give up the need for argument and move beyond others, the individual must stand alone. Life is a search for and movement toward truth.

[STACY B]

If ya think about it older chix are way more of the majority than younger ones . An I think its all about oportunity an convenance ,,, Think about what Im saying when your young ya have to work an conform to requrments but the older ya get the more free time an liberal jobs an self employment jobs an parents are gone an siblings and kids are moved away so no direct everyday in an out judgment. An when I say kinda like weight lose think for a second when you were PUSHED at work physical labor you could an would lose weight like hell . But the older ya get an ya realy dont have to work like hell an usualy get the superviser jobs an management spot an we get lazy an are not pushed so its harder to lose weight see. so that being said if you have no one pushing ya to be a man an act a certain way at work orhome all the time you can let go an be yourself finaly , Just my thinking ,, An PLEASE this is not for EVERYONE just some of us GEEZ P.S. Again just my thoughts

[LeaP]

IMHO...anger is about helplessness. our dysphoria is somewhat a product of the same helplessness...it is a feeling that displaces the emptiness

btw...its often in the context of anger at your helplessness to change others that people talk about anger this way (think of parental abuse, cheating/alcoholic spouse)
in our cases it may be kind of the same thing... your helpless "real" self raging at your "fake" self (thats too metaphysical for my taste but it makes some sense)
its a life or death feeling sometimes...this life or death feeling is very often the final straw for those of us that transition....

Kelly is right...anger is blinding..it masks your lifetime of built up wisdom.. why is it everytime i've punched the wall i've regretted it?? (outside of it hurts my hand)

I tend to think of the emotionalism and drama as having a lot more to do with survival, to preserve myself as I have been, than about what is emerging. That is, the emerging identity might be the threat, but it's not the source of the reaction. I'm feeling like a complete and total drama queen these days - waaaaay over the top for me. The emotion feels self-indulgent.

[edit] - It occurred to me after re-reading that it might not be clear how this was a response to your comment. It's this: Anger out of the current persona is an assertion of control. As far as it masking build-up wisdom, it simultaneously invokes it (or tries to) as well as tries to bury the threat. The latter is where blindness comes in.

By the way, don't punch pictures on the wall with cover glass. The amount of blood was unbelievable ...

And speaking of anger, this time without regard to persona, threat, or considerations of blindness ...

If ya think about it older chix are way more of the majority than younger ones . An I think its all about oportunity an convenance ,,, Think about what Im saying when your young ya have to work an conform to requrments but the older ya get the more free time an liberal jobs an self employment jobs an parents are gone an siblings and kids are moved away so no direct everyday in an out judgment. An when I say kinda like weight lose think for a second when you were PUSHED at work physical labor you could an would lose weight like hell . But the older ya get an ya realy dont have to work like hell an usualy get the superviser jobs an management spot an we get lazy an are not pushed so its harder to lose weight see. so that being said if you have no one pushing ya to be a man an act a certain way at work orhome all the time you can let go an be yourself finaly , Just my thinking ,, An PLEASE this is not for EVERYONE just some of us GEEZ P.S. Again just my thoughts

Stacy, I'll keep this in mind as I face a senior management meeting stuffed with some of most brilliant, accomplished, driven, competitive, and political people I've ever known. Yeah, none of us have to work anymore. it's easy and things just sorta work for us as we sip cocktails and flog the underlings occasionally. I have plenty of time to devote to my emotional issues - after all, I only typically work a 12-15 hour day, 6 days/week ... when I'm not traveling, on calls with Europe or Asia, or dealing with some problem in the middle of the night.

Just WHAT did you think a comment that insinuates gender identity issues are the province of fat, lazy, old people cruising by on the minimum added to this? Get a f'in clue. This is my life at stake. Now with THAT I know what I'm angry about.

Lea

[STACY B]

Just WHAT did you think a comment that insinuates gender identity issues are the province of fat, lazy, old people cruising by on the minimum added to this? Get a f'in clue. This is my life at stake. Now with THAT I know what I'm angry about.

Lea[/QUOTE] { I SAID IT WAS NOT } FOR !!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERYBODY ,,,,, SEE cant help somepeople ???

[Kaitlyn Michele]

If ya think about it older chix are way more of the majority than younger ones . An I think its all about oportunity an convenance ,,, Think about what Im saying when your young ya have to work an conform to requrments but the older ya get the more free time an liberal jobs an self employment jobs an parents are gone an siblings and kids are moved away so no direct everyday in an out judgment. An when I say kinda like weight lose think for a second when you were PUSHED at work physical labor you could an would lose weight like hell . But the older ya get an ya realy dont have to work like hell an usualy get the superviser jobs an management spot an we get lazy an are not pushed so its harder to lose weight see. so that being said if you have no one pushing ya to be a man an act a certain way at work orhome all the time you can let go an be yourself finaly , Just my thinking ,, An PLEASE this is not for EVERYONE just some of us GEEZ P.S. Again just my thoughts

thank you

i consider this an advertisement for safe haven

[elizabethamy]

What makes this question much more difficult for many of us is the idea that we have identity issues in ways other than gender. In living a good chunk of my life as an artist/writer, one almost cultivates this "outsiderness" so that one can observe and understand the world and make sense of it in an artistic/writerly way. That's essentially what the work is. However, feeling outside the gender norms is a different kind of outsiderism, and I have found it very hard to sort and separate the two. I'm sure there are other forms of outsiderness which can help keep a repressive/suppressive CD/TG/TS confused for many years.

e.

[Myojine]

What this triggered in me was the memory of envying girls, of hiding from my friends. I had totally forgotten what it felt like to look at girls like that, and it happened over decades from my earliest years. I STILL do it without consciously realizing it. How can you NOT remember something like that?

Dont we all?
I used to be extremely angry at Transmen because they were ruining the body that I wanted and taking for granted they were a woman.
Boiled my blood to just under the point of loosing control. but i kept my cool long enough to relize they were in the same damn boat as me.

[Julia_in_Pa]

Lea,

I knew since age four that things were not what they seemed.
Once transition has commenced in earnest and the excuses as to why one can't have been stripped away, it becomes a truly life saving process.
After five years of full time I have had difficulty remembering what I had to be for so long.
You would think that this would be a good thing and in many ways it is but in ways it disturbed me deeply.
Attempting to remember things and everyday life prior to December of 2006 was, for a while, a serious issue with me so much so that I had to seek therapy for it.
Having this "amnesia " of sorts caused me a great deal of panic due to not being able to remember my life very well before transition.
Now I'm able to remember what my life was with all the good and bad that went with it.

My point is that you have to know where you have been in order to know where your going.


Julia

[Marleena]

Lea I can really relate to this due to my recent "awakening". As a child we gravitate towards things we like, in my case girlie stuff. Then parental guidance due to gender concerns puts a stop to it. We are moulded into our birth gender by parents and society. So in my case I just snuck around when the urges were too strong. I always knew I was different as a child, I always remember feeling like being on the outside looking in. I never put 2 & 2 together.

This went on through most of my life with the usual dressing fix that I knew needed to be hidden from everybody. I was always attracted to women, but if they dressed feminine I noticed their clothes was more important to me. I just loved girls that wore pantyhose and short skirts. I wonder if anybody noticed me staring at them each day in class?

The human mind is a powerful and complex thing. In my case things got buried away probably as a form of self protection. I also overcompensated unknowingly as a male so as not to show the girl within. Everything is now making sense since I let the genie out of the bottle. Memories are coming back, and things are now making sense.

[Kelsy]

I hid my secret for my whole life not knowing who I was and how I fit from nursery school days. It wasn' until a girlfriend of mine
discovered my crossdressing and I was confronted with myself in 2006. The failure of a 25year marriage, the death of a close friend, the death of my father, the death of my brother and the total loss of eveything I owned through divorce and bankruptsy pushed my identity crisis over the edge! To top it off I was sure that I had always been and was some perverted freak! It has taken six years, the failure of numerous relationships, and some heavy introspection and counseling
to get to a place where I could accept myself as I am and to admit and understand just what was going on with me. I was a fraud my whole life and now my coping mechanisms are gone and lies are useless.

I was told not to long ago by a wise person that this condition can be treated but if you treat it you're probably going to want the cure!!

Kelsy