Let's say it is Not guilt over dressing...but guilt over harming a loved one.... would that make a difference?Originally Posted by Dana44
Let's say it is Not guilt over dressing...but guilt over harming a loved one.... would that make a difference?
Yes, that makes a huge difference, Kim. But let's be crystal clear on this, there is no rational reason for you to feel guilt over your TG nature. It is your nature, as in "something you were born with". You know perfectly well that we can't choose to not be TG. You can choose to align yourself with that nature and resolve the conflict within yourself, or you can choose to do nothing and suffer for it. Until you have enough respect and love for yourself to see to your own happiness and well being, you should probably not think about bringing someone else into the mix.
Be who it is that you are most happy being. When you get that worked out, relationships will grow from a much healthier footing.
Hugs,
Kelly
I agree with Teresa; guilt and shame are bad. I felt a lot of shame when I was younger. I knew that crossdressing was "wrong" but I really liked crossdressing. I went to therapy for a long time about my crossdressing after my wife discovered some of my clothes. The best result was getting rid of my guilt and shame and accepting my whole self. It made me much stronger when my wife was expressing how much she disliked my crossdressing. I was able to feel, "I like it, and if you don't that's too bad. I'll respect you and not do it in front of you, but I'll still do it." We're still DADT, but I go out a lot. Steffi has a lot more friends than I do.
Hi, I'm Steffi and I'm a crossdresser... And I accept and celebrate both sides of me. Or, maybe I'm gender fluid.
Oh yes, for many years, I felt very guilty and much shame because of my crossdressing. I would put on the underclothes, get excited and then feel very guilty and yes much shame. It took a long time for me to realize that I was born like this and this is me. I'm not hurting anyone and God loves all of us. The desire to dress is not gone by any means but the guilt is gone.
In my experience of decades guilt/shame I have to say it is always bad and leads to the Dark Side. How would Master Yoda put it?
Guilt and shame leads to pain. Pain leads to suffering. Suffering leads to bitterness. Bitterness leads to hate. Hate leads to anger and conflict. And no I am not joking! The best thing anyone like us can do is throw off the guilt and shame as quickly as they can, just throw it in the trash because it isn't worth keeping around to torture yourself.
After reading the article, I'd say my personal opinion is that guilt and shame are *always* bad -- that's why they're cast as negative emotions. But sometimes guilt or shame are *appropriate* reactions we have to our own behavior when we feel we have failed to meet our own standards. Using their definitions, shame is always destructive but to me shame can be constructive as we remember the sense of shame and use it as a motivator to avoid the shameful behavior in the future. I think the difference between their view and mine is that they view the shame sense as a static "I am a horrible person unworthy of love (and am incapable of change)" emotion, and I see it as "I did a horrible thing, I feel unworthy, and resolve never to make myself feel that way again."
I am not a woman; I don't want to be a woman; I don't want to be mistaken for a woman.
I am not a man; I don't want to be a man; I don't want to be mistaken for a man.
I am a transgender person. And I'm still figuring out what that means.
"My question is whether such emotions can have some positive value in helping some people resist or overtime quell the desire to cross dress? "
Kim, the premise of this, though unstated but suggested, is that crossdressing is bad, so anything that can be used to suppress the desire to crossdress (guilt and shame) is good.
I had the desire to crossdress at an early age, and in a different time before the internet allowed me to access information and when crossdressing was generally considered deviant behavior in need of correction. Thinking I must be broken, I kept it to myself and had those guilt and shame thoughts.
In time I came to believe that my crossdressing is an attribute, not a flaw, and the G and S went away.
It was never G and S that suppressed my CDing desire, actually nothing suppresses it. But my CDing activities were (and is) suppressed for practical considerations. My wife knows and accepts, but otherwise I keep it private. My other family, friends, and coworkers don't need to know.
I don't consider my desire to crossdress a bad thing that needs to be resisted or quelled. I just enjoy it privately without guilt and shame.
I have read some reports of criminals who couldn't live with their guilt and shame, and turned themselves. In these cases G and S had a positive effect. But crossdressing isn't a crime (here in the U.S. anyway).
Again, I don't mean to imply that CDing is bad...although many (most...all) of us have experienced a degree of each for the mere fact that we have cross dressed.
I lean towards the perspective that guilt and shame exist as emotions as part of a complete and healthy psyche. Only sociopaths live without experiencing them. Perhaps their purpose in a healthy mind is to enable us to learn from and avoid repetition of actions that are (or are perceived as) harmful to others. Not the cross dressing itself, mind you, but the perceptions of it held by someone you value as a part of your life....if they are distressed by it...well, then maybe its helpful to feel guilty as a way to motivate change. The nature of that change....the resolve to reduce that distress....is something else altogether.
Just as relates to wearing women's clothing in the distant past I did feel shameful. How would this occur? As I have just ended my seventh decade of this planet my experiences over the years has varied greatly. I first tried on one of my mother's rompers from the 1930's when I was visiting my grandparents. I had absolutely nothing to do. My parents did not tell me to pack some toys. Or a book. No television to watch. I could not go down to the daylight basement to mess around. Total boredom. I felt nothing other than it gave me something to do. I remember my parents were not thrilled, but, there was no trip to the woodshed. No guilt. No shame.
Later, something clicked in my mind and I was drawn to my mother's nylon slips. I would fondle them. I loved the feel of nylon. The fabric was like nothing I experienced with my boy clothes. Finally I tried them on. Loved it. I felt no shame or guilt. Up to this point nobody told me what I was doing was WRONG. I was not indoctrinated by social norms and expectations yet. Somewhere along the way I gain some "knowledge" that wearing women's clothing was a sign of being a "queer," a "faggot," and "fruit" and some other choice words. So, I formed the opinion that wearing women's clothing = homosexuality = bad. Total confusion. I lusted after Annette Funicello and others. Since gayness was equated with a moral deficiency I felt shame. I think most people will believe conforming to societal norms and expectations is a good thing. Minor deviations are OK. But, there are core values to adhere to.
It took a very long time to realize there was a lot of misinformation going around. Wearing women's clothing does not equate to homosexuality. So, I am straight, but, still wearing women's clothing? Still confusing. There were no resources available to self psychoanalyze myself. No Dr. Google. You youngsters have the Internet or you would not be on this site. You realize what we are doing is not "bad." Reactions people have are not what we hope for, and, we have to deal with that. Their problem is also our problem because of the varying degrees of non acceptance.
I no longer ascribe to the notion wearing women's clothing is wrong. My wife is not on board with it. It is her problem, but, that also makes it my problem. I do not rub it in her face because of the bond between us. I know her background and reasons for reluctance to embrace my cross dressing. I am comfortable with my level of cross dressing. Others may not be so, but, I am.
When I sat down and thought out all this over the years I did reflect on the scale of life. It is weighed down heavily on the side of societal norms and expectations. I've done all the things society thought was good..as a male. I would conjecture there are not very many on this site who can say they have done or experienced some really traumatic experiences I have. I feel comfortable. No shame or guilt for anything I have done. Cross dressing is the least of them.
Sigh ... being human is hard.
Go to a crowded shopping mall, or a sporting event, an airport or a subway station. Look around you and realize that between the ears of every single person in existence, there is a well as endlessly deep, convoluted and mysterious as your own. This IS the human experience. For you, there is cross-gender expression mixed into that experience. For others it might be thrill seeking, it might be substance abuse, or sexual infidelity, or it might be something way out there and as completely off my radar as crossdressing is to most other people.
Knowing that, first cut yourself some slack.
Second: check your frame of reference. We are not perfect beings, born into a perfect world and corrupted through our own failings. Me, you, Donald Trump, your cat, your dog, and the bacteria in your gut digesting breakfast are simply this: the end result of billions of years of nature answering this one simple question: "did it survive long enough to reproduce?"
We have acne, wisdom teeth, heart failure, kidney disease, diabetes ... hell ... an astronomical number of us would completely blind and helpless without the technology of eyeglasses. So when people start talking about how cross-gender expression "isn't natural" ... well ... sorry hun, but that ship sailed like 600 years ago. 99.999% of us live lives that are completely and totally unnatural, and we'd be dead if we didn't.
In that context, ask yourself what the purpose of guilt and shame even are. How did these constructs come to exist in nearly every human who ever lived?
My point of view is that these constructs of guilt and shame are a survival instinct. Organisms survive longer in cooperative groups ... that is, communities. Cooperation is built on terms ... rules ... and rules cannot be constructed without generalizations. In that way, societies are literally built on abstraction and generalizations ... societies cannot exist without papering over the fact that while in some ways we are all the same ... we are also, each and every one of us ... infinitely different.
Guilt and shame are internalizations of the rules of the community we grew up in. These are survival instincts to help us fit into the society we live in ... to enhance our survival prospects and to henhance the longevity of the society itself.
These emotions have utility for sure, but are also in many ways out of place in the world we live in today. Guilt and fear are far from the only emotions in this category.
Take anxiety for instance. It arises from a deep place. It is baked into our DNA ... it's a survival instinct. Without it, our ancestors would not have survived predators and earthquakes and the rest. Today, almost no humans are killed by predators or the weather. It does happen, but not that often. Nonetheless, our old friend anxiety is still along for the ride, and a whole lot of us get around it by ingesting drugs to keep it at bay.
So ... I have waxed philosophical on this Saturday morning for sure, lol.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this ... take what little you can that is positive from guilt and shame, but then treat it ... exactly like you would acne, or nearsightedness or anxiety.
"Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world." -Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Kinda where I am leaning, Amy. Not so much feeling ashamed of who I am, just recognizing that in the aftermath, I have these emotions that I can perhaps use to good purpose or allow them to drive me into depressive isolation. Beside progressive deafness, occasional aches and pains, and the other progressions of aging, I'm doing fairly well....save this one continuing thing, a feeling that I somehow can undo what has happened if I can re-do myself. I know its magical thinking. I can't undo and even if I succeed in apparently "redoing" it won't alter the past. Sigh....deep sigh.
Guilt and shame are corrosive when they become ingrained habits, and plenty here seem to be saddled with them long term. Perhaps g & s may be helpful as pointers, but only if they can be moved on from.
I used to have a short attention spa
Guilt and shame should not enter ones mind in the general run of things if one is relating it to dressing alone then NO it should not become a thought slowly eating its way deeper until one needs help.
Truth be told, I needed help a long time ago....blew up a marriage and finally sought it out, got somewhat better at coping, then gradually allowed myself to slip back into old (and some new) destructive behaviors...blew up a marriage, sought help, and have gotten somewhat better at coping and controlling my behaviors. Now, we shall see.
Guilt, for me at least, seems to be an effective motivator.
I have found there is such a thing and toxic shame that's about who I am. Healthy shame or guilt is about wha I've done.
Amanda
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