The past three months have been agonizing for me. My 30+ year marriage is on the rocks, and my wife wants me to move out. She, of course, blames it all on me, on my transgender issues, and on my efforts to come out of the closet. The reason I felt I needed to "come out" was to relieve what I believed was "Gender Expression Deprivation Anxiety Disorder" (a term coined by Anne Vitale, Ph.D.), which was causing severe depression, suicidal thoughts, and frequent chest pains. In view of the fact that I recently had a heart attack and was found to have an aneurysm of the ascending aorta, I honestly feared that the stress of GEDAD (or GID or whatever you want to call it) might literally kill me.
Being Maggie was the only thing that totally relieved my symptoms. Therefore, based on the TG literature I read, together with my past history, I came to believe that I must be transgendered. I also had been seeing a clinical social worker and a psychologist who specialized in gender identity issues. But I really wanted to be a husband for my wife and a father for my children. So I was also looking for a way to free myself from the CDing without killing myself.
Therefore, I read whatever I could find on the Internet to help me figure this out. Unfortunately, because the available literature was deeply divided along ideological lines which did not address my specific needs, it ultimately made my situation worse.
I found the TG literature to fall into roughly three categories:
1. Articles by people who are themselves transsexual (such as Anne Vitale), who contend that gender identity is permanently fixed at birth, and that we should accept our transgenderism and transition if we can. (This position seems to have become the conventional wisdom expressed in TG forums and support groups and by TG counselors. It helps to relieve the guilt and stigma associated with CDing, and it provides a rationale for anti-discrimination legislation to protect TGs.)
2. Articles by people (such as Jerry Leach) who condemn transgenderism on religious grounds and who therefore advocate Scripture-based "reparative therapy" to deliver TGs from their sinful ways. (This position is espoused by religious and political conservatives who oppose anti-discrimination legislation to protect TGs. However, the evidence indicates that "reparative therapy" has a poor success rate, and that it often does more harm than good.)
3. Articles based on arcane psychoanalytic theories (which I didn't find helpful after many years of unproductive psychoanalysis myself).
Having already exhausted Option 3 in the past, I found myself forced to choose between the extremes of Options 1 and 2. Option 1 didn't fit me, because it required that I ignore my masculine essence. When I read the literature based on Option 2, I could identify with many of the case histories. However, the more I dwelled upon this literature (with its underlying judgmentalism) the worse my depression and chest pains became.
After much reflection, I now believe that my situation does not fit entirely within any of the paradigms offered by the literature. Right now I am able to feel much better by nurturing my masculine essence. This involves regaining my feeling of freedom, autonomy, and sense of purpose. I had lost these qualities, for various reasons, back in 2002, shortly before I resumed CDing after 30 years of abstinence.
My message is simply that we are each unique, and our uniqueness isn't adequately addressed by the literature on the Internet. We should be aware that an article's objectivity may be obscured by the author's personal perspective or promotion of an ideological agenda - either one way or the other.
Maggie
Originally Posted by Maggie
So many groups, so many agendas
