Obsessive

[Carlene]

Is what we do/are/want to be, obsessive in nature? Is transgenderism (umbrella term, sorry) a seed in its early stages that grows like a weed when nurtured? I believe, for myself anyway, it is obsessive. I also think that, for anything more than casual crossdressing, it is by its very nature, obsessive.

Is this not something that is on our minds a great deal of the time? I'll wager that GGs aren't constantly thinking about being womanly. It is just something they are. They get up in the morning and just be.

Please don't think that I am criticizing. I'm not. I am wrestling with the dificulty of my situation daily......... obsessively, I suppose.........:) I don't understand why and how I got here. I know full well that the consequences of my actions may be dire, but still, I resist letting go of this tiger's tail.

Thank you for listening,

Carlene....:daydreaming:

[melissaK]

Thoughtful. I'm not a psychologist, and I don't know enough about obsessive disorders, but I know plenty of other qualified professional people have looked at TGism and considered its obsessive component, and they don't attribute TGism to an obsessive compulsive disorder. I expect with some research you can find the papers of the writers who have considered it.

Anne Vitale is a counselor, author, and is pretty approachable, and might even answer an email about the topic.

Or possibly Arlene Lev, a writer and counselor ("Transgender Emeregence.").

Or, get a copy of "Handbook of LGBT-Affirmative Couple and Family Therapy."

I'd venture what you will find is the obsessive component comes from trying to cope with the anxiety caused by repressing TG expression, and that those free to be the gender of their choice, they don't display obsessive traits about their gender anymore.

Hugs

[Rianna Humble]

It is possible that you could say that the desire to be whole is obsessive in nature, yet that is what I want.

I don't believe that being born transsexual is obsessive in nature, but it certainly provides us with plenty of conflicts.

If you consider that lying to myself that I could never transition and doing everything I could to continue to pretend I could be a man was "nurturing" the problem that is caused by my Gender Dysphoria then I am guilty as charged. To my mind, though, the dysphoria grew worse despite my resistance not because I "nurtured" it.

There was a period, just prior to the start of my RLE, where I started to obsess about the mechanics of the transition such as how and what to tell at work, how to let my family and political colleagues know, how to tell my doctor what I needed ... but I don't think that I obsess particularly over how to let my true nature express itself

[LeaP]

There's obsessive and then there's obsessive. When most people use the word, they are implying something pathological. As in OCD.

Are gender/sex issues pathologically obsessive in nature? They can be. A good therapist will screen for this every time. Mine did.

When someone questions whether something is obsessive, though, they are also implying that the target of the obsession is illegitimate if pathological obsession is found. That easy assumption, however, is incorrect. Someone who actually is transsexual may also have a problem with obsession, just as they may have a problem with depression, schizophrenia, or any number of other things. Just like anyone else. The therapist's job is to figure out whether the gender/sex issue is rooted in the obsession or whether obsession problem is unrelated.

Then there are activities and interests that take up a great deal of time and energy. People like to call these obsessive, too, especially if they don't think that someone should spend that kind of time and energy. That's dangerous thinking when coupled to real issues like gender/sex, because it feeds the meme that (in this case) transsexualism is an illness.

Well, how about people who are adopted who comb the ends of the earth trying to find their birth parents? How about someone who works three jobs for decades to put their children through college? What about someone who sacrifices everything to be an artist? I view the transsexual's quest to correct their physiology in the same vein. What could possibly be a more natural and understandable focus? And – when the journey is complete – no sign of the so-called obsession is left, typically.

No. It's just a variation on the myriad of ways to say that one does not believe.

[Kathryn Martin]

Is what we do/are/want to be, obsessive in nature? Is transgenderism (umbrella term, sorry) a seed in its early stages that grows like a weed when nurtured? I believe, for myself anyway, it is obsessive. ....

Is this not something that is on our minds a great deal of the time? I'll wager that GGs aren't constantly thinking about being womanly. It is just something they are. They get up in the morning and just be.

This is an interesting thread. In my view, there are two phenomena that can be observed which can mask as a similarity but are fundamentally different.

The first one is obsession. Rianna somewhat alluded to this aspect as a companion to transition. If you experience an intense sex or gender/sex conflict your behavior takes on the character of an obsession even though it is in fact a direct outflow of the conflict and the corresponding need to overcome, heal if you will that conflict. We appear obsessive in the single mindedness of the pursuit of wholeness, but also in the single mindedness of our focus on the issues that underlie our conflict. This is not an obsession with womanliness but rather an obsession to be whole. This is common with all who experience disability or disfigurement and can take both external forms, that is surgical intervention to become whole and also psychological work to overcome the rift experienced or to overcome the damage done by our disability. It will, after a time following the achievement of wholeness vanish and no further thoughts or emotions are expended on it, except in remembering the difficulties experienced.

The second, and I think this is what you are referring to, is addiction. There is ample evidence that finding satisfaction in realizing a fantasy or dream of being a woman often temporarily grows proportionately with the frequency with which this form of satisfaction is obtained. Fantasies become part of their mainstream life, and satisfaction obtained often shifts from initially purely sexual to the comforting. Ultimately they are both the same albeit the tendency is to move from the sexual to the comfort form of satisfaction. The more this is experineced the more it becomes a "need" and often tends to result in questions like "am I transsexual". The action benefit loop, and the need to find satisfaction in either sexual arousal or comfort gets tighter until such a question is quite natural. It is however classic addictive behavior and so often ends, like any addictive behavior in the destruction of personal lives and social networks and professional engagement. Very often these dreams are accompanied by desires to miraculously waking up as a woman, being forced to become a woman, in some strange sense abdicating responsibility either by this fantasy or by the destructive behavior so often seen. If such an individual attempts to transition the loss of the action benefit loop almost invariably leads to frustrated unfulfilled lonely lives.

I think it is also important to note, that among transsexuals destruction of life circumstances can occur. If that happens it is often a by-product of achieving wholeness and dissipates once transition is complete and the individual can move on to a normal life.

[KellyJameson]

Obsessive behavior is often about control as a way to reduce anxiety such as the person who fears germs so constantly washes their hands.

It can also be about the intense need for structure and uniformity that once again reduces stress and occupies the mind in pleasurable but narrow pursuits.

In my own life my mind refused to adopt a male identity and insisted on building a female identity very early in life that could than not be "lived" so was buried by being pushed below conscious awareness very much like how a child who is sexually abused will "forget" the experience.

I was always intensely interested in how trauma could be forgotten and that was one way my mind was trying to uncover my own trauma of suppressed identity.

I could not understand my interest in this because I knew there was no trauma in my life because I had very clear memories going all the way back to when I was two years old.

My mind was searching for "forgotten" identity that was caused by the trauma of living contrary to my body.

The types of mental sickness I was interested in pointed indirectly to my own sickness as a result of suppressed identity causing and caused by gender identity trauma.

In a way I was gender raped by both my environment and body so was violated.

Suppression never works because the identity just like the sexual violence becomes a part of us but the sexual violence is an act that happened to the person where the identity "is the person" so the identity is actually more difficult to discover and name than the act because it is hidden in plain sight so the effects are much more nuanced than the effects of sexual violence.

For me in childhood gender dysphoria was like a background noise in my brain that never ended.

This identity will keep pushing for expression because there is really only two states of consciousness, living and formation of your identity or suppression through dissociation so the person goes into mental illness from suppression of identity and because of identity conflict creating mood instability which you see all the time with transsexuals before they understand that they are transsexuals.

The problem of understanding what is happening comes from other forms of trauma being layered on top of the suppressed identity such as child abuse which I think is extremely common to the child who turns out to be transsexual because their behavior makes them targets for bullies and rejection or condemnation by family members

Children absorb hate just as easily as love so if you have been exposed to gender related hate such as a mother who distains men and wanted a daughter instead of a son or a father who distains woman and wanted a son but ended up with a son acting like a girl this rejection by adults will become mixed in with the rejection of self confusing the underlying reasons for the gender dysphoria.

For myself I needed to be sure of the reasons that I identified as female and than suppressed this identity.

I wanted to be absolutely sure that this identity was "natural" to me and not caused by unhealthy life experiences from poor adult relating in a family or community setting.

I spent much of my life with two obsessions. Becoming a woman and preventing myself from becoming one and for thirty years I was pulled back and forth between these two opposing poles.

It was simply fear and ignorance with all its many faces that kept me living in this constant state of tension so living in a state of constant dissociation and obsession taking something that could have been resolved in a few years and stretching it out over many.

It is simply terrifying to realize you are living in the wrong body because once you see the problem clearly than you must act because the nature of the suffering changes and it stops being a background noise always interfering in your life and explodes out into the open.

Once the genie is out of the bottle there is no going back.

It is no longer being suppressed so pushed down below conscious awareness as living in a constant state of mental numbness through dissociation and suppression.

Your obsession may be that same tension I lived where I knew the truth but refused to accept it.

Understand your fears about how you would feel if you discovered you are actually a transsexual.

Also look closely at your childhood for abuse, neglect, rejection that is gender specific.

You want to be sure you are not reacting to violence against you as a "boy" so to escape internalized hate by others you than go into the feminine.

It is very important to understand the source of any self loathing.

Make sure you are rejecting self as foreign to you and not because you were made to hate yourself by what others have done to you.

Many men and women reject their gender because of psychological violence done sexually or in other ways related specifically to gender.

I do believe that gender identity formation is strongly correlated to brain structure and you see this with those born intersexed who identify as opposite their assigned gender and pursue sex changes later in life.

This is a constant problem in the intersexed community that has caused alot of rage because they believe they have been mutilated by the medical community along with conflicting feelings of love and betrayal for the parents that have allowed it.

I personally believe we are born with both our natural gender identity and our natural sexual identity and than it just becomes a matter of living naturally or contrary to what is normal for us.

You can force yourself to live contrary to both gender identity and sexuality but you will suffer the consequences because you will than live in opposition to self so must exert constant control over self which is exhausting plus you must live in a very narrow range of "safe behavior"

Expand your understanding of identity and search your memory for instances where you may have tried to assert this identity as a child or kept it hidden if you were in a hostile environment.

You want to search for internalized misandry or misogyny. If you are attracted to one gender over the other because you think one is superior to the other I would treat this has a red flag and a possible indication of internalized hate or unhealthy parental bonding and identification

[kimdl93]

It can be. So can collecting toy trains. The question is really how your CDing might affect your ability to function in other aspects of your life...your work, personal relationships, your personal finances. If its adverse in those areas, then you may Ned to consider therapy to address the obsessiveness.

[groove67]

I deal with this everyday of my life and have for years. In my heart I know that i am female feel it and when dressed no sexual thing i just feel totally right. If i knew what i know now would have made the transition many years ago. However can only change the future and i am very sure in few years i will be what i should have been at birth. As i council i hear that what i feel is totally what i am. so her i go and you ladies here have really been a huge help to me in reading about your struggles.

[Carlene]

Yes Kathryn, I think addictive might better describe the behaviour many exhibit. There is a certain comfort to be found in the non-aggressive nature of women. A comfort in being vulnerable while seeking social acceptance rather than male situational dominance attitudes, if you will. Seeking such comfort can't be all bad, though, particularly when the male is unhappy with himself.

In any event, thank you for your insightful comments.

Carlene :daydreaming:

[cathie pantyhose]

the thousand pair of pantyhose I own yet still unopened and still buying more might be considered obsessive......