What did you gain from gender therapy?

[mary something]

If you went to gender therapy what do you feel was most helpful about it to you?

I ask this question because at the time I wasn't sure how helpful the sessions were, some very much but some not so much. Now looking back at the topics we covered I can see a lot of valuable lessons.

An HRT referral is kinda a given, I mean more emotionally helpful

[Angela Campbell]

I have benefited a lot from it. The first therapist made me feel better just by helping me to accept that it is ok to be a girl. She was very helpful and is the one who told me I was a transexual. She referred me to one who specializes in transitions. He has been a wealth of information. We discussed my background and any additional issues first, then we moved on to topics as to how to address this with family and work. We have discussed legal issues like name and gender change, and the WPATH SOC. He has asked me to start a plan on how to go about the transition even though it is not likely it will go according to plan. We have discussed so many other things as well and it all makes me feel better about my situation. It is still stressful because no matter what I will always be in this alone but he is helping me to cope with it.

He has told me that he will help me pick a doctor from some he knows well in the next week or two so I can begin HRT. He tell sme that any plan I come up with will change once I am on the hormones for a while and to expect this.

So far the most helpful thing is both of them make me feel like I am almost normal and should not be ashamed for what I am, and they give me hope that I can be what and who I always wanted to be.

[emma5410]

My therapist did not tell me I was transsexual. I would have been worried if she had although there were times I wished she would because I struggled to accept it. The type of therapy she practices means that it is the client that has to discover and arrive at these answers. She did have the knack of asking just the right question. I did a lot of work between sessions thinking through what we had discussed.

I am in the UK so a therapist is not involved in prescribing HRT. As far as I know HRT is only usually available after seeing psychiatrists at a Gender clinic. My therapist helped me to come to terms with being transsexual. She helped me work through my feelings of guilt, shame and self hate. It may sound melodramatic but I am not sure I would still be alive if had not been for her help.

[Angela Campbell]

She did not just come out and say it. She allowed me to realize it and confirmed it. It happened over time. My other therapist confirmed it as well. I just sped things up in explaination to use less words.

[DaniG]

I got into therapy after my epiphany. I'd always been someone who thought they were in control of things Boy, was I wrong. This year has been an exercise in reeducation on reality, including "welcome to yourself." My therapist has helped me to navigate all these associated issues. She's acted not as a guide, but as a sounding board, assisting me in finding my own conclusions. She did not tell me I was transgendered, but talked through my feelings on the subject until I was pretty sure about it. Finally, after much prodding, she confirmed with her agreement. She's also assisted me as a resource, connecting me with trans groups in the city and alerting me to trans related events such as a talk on trans health care.

I started therapy bewildered and frightened. I went from that to inquisitive and doubting. Now, I'm more comfortable with my new self and the transition I'm certain is in my future. I think without that therapy, I'd be in much worse shape with myself and in my marriage. I think everyone who's trans and not years post-op should be in therapy to some degree.

[STACY B]

At the least someone to talk to an open up that get it . An you can talk about anything an they will give you an honest answer ,,
An maybe shed some light on thing from another point of view .

[josee]

My therapist has been working with me a lot on learning to accept and love myself. I always walk out of her office feeling better than when I walked in.

[Maiko Newhalf]

It was very helpful in the beginning. Lately I was trying to keep things more or less status quo socially so there's not a lot to talk about between me and my therapist. Well, I'm sure there's going to be some bumps down the road where the emotional support became important again.

[Christine.Lolita]

What I got so far from therapy is the realization that I have a right to be happy in my life even though I was born gender variant. I should not feel less of a person, or that I deserve less.
I have also had the chance to talk to a person face to face about all the issues and feelings that I have been dealing with. Just the act of talking to someone and not holding back anything out of fear of judgment is very cathartic.
The other side of my therapy sessions is that I am in doubt and confused about where I am in the gender spectrum. When I started I felt that I was a CDer, but of the past 5 months I am feeling more that I am TS.
I am still going to therapy and will continue as long as I feel uncertainty. If I am truly a TS than I will take it one step at a time.

[mary something]

I understand not feeling like one needs gender therapy, I used to feel that way myself. And I understand that there is a learning curve, it seems in my case it was learning to stop using the same coping mechanisms that I had used my entire life to deal with my gender identity. Namely I had to learn to be comfortable enough with myself to just be me without worrying about what the therapist thought. As Stacy says you can talk about ANYTHING, it is the only relationship in your life where you can totally let it out without any judgement or repercussions. This was so essential to my self-understanding to be able to voice feelings out loud without restraint that I had never allowed myself to before.

Looking back on my sessions I realize now that all of them were so important, it's just some of the lessons wouldn't be applicable until later. We spent a lot of time looking for small errors in my thinking that had been socialized as acceptable and that I wasn't even very aware of at the time since it was something that I had been doing since childhood. Specifically she helped me to recognize when my thinking was very black and white, to overcome the need to self-justify myself other than the wish to be happy and fulfilled, and perhaps most importantly she helped me to clean the lens through which I view the world to avoid false dichotomies and other unseen traps that would keep me from living a life that was best for me. Now I realize that it would be almost impossible to work through this with any other person than a therapist, because there is no judgement except what one imposes on themself when there. If you keep going you realize that it is truly a powerful and transformative experience that will give you the tools needed to self-navigate a path that few examples and role models exist to follow.

I agree Dani that everyone should participate in some therapy, from the occassional cross dresser to even a fully assimilated postop woman that is years removed from her physical transition. The reason I say this is because like a pair of glasses gets dirty just from living life, our lens through which we view the world gets dirty over time. The problem is that part of the human mechanism of dealing with a world that is constantly bombarding us with stimuli we learn at a very early age how to filter all the sensory and emotional experiences that we get in order to make sense of the world and ourselves. It is this very self-protective mechanism that can also be distorted through no fault of our own, and cause us distress.

In other words it's a lot easier to fool ourselves than someone else, and it's just a part of human nature because of how we're designed to perceive our environments without becoming totally overwhelmed. It is for this reason that socialization is SO IMPORTANT, and in my opinion it all starts with an opportunity to have the only judgement free relationship that any of us will ever have in our lives.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

MY therapist was very helpful..It can be difficult to tell if you are in "bad therapy" and it gives therapists a bad name sometimes..

therapy helps people that are trapped in their inner dialog... that was me.. I am/i'm not....i can't/I must...I will/I wont ....
and people that are suffering comordid issues like depression or anxiety...they can also help manage inter family communications...

my therapist did all this..

she never told me what i was or wasn't... she never told me that i should start HRT (she did ask if i considered it)...same with electroylsis/laser...

another thing she did which was huge for me was that she introduced me to transsexual women.....those women really made me better understand what i was going through...all my gender related friends were cds...it was a revelation to meet women that had transitioned...the impossible became possible in an instant....

[mary something]

Yes I can sympathyze with that very much Kaitlyn, I actually years before had reached a cathartic point in my life where I felt that transition was needed but in no way was capable of safely achieving it. I found an article on the internet written by someone who had actually detransitioned who gave the advice to work on getting yourself as mentally healthy as possible beforehand. I entered conventional therapy at that point and was able to make some much needed corrections to my self-talk and inner dialog.

Speaking a thought out loud makes it real and gives it meaning by allowing us to own it in another's presence. By sharing some of my self-talk and inner dialog with my therapist it really helped me to calibrate my compass so to speak.

[Leanne2]

In therapy I learned that gender identity is separate from sexual orientation. They were developed at different times in the womb. That lack of knowledge played a major roll in the delay of my self awareness of what I am; a transgender woman that is attracted to women ( actually just one woman, my wife.) My life could have been so very different had I just known this fact sooner. Hopefully today's transgender children will be treated correctly for their birth defect. Leanne

[mary something]

yes Leanne I found that being gynophilic was very confusing to me also, I think that some of the misunderstandings between transsexuals can stem from whether they are attracted to men or women, and how that influenced their self-awareness while they formed their narrative

[mikiSJ]

I started therapy last November with a very experienced and warm counselor.

I think my therapy has allowed me bring out secrets that have held me back since my teens (being raped, having my mother try to stab me and others). By getting all of these issues out, I am able to explore where I should have been and how to get there now.

I CDed since I was 6. I told my wife of 37 years before we married but the need for Miki to get out became too much and with help from my counselor, Miki is becoming what she should have been. I no longer consider myself to be a crossdresser, but rather I am transgendered. I do not want to transition, but I want to merge Michael and Miki into something that I haven't yet figured out.

My counselor is there to help, to offer hope, solutions, a friendly shoulder - and I am glad I found her and her counsel.

[mary something]

yes I believe my therapist called it integration but I remember working on that also, sounds like a great start and a wonderful goal!