Why? My long winded rant!

[Anne Elizabeth]

This is my rant so to say that was sparked by Dreamer_grl's thread "Sex change Regret web site.
I chose to make this my rant, or my confusion rather than mess up her thread. I would appreciate any to read this and please offer up any of your own personal observations and experiences to these rants. Sorry it is so long. I guess that I need to go see my counselor as it has been way too long.

You know as my marriage to a wonderful person takes a turn for the worse this posting with all the comments brings me again to the point of self reflection. I think these threads are great in that those of us that are trying to really figure out where and what we need in life are posed with thought provoking question that need to be answered again and again to make sure of why we are heading down this path.

I myself have many times and still do wonder am I just trying to "fix the past" (as KellyJameson and said), am I trying to relive what I missed, did I somehow grow up thinking that being a woman would be a better life? I sometimes question "What am I running from? Am I running from difficult times with my wife thinking it would be easier if I were just a woman? Am I running from difficult times at work thinking if I were just a woman things would be different?
Am I just running from myself?

I mean why would anybody want to throw away the best things of their life just to transition., just to live their life a different gender than what they were born with?

I am sure all of you know this scares the s--- out you and it truly scares the s--- out of me.
I have spent most of the last four years working through this with my wife. I know she hates it and has to get away from it yet she is also very protective and loving of me. She probably understands me better than I do. I have talked with my children, some understand and I believe one has a hard time with it, but they all still love me. One of my brothers has said he still loves me. I have not heard form two others. Hell I even talked to a business partner the other day and I was totally surprised by his remarks. Man am I the only one that doesn't know how to love unconditionally?

I have heard over and over don't transition unless you are totally sure, unless there is no way out. What does it take to be at that point? I figured there would be some opposition form others, other than my wife and I fully understand her position. I think maybe I thought that if I ran into some opposition that maybe it would knock some sense into me. (I am not discounting the many tears from my wife either, don't get me wrong) But, it appears that the most opposition I am running into is my own mind, My own fears of the future, of being accepted as a different person at work, with all the others I know and interact with on a daily basis. I mean do I have to find a trigger, train, pills, or something to prove to myself that the path to transition is correct?

Am I running from the reality of life as a man and the so called societal standards of a men? Or am I running toward the so called societal standards of a woman in order to escape those standards of a man?

The one and only thing that I have is that somewhere in my own mind I have convinced myself or I believe it to be that I should have been born a woman. that is the only thing that I have and I have let that run my life and ruin my life.

So I go back again to something KellyJameson said
"Transitioning must never happen out of self deception but be grounded in the reality of how you experience yourself." And "It must be a truth based relationship you have with yourself with no room for fantasy or delusion or you will destroy yourself"

Now I ask myself
How do I experience myself?
How do I make sure I am not running from reality?
If I am running from reality?, then all those problems I have had and personality conflicts and personality quirks will still be there, and if that is so then I need to fix those before transitioning or at the very least along the way.

Yours

Anne Elizabeth:straightface:

[lingerieLiz]

I think that we all bring baggage from society. By that I mean when I was young it was assumed only "queers" dressed like women. While I liked to wear women's clothes, I was only attracted to girls. I was lucky enough to have a friend who was coming to terms with being gay. I played dress up and he had dates with a "girl". We each learned who we were. I was a straight CD, liked girls, and didn't want to be a woman but liked their clothes.

One thing that many don't understand is that there is an infinite set of sexuality, gender, and identity combinations. We need to select our own combinations and not try to fit others. There is reality in how you will live and face others. No one should accept preconceived notions of how someone should live. We all make choices. If you will be happier living as a woman and desire it above all others then a sex change may be right. I don't know how you feel so I can't answer for you nor should I.

[Aimee20]

Anne, the questions and fear you are expressing are normal and justified; this isn't a long winded rant, more like a self monologue. I've spent quite a long time thinking along the same line of "so-and-so would be easier if I had been born female, but that is kind of circular reasoning. Because how much of the problems with relationships, work, family etc. are actually due in part to the inner struggle we face every day? Looking at your questions there are a few ways for you to answer them.

How do i experience myself? Do your actions and words feel authentic? Do you feel guilt/regret/shame when reacting in a typically male fashion?
How do I make sure I am not running from reality? That depends on your perception and where your true feelings like, most of this line of thinking will be answered while you are looking in to the first question.
If you are running from reality...? If you are, that falls to the first question again. So much of how we feel and act is truly based on what the outside world sees. If you are moving towards transition you would spend quite a bit of time working on building healthy habits and working through the root causes of fears and anxieties you face, working towards being the complete package.

So much of what causes pre-transitional woes and conflicts really is due in fact to having negative self image. You mentioned feeling like you are the only one that doesn't know how to love unconditionally, which is very true. Loving yourself and who you are first is really needed to be able to really extend that love outward. You really do have to devote time to work on you and sort your feelings and emotions as well as work through negative though patterns.

Que sera, sera sweetie.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Go to therapy. Live day by day.
Start living outside of your head a little bit.
Meet some transsexuals. Get information on what it really means to transition.

You are appropriately concerned.


One thing you said..
I mean why would anybody want to throw away the best things of their life just to transition., just to live their life a different gender than what they were born with?


I would simply ask you how much value you are getting from these "best things"... are they filling your "cup of life"...do they make you feel fulfilled and alive? do these "best things in life" give you the comfort and pleasure in life that can get you through the "tough times" when perhaps you were really really upset over your gender problem?

Don't you think the best things in your life should be things you can enjoy and cherish in a way that fills your life life with meaning?? When I had to answer this question no, I knew it was time to do something

[I Am Paula]

Nice rant.
Being a woman is not looking for a better life, it is looking for your REAL life.
I'm not running from anything. I am running toward something.
I don't regret anything. My memories, hopes, and dreams will always remain. I'm just living them in a better body.

[Marleena]

Good replies here. The failure rate is very low for TS women that transition and that is documented. There are many post-op women on this site that are living happy lives as their true selves. TG/TS people are news fodder right now and people are trying to cash in on that ( Dreamer's link). When TG/TS people fight for their rights you'll see other groups and haters push back. Do what is right for you to live a better quality of life. There is help out there.:)

[arbon]

I mean why would anybody want to throw away the best things of their life just to transition., just to live their life a different gender than what they were born with?


Because I was incredibly miserable.

The thing was I could not feel okay about myself living as a man.

[PaulaQ]

Why? I hated myself, and I hated my male body. I hated fighting to contain who I really was. I hated the constant fear of discovery. I hated feeling valueless, always living my life for everyone else's sake, receiving nothing in return.

[LeaP]

Now I ask myself
How do I experience myself?
How do I make sure I am not running from reality?
If I am running from reality?, then all those problems I have had and personality conflicts and personality quirks will still be there, and if that is so then I need to fix those before transitioning or at the very least along the way.


Kaitlyn was correct when she said you need to get out of your head.

That is usually taken – and was taken by me – as a call to stop overanalyzing. Thinking about and through everything, but never feeling anything (except anxiety and upset). Think less, do more, as it is sometimes put.

That is only partially right. There is nothing wrong with thinking. The problem is that all of our thinking is wrapped up in external expectations of us and which we have internalized. That precipitates an emotional firestorm when we feel overwhelmed by them or feel our control, our ability to respond to them, slipping.

The internalized framework is not your own. Put another way, these are not truly your thoughts. They do not represent how you might think and feel on your own. This can happen to anyone, not just trans people. And it can be compounded by any number of additional factors besides, like external stress, psychosis, etc.

I suppose there are any number of ways to deal with this, but the only one that has had much impact on me has been mindful meditation. Cognitive therapy may help also. It did not for me, however.

The difference is this: Cognitive therapy is aimed at changing how you think and respond. If you find the prospect of going to work depressing, for example, cognitive therapy approaches may be able to help in turning this around into a positive experience. Mindful meditation, on the other hand, is aimed at getting you to experience the moment, the here and now. Either can be away of experiencing the "real you."

So why did mindful meditation work for me? Because the biggest problem I had to break was escapism. I would do anything (consciously or not) to avoid reality. I would simply never let myself be pinned down. Not rationally, emotionally, or any other way. Press me and it would turn into a pretty unpleasant backlash.

My therapist didn't tell me to just go meditate, though. At that point, the suggestion would've produced a response like "umm… sure… yeah, I'll go right out and do that (not)". What she told me to do was to stop when I had some sort of emotional reaction and sit quietly until I could describe how I felt, because my problem, being the escapist I am, was that I never could describe my feelings. My entire being was wrapped up in not having them at all! Clever therapist - she got me to meditate without telling me that is what it was. The end result, for purposes of this thread, is that I finally got to the point where I could not only describe how I felt, I could feel who I am. It was hard, and it took me quite a while.

Plenty of others here will tell you they had success with cognitive therapies and other approaches, too. Different techniques are appropriate to different kinds of issues and needs. You will have to experiment a little to find out what works for you, because while you are in the crisis, you cannot know for certain what the issue is.

This is why I have a problem with suggestions of jumping to hormones or taking transition steps with serious implications. Kaitlyn, for example, often advocates taking small steps, but I am dead certain she would not advocate truly consequential steps in your psychological state. You don't have to fix everything in your life to move ahead with transition, even if they are pathological. But you should have a strong conviction, based in self-knowledge, that it is the right path. And that you do not have.

[KellyJameson]

It is really important to remember that no two transsexuals are alike. The journey and even the reasons may and are going to be different from one person to the next.

Many transsexuals are sexual with men from the very beginning and others are sexual with women, often starting families.

Our sexual experiences and the lives we build around sex will play heavily to how gender dysphoria is dealt with.

An example from my own life would be my experience and exposure to and in the world of drag. I used fantasy to "feel real" and "natural" but I will never know how much of that "deepened my female identity"

Identity is fixed but also fluid so it can to a certain extent be changeable but I'm what I call a "hard core case" in that I never experienced a reprieve from my female identity where others seem to have had the ability to repress it by getting married and "manning up"

I tried to "man up" and it would last for a few months and than my life would blow up from depression and anxiety and I would run for the exit like the building was on fire.

I could not go against this thing in me that made me feel like I was "living untruly"

Severe gender dysphoria has an element of "living a lie" to it but you have to be aware enough of yourself (mindful as Lea said) to see and feel the lie.

I have always been an extremely sensitive person emotionally so there was never any chance that I could escape for long from my feelings.

This is my temperament and I'm sure why in the first years of life I aquired a female identity because no boy I had ever met had this but only the girls so naturally by being around girls and boys it was easy for me to figure out who I was.

This identity was imprinted on me and so deeply cut into my mind there was never any chance of me being able to erase it and the thing is nothing has really changed in that as an adult I do not find myself in other men but only women

I think there is a spectrum that transsexuals live on just like other men and women where there are transsexuals just like other women who have a masculine side to them.

All men and women have elements of masculine and feminine energies. I never had a reprieve because I'm so far to one end of the spectrum that I have to consciously work at bringing the masculine energy into my life to have balance.

I would not have been willing to do this before because I would have feared losing myself even further but with transitioning it becomes "safer" to "let the man out in me" which is a type of forceful energy that helps support my will power.

In my opinion transitioning brings the person "back into balance"

I always felt I was living a lie or my back was against the wall or I was drowning or cornered or suffocating.

Several times over the last four years I would literally feel as if someone had drilled a hole in my head and released the pressure as I would experience the understanding as epiphanies and each one brought me closer to the truth and the more truth and understanding I had the more I acted to physically change myself.

This had been happening all along but it became very focused on gender the last four years which just meant that I "was ready" to face the trauma of what I had lived through.

To live a whole life with gender dysphoria is an extreme shock to the mind much like being violently raped or experiencing some other form of trauma. The mind shuts off and builds wallls around the memory of "identity" which I believe is what Lea is describing and why she went numb.

If you are only now starting to confront this trauma your mind may put up a huge fight to protect itself from the "realization of who you actually are as your gender" and the trauma will be measured based on where you fall on the "transsexual spectrum" so how far and how long you have lived "out of balance"

In my opinion this is why some people do not need to completely transition to "find balance" but others "must transition" to ever hope to experience balance.

Gender is subconscious and your subconscious knows who it is but the subconscious is where we store all our pain so to get to your subconscious "to consciously know your gender" requires bringing up to conscious memory (remembering) all that buried (forgotten) pain.

When I "remembered" my female identity from childhood as connecting all the dots as what I was doing as a child to keep this identity before I suppressed it, I experienced severe depression for months and than rage.

Transitioning is a tortous experience in every sense of the word because it is always about pain of one kind or another until you completely come out the other side.

I'm really amazed anybody survives it.

Read everybody's words but remember your path is unique so look for what sounds and feels familiar to you but don't let anybody define the experience for you.

I have had a very surreal life so far removed from the word normal that my experiences would be a poor comparison for others. I try to take my story and word it so that elements of it may emotionally resonate with others but I assure you I'm very odd and way out there compared to 99 and 9/10 of the people walking on this planet so I make a very poor yard stick to measure yourself against.

I'm quite sure that I'm an alien left accidently behind by my parents when they were visiting from another planet. Or they dumped me here.

[Anne Elizabeth]

Thanks! Iwant thank those who have responded to my post. You have provided me with a lot to ponder and think about. This is what I like about this web site. I am provided with a wealth of information and allowed the opportunity to think through everything and make my own decisions. As a preliminary thought on the process I am going to stop and smell the roses the rest of this year. My wife has recently announces to her congregation that we are separating and she has asked to be moved to a different location. She will be moved to another state about 6 to 7 hours away. I myself have been seeing a therapist for the last 3 and half years.I haven't been able to get there yet this year because of my work schedule. Last year my therapist said when I was ready for the letter she would write it. I talked to my family doc. and he provided me with the names of endos. I know how I feel and believe what I should do;continue with transition. However, since I have been trying to do all the right things in my life and satisfy everybody and build an art business; I have decided that I need to Stop and Smell The Roses this year. I need to live life to the fullest for me and find friends and do things with family however I can. I need to find the real me. By taking a lot off the table and my plate I believe that I can truly find myself. During this time I believe that I will get a real understanding of myself and most likely be ready to transition.

Thanks

[kerrianna]

It sounds like you are doing just fine hon.
This is a huge transformation. No matter what you do in a real world sense, just facing things and opening up yourself to truth and deep honesty is a big big thing many people never get close to.

From my own experience these are some things that I learned along the way, and they echo a lot of what has been said here...

Get out of your own way. Recognize fears and doubts as being genuine and understand that paying attention to them is only prudent. But it doesn't mean they are right. Fears and doubts are ghosts usually. You'll know if they are that to you.

Explore. That's the main thing. Find yourself. Test yourself. See how it feels. How do you react?

Go as fast or as slow as works for you. That may change. All the time. Just get used to the flow of change, as it comes to you. Your journey is unique and only you can know what works and what doesn't.

Accept you may make mistakes or take wrong turns. But know you will not only survive them you will learn from them.

Keep reaching out and expressing yourself, and try not to judge yourself and try not to judge others. Take your time if you need to. Find people you trust and people who will help. Believe in yourself, not as a woman or whatever... but as a soul. Start with your soul and work your way out.

It doesn't matter WHY in the end. It only matters is this right for you.

I went back and forth and all over for ages. I was scared. I finally admitted that and that was an important step. Because then I could see Fear as a wall I had to climb over if I wanted to see what was on the other side.

I used this forum a lot in the early days to figure out what the 'eck was going on and what to do about it. It helped. Just journaling helped. Having people to talk to, even cis-people who had no experience with gender issues but had experience with me or just plain liked me as a person, helped.

I also bogged myself down with doubts. I was always a worrier. I imagined all the worst scenarios. Most of them, like always, never came true.

And I tried it on, at my pace. I started with therapy to talk. T blocker to feel more. Didn't freak out so went to E to move forward. Felt even better. More E. P. More and more, at my pace. And in that I kept feeling more and more at home in the world. That was the key to me.

So I'm now 5 years full time, 2 years post op, and happy as a clam in a way I never imagined. I still have stress, issues, etc. But I handle it better. I'm more optimistic and pro-active about my life.

And I really couldn't tell you at this point whether I was "officially" trans, or if I was trying a new path to healing old wounds, or if the reason I feel so much better is just because I showed myself how strong and determined I am and how much I love myself.

I know to see myself as male feels absolutely foreign to me now. It is like an old life that didn't fit and I am not only glad I transformed myself but I am relieved.

Your path will take you where you need to go.

You will find the ways that work for you to climb over those walls, because life will always bring us walls in our way.

You will learn all the little sayings and mantras that help you through the hard times. Things like "Those that matter don't mind, those that mind don't matter." and "It's none of my business what others think of me."

You will learn all the tricks that help you love yourself as you are and as you are becoming.

One thing I will say helped me a lot was this - enjoy the journey. It's not so much about the destination - that's always an illusion in life because we don't know what that looks like until we get there, no matter how much we think we do. It's all the things we do and see and learn along the way.

And in that journey, weave in GRACE, and HUMOUR, and COMPASSION, love for yourself and for others. And FORGIVENESS, for your missteps, for others' missteps.

And one final share from me... the day that really turned it for me was this -I was at a store, in my in between, questioning stage... and the clerks saw me as female and used her and she for me when talking among themselves and I felt like I had been called that all my life. It felt just right. That's when I knew I was on the right track.

Listen to that feeling, that deep deep feeling that either sits well or doesn't. Find your deepest, most true part and start from there and work out. If you work from your centre out, I assure you all will go well, no matter what path you travel.

:)