building storm

[GabbiSophia]

I am sure you know the routine. Work kids eat sleep repeat. Never any time for you. It is even worse being ts because the no time for you means no time to "be" you either. It's is this later point that is starting to build. I find that my anxiety has come back and i am starting to be a wash of emotions again. I might be consumed by work but that doesn't help either. It seems the less free time I have the more I can feel the storm brewing. I have learned some self medicating, all legal, but even that doesn't last long. I now have a hard desire to transition, to just be. i have noticed that with each new step i take forward comes with a new type of gd. Who ever said it was like a hydra was correct. Every time i cut a head off 2 others grow back. The constant internal battle is tough. I still have my days where I fight this really hard but they are getting further apart.

so for now I have to find another step to take but i feel the storm of transition building fast now.

[Rogina B]

It seems to me that you need to redesign your life and reallocate your time a little bit as a meltdown won't do a thing for anyone.

[GabbiSophia]

I am Not sure that it will be in meltdown. The storm coming or I feel building is the pressure from the one to transition. The time frame that I originally made out may not in the end work out. everyday is the same old routine but with a new twist from the Gd

[Sara82]

I know exactly how you feel when the daily routine just wears on you and the anxiety builds because you feel there is no escape. You have this basic need of expression and you are just scared.

I feel that I have built my self into a prison of normalcy in the hope that everything will be better and safer. Now i feel trapped and need to break out.

I found that dwelling on stuff doesnt do any good though. Try to look past your current lot in life and make small changes to improve it.

[arbon]

Do you have people to talk to about this stuff other then the therapist?

[Bria]

Rogina makes a good point, it is easy to be too busy to take care of the most important person in your life, YOU! The hurriered I go the behinder I get has a lot of truth in it. Try writing down the things that are most important to you in your life and then divide your time so that all of those things get adequate attention without skipping something and overdoing something else,

I have trouble dividing my time into small increments, I want to concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of others that may be equally as important, so I have some understanding of how you can get to a point of feeling overwhelmed. We all are only human and can only do so much even though we want to do more we aren't Superman (or woman).

My 2 cents.

Hugs, Bria

[GabbiSophia]

Theresa i have my wife and my therapist. Getting out is an issue still

[Kaitlyn Michele]

One thing that drove me to transition was it felt like there was nothing but gender related thoughts in my head...

I had no relief, no free time...it was all this... I had to "get a life"...it was not like being run over and overwhelmed...it was like the gender problem was expanding like a balloon totally on the inside and it was filling up every nook and cranny of my existence...
if it sounds bad, it was...

I resisted for many years...but this increasing intensity made inaction impossible...and ups and downs became just a constant drone of this..

So Gabbi, you have to take care of yourself and examine your life really hard for exactly what it is
...getting out is something that can go either way...it could really impact your feelings because you its such a big unknown and its a huge stress to be wondering about it as something in the future...

Are these feelings you are having now intermittent?? do they go away and come back??

I also agree you should check with your therapist and try to find if there is anyone else that can talk to you...share their experience...I found meeting transsexuals to be hugely important in my life

[DebbieL]

Gabbi,
You should absolutely start seeing a therapist now if you aren't already doing so.

You don't want to let your kids become the reason you don't transition. If you do, you will never be able to love them fully, and they will not be able to love you fully.

My ex-wife threatened to have my visitation revoked, and showed me the letter from the therapist and told me the name of a judge she had gotten to know while working at the county court house. It was a credible threat, so I aborted transition.

I ended up being separated from my kids anyway, and the delay in transition led to a heart attack and a stroke to to overeating to fill the void and the pain of not transitioning.

I'll never be as close to them as I could have been, and I'll always have to make a conscious effort not to withhold myself because I chose not to transition so I could protect them from an abusive step-father if necessary.

Your old enough to know that trying to deny who you are is dangerous. I turned to drugs, alcohol, and food, and each almost killed me. The worst point was that there were times when I really wanted to die because I didn't believe transition in this body was possible. When I was 14 and found out I had a bass singing voice, I lashed out in some of the worst possible ways. I'd combine booze, recreational drugs, prescription drugs, and over the counter drugs into a nearly lethal combination that almost always led to black-outs. During those black-outs I would either turn into a ****, in the coat room with my head between someone's legs, or I'd turn into an emasculating bitch - saying and doing things that would make every man in the bar want to kill me and anyone I was with. I didn't even try to fight. Sometimes I'd just spread my legs and hope his aim was good and his kick was hard enough.

Finally, at 55, I started transition. A year of increasing RLE until I was 120 hours/week, hormones, and switching to working as a female at work. I got my name change and gender marker changes done in May and my only regret - is that I didn't do it 40 years ago.

Sadly, it wasn't an option back then. In my state, the "treatment" for transsexuals was electro-shock, torture (aversion therapy), and ultimately, a lobotomy. The suicide rate among transsexuals was known even back then, and a man who wanted to be a woman was considered to be psychotic. Since I was otherwise pretty well balanced and functional, they wouldn't even talk to me about my gender dysphoria. They knew of only one "Cure" and SRS wasn't it.

Don't wait until you hate your family, your parents, and your own children, to get help. If you start seeing the therapist now, you can start making plans together, which will include how you address your relationships with you wife, children, work, and community. Make sure the therapist has experience with Gender Dysphoria. The best way is to contact the local LGBT support center in the nearest large city near you. The main office will often have the cards of therapists, doctors, and lawyers who can help you through the transition process and often it's an important part of their practices.

[Rachel Smith]

One thing that drove me to transition was it felt like there was nothing but gender related thoughts in my head...

I had no relief, no free time...it was all this... I had to "get a life"...it was not like being run over and overwhelmed...it was like the gender problem was expanding like a balloon totally on the inside and it was filling up every nook and cranny of my existence...
if it sounds bad, it was...

I resisted for many years...but this increasing intensity made inaction impossible...and ups and downs became just a constant drone of this.

Exactly Kaitlyn. It was one big merry-go-round that wasn't merry at all. It was the hardest decision I ever made but it sure was the best one as well.

[GabbiSophia]

Debbie i am seeing a gender therapist. this post was more about how i am dragging my feet trying to get my ducks in a row. As i try to do this i can feel the pressure building to go faster. It really started by going out.

Kaitlyn how did you balance your children and going out? They are not going to stop me but I have a hard time leaving them or forsaking them to go to meetings.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

My wife left me Gabbi...

She left me because she lost her love for me ... it wasn't specifically about my crossdressing (that's all it felt like at the time)...

She sensed my distance... she intuitively knew that I had changed and she was right...

As a practical matter (And I am all about that!!), and prior to our divorce, I would go on some "business trips"... I would take my clothes and makeup/wig and i'd check into a red roof inn and i'd dress and i'd literally just walk outside and drive around...

I learned a lot by those times as I analyzed how I felt, I thought about my behavior and how awful I felt when I had to go to sleep...in fact, over the years I wouldn't go to sleep ... i'd stay up until 6am and then get changed and go to work... I can't express how empty and awful this all felt except for the moments in time where I "dressed"...

One thing about my kids is that I was forced to learn that I could take care of them, I could love them, and I could spoil them(lol), but I had to give myself some space from them...if I didn't, then all those other things would become empty... this is a point I harp on all the time....

if you find you just "cant stand it", you are not of any use to anybody and its a fantasy to think you have a happy wife and kids when they are actually wondering what the heck is wrong with you because you can't hide it...

if you CAN hide it, then pursue that middle path and ask those folks how they do it... I bet most of them tell you that healthy expression of their female side is hugely important

[Thea Pauline]

Interestingly, I find myself experiencing many of the same pressures described by others here. I say interestingly, because although we are all different at the most fundamental level, we have some similar experiences. Perhaps it's about how humans deal with stress, regardless of the source of that stress.

Myself, I find the very few remaining situations in my life that I have to deal with as male have become seemingly unbearable. Even though I will largely have it wrapped up by the end of the year and even seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, it sometimes seems too much. I have had to accelerate what seemed like a reasonable transition timeframe, simply because of the growing difficulty in switching modes. Even when it is absolutely necessary, I find that time spent as 'not me' extracts a heavy emotional toll. I think that once I gave up on holding any part of that life through transition and had mourned its loss, the eagerness to begin again and fulfill my dreams, the desire to finish the second half of my life with self knowledge and internal peace became overwhelming.

I have found too, that I have had to protect myself mentally and emotionally at all costs, even to the point of firing stress inducing customers, limiting how much I work and completely rearranging my life to accommodate time for myself. I too ended in the hospital with a life threatening event as others here have mentioned; reevaluated my life and who I am, and I agree that if I destroy myself to please others, nothing gets done. For them or me.

I have been accused of being self indulgent when I came out. Yes, yes I am. I have 50+ years of healing to do, decades of mental and emotional self abuse to enable me to meet society's' expectations and live the false life I was told to live. I have relationships both new and old to attend to and I need to fix me so I have the insight to be the best friend I can be.

I feel for all of us, but I also know we have it within ourselves to make our lives what we want them to be and I wish us all the best of luck.

[GabbiSophia]

Kaitlyn sorry to hear that though I know you talk highly of your ex. I didn't mean to bring it up. For me atm i do not want to go be by myself. I want my family. I just am not out to the step son so i can't even use cding to help at home. Don't think i am accusing anyone of not loving their kids. I am just saying how i feel. Some of it may be fear but on come Saturday night I want to go see a movie or something as my fam be going out by myself.

Hell i am not sure any more. I try to live day to day but in life i have found that never gets u any where. Of course I am sure hundreds of peeps would argue this also but my opinions are mine.