the experience

[GabbiSophia]

Into 7 month of hormones and this ts experience. There is one thing that replays in my mind more than anything about this whole deal. You ever watch shutter island? As Leonardo walks away he says something that i relate to. i am always playing that last quote out in my own mind. For me it just seems to make since in this day and age of our society and i get it.

[Rianna Humble]

So why not tell people what it is that the character says?

[Aprilrain]

Yeah I don't remember the quote

[PretzelGirl]

"Live as a monster or die as a good man"?

[GabbiSophia]

Sorry Rihanna he "says is it better to be remembered the hero or live as the monster". He says this as he walks to get a labotomy

[Jorja]

I have known several true American Heroes. None of them believe they are a hero and do not ever talk or boast of the fact. I do not know of many monsters so I can not say what they would have to say about your statement. I don't know any with a lobotomy but I do know a few who should consider the procedure.

[KellyJameson]

My understanding of the movie is his opinion of himself as good was more important than keeping his brain intact but with the memory of having done evil.

The lobotomy was to lose a piece of himself but to keep his delusion of being good. To escape from himself and to die (lobotomy) a good man "in his own eyes"

Transexuals are often thought as sick and delusional for transitioning by "society" so this comparison leaves me uncomfortable from not being explained more clearly.

[Aprilrain]

I guess I don't really get the relevance of the quote to being transsexual.

[Frances]

I don't get it either. Who's the monster, the transitioned person, or the person before? Forget the quote and its equivocal meaning. What are you feeling, and what do you want to tell us?

[LeaP]

What Frances said.

Kelly, it isn't a matter of self-opinion. It was self-realization. Andrew became Teddy because of overwhelming guilt. Already psychologically damaged by war, he literally loses himself after killing his mentally disturbed wife. At the finale, he has become himself (become Andrew) again, but realizes he doesn't have the ability to keep his sanity. (As hinted by Ben Kingley's character.) So pretending to be Teddy - and therefore not recovered and to be lobotomized - he essentially commits suicide. It's a profoundly tragic story that posits that there are some things that not avoidable and not recoverable.

Gabbi, I doubt you intend the trans analogies that suggest themselves. So, what do you mean?

[GabbiSophia]

Actually Lea you summed it up pretty good imo. Though i am not relating anything to true hero's as jorja has commented on. I find my own struggle to be close to the stuggles of the main character. I seem to be in the place where I am in the middle with a descion to make. Is it so far out to see the link in the descions that we have to make? I feel like the labotomy is the optionto keep myself who i envision. I have spent a life time making goals and to have that snatched away and to spend the rest of my life dealing with people like Anne writes about. Have I not made a second persona to live the life I am living right now? By no means am I calling myself a hero but it's about who you are and who you see yourself as in the future. The same is now i am trying to just be because I do not want to be that person. Now don't get me wrong i am not wanting to die or hurt myself as someone could read into this but a labotomy would help. My therapist doesn't believe there is a middle ground for me but I am trying to keep that alive. Imo unless you blend away after transition you live outside the norm and our brains want the norm because it is nature trying to protect us. I am not at the point in my life I can tell the world off especially since I have done so much to just be.

[Frances]

You're fighting this way too much. It shows in most of your threads. Transition is a medical prescription to alleviate gender-related anxiety. It should make things easier, not harder. I think I have asked before, and I ask again: Are you sure you are trans?

[GabbiSophia]

Well after 2 years of therapy 7 months of hormones and the constant feelings that seem to get worse i would go on a limb and say yea. Not to mention the fact that i can never stop thinking about it to the point i have wondered if i have ocd. The fact of the matter that i am fighting doesn't make me less t. I just don't want to do it i really enjoy my state before all this came about.

I am self destructing myself trying to not do it. I have found that i get why people abuse alcohol as it makes the noise and feelings to stop. So in the end Frances i say yes... with all that said i still hate it and i wish it would end but the way I want it to

The point of of my op is that i feel like have to make a choice and that's how i feel about it. It also doesn't bother me that you do not or you question whether I am ts. Your not the first but what's funny is the gender therapist keeps telling me to do it. Ahh the joys of mental issues

[Frances]

A gender therapist should not tell anyone to transition, ever. People may disagree, but that's my opinion.

[GabbiSophia]

I agree and diagree. I have come to the point in my relationship with my therapist that it doesn't matter what she says i am going to do what i want. That's just my experience and i asked her how to make the noise end.

[Frances]

Great response. I don't ask these questions to judge or repudiate your transness or anyone else's. I ask them because they are important. I went through a very rigourous gatekeeping style system, with individual and group therapy sessions every week (alternating). I was asked these questions over and over again. As long as there was still ambivalence, I did not go forward. The day that my answer become "I'm sure" and "I have already made an appointment with the review panel," I got my letters and transitioned. And I did so with great determination.

There were setbacks and hardships, but, internally, everything felt better afterwards. The difference between you and I (or others) is that I did the hard work in group therapy in a hospital with psychological supervision over the course of 5 years, not on an Internet forum. When someone (or I) would come in saying things like you do, the other members of the group and/or the therapist would ask the question "are you sure?" I don't care if you transition or not, but asking about it is my way of actually helping you test your resolve.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

The only chance to have what you "want"((which I assume is to not transition and be happily male (or at least be able to live with it)) is to explore yourself

and that's what you are doing... the hormones...the therapist...going out as yourself...
BUT
you have to live day by day ... this is good advice for anyone but you are looking at the future and you see no good outcome... what you are fighting is part you part boogeyman...

if what you are feeling day to day is so miserable, you have to focus on what can you do TODAY to feel better...the future will unfold ...and frankly what you want has very little to do with it unless you are able to better
cope with the day to day misery you are feeling... these are all just thoughts...have you explored mindfulness?? its just a way to notice to your thoughts as just thoughts...and not judge them...its not easy but its one potential way to try to better cope with day to day thoughts...and i'm sure there are lots of other ways you could work on... or work on that SPECIFIC thing with your therapist...don't talk about the transition or the future...just talk about right now...what are good coping strategies TODAY?.....

if you can't find good strategies and you can't cope with it then you are right to say that the status quo will have no good outcome.. as i'm sure you know, you are of no use to the people that love you and need you if you are a constant mess

forget transition, what can you do today to feel better? what can you do to improve your quality of life tonight?

[LeaP]

Again, I agree with Frances. The role of a therapist is to help you reach self realization and self direction – not to provide answers for you. Nothing short of self-realization is going to result in authenticity. Be very careful with a therapist who has a tendency to steer.

Think about this rationally for a minute. Are you simple and obvious? Really? So much so that a therapist can spend time with you, read the tea leaves, then pronounce who and what you are as well as what you need and what you should do? Do you think they have some special insight or training that enables them to do such things across the diversity of people they treat? They do not. Any decently trained therapist will tell you this outright. What they are trained to do is assist you in understanding yourself and helping you through the disentanglement of your own issues. The second they depart from this, they have stepped into another role. Some people want that. Some like it. A few hit the lottery and get steered into something appropriate. Just don't confuse that with psychotherapy. You are paying for psychotherapy – not someone to be your special friend or something. If, after two years of therapy, you find yourself wondering about OCD, I strongly suggest it is time to find another therapist.

[Aprilrain]

The movie metaphor is way over my head.

My experience was that GD just was not going to go away. There was always a dull roar in the back ground but on two separate occasions in the last ten years it reached a crescendo where it was impossible to ignore. On the first occasion events happened that caused me to want to shove it all back in the closet after a brief period of tentative self acceptance. On the second occasion about 5 years later I just knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the GD wasn't going to go away. I could have shoved it all back in the closet again but it would have reared its head again and again and again only each time I'd be older and that terrified me! I just did not want to be any older than I already was and transitioning! Once I knew transition was the only solution to my problem I let nothing stand in my way.

[GabbiSophia]

Frances it's a great point about people using the Internet therapy for determining their path. I do agree that those people are doomed. I use it to voice my little opinion and try to see others experiences since i don't have the time to go every week. Also i do not mind anyone questioning something i say because it's my thoughts. I hate that nature created this and that i am going through it. That's basically it.

Lea I didn't give a time line but i get your point. I am confident in how my therapy is going. I also believe though that at some point a good therapist should tell you to poop or get off the pot but timing is everything.

You are correct kaitlyn just sometimes that's hard to do.

[LeaP]

If the 2 years you gave in #13 isn't a timeline, I'm not sure what is.

My last comments were particular to your OCD comment. OCD is something a gender therapist screens for right up front. First, it's a condition that sometimes manifests falsely as gender confusion. Second, when co-morbid with genuine gender issues, it's a complicating factor that should be treated first, lest a patient extend the time and extent of their suffering or, worst case, take a path - like transition - that they don't really need to take. That you would have ANY ambiguity on this point after 2 years of therapy is concerning.

[Frances]

I don't know Lea. It took me 5 years of therapy to suss it out. It takes the time that it takes. It's forcing it that I find concerning.

[LeaP]

It took 5 years to find out you had OCD?

[Frances]

What? No. It took five years to come to the conclusion that transition was inevitable and that I had to deal with come what may.

I have always known I had OCD. Ask my friends, they will tell you.

[KellyJameson]

For some people they have a compulsion to live falsely because they need to escape something and for others they have a compulsion to live truely because they need to find something. Avoidance versus searching.

Gender dysphoria can make you do both simultaneously so GD potentially can be "crazy making"

My identfying with and as female early in life and than being told I was'nt, pitted me against everyone without understanding why or how.

I became suspicious that everyone was deceiving me yet I was also very gullible.

I had a problem finding something to believe in as being able to discern what is and is not true with the result being that I believed in nothing while also being a seeker of truth.

I did not believe there were truths while obsessively searching for them and this came straight out of my repressing my actual gender identity while searching for it.

On an existential level this was the expression of my gender dysphoria. All of it came out of not living "as I am".

I was pretending to "believe" that I was male while "knowing" that I was female which created a conflict within my own mind.

This is a common theme in gender dysphoria where you constantly hear that the person can no longer go on pretending to be what they are not.

In my case this conflict very much looked like OCD because of the obsessive nature of my struggle and search while in the grip of terrible uncertainty and fear.

The hormones did not create my identity but only quieted my anxiety so that I could stop fighting myself as my identity.

Part of this anxiety of course was reduced by the physical changes I witnessed but before that it was the almost complete cessation of anxiety that the testosterone was creating in me and it was not really the testosterone but the relationship between various hormones as "the proportions" that mattered.

My mental state was very similar to women who suffer from PCOS and there were concerns that I was Bi Polar,OCD and ADHD.

All of this was remedied by changes in my endocrine system. The hormones "leveled me out" so I was not agitated, nervous, irritable, depressive, anxious, ect..

I knew what gender I was as a child and my body and brain reminded me by the emotional/mental suffering I endured until I made the necessary changes.

For me mental illness closely followed not only "not living my actual gender identity" but also not having my endocrine system in the proper balance.

For me I cannot imagine some level of OCD not being an aspect of gender dysphoria.

Your doubts of what is true or not in my opinion are perfectly understandable when you consider what a transexual is and does and most importantly what has "been done to them" that contributes to their mental and emotional state.

Searching for ones gender can be very messy. Being unsure does not make you "not a woman" because you either are or you are not. You cannot consciously create it or undo it because it is beyond your reach, hence why we suffer so much.

Gender just "is" and all you can do is accept it or deny it.

It is moving beyond the barriers that blind you to the truth of what it "is" that can be difficult.

[GabbiSophia]

Normally Kelly i get do lost in your posts that i have to stop reading them. Just over my head I guess. Though this post of yours is great. It really kinda sums things up

[LeaP]

Kelly, sometimes you describe my inner experience so closely that it is spooky.

Avoidance and searching are not mutually exclusive, as you point out. The searching soul will inevitably investigate any number of theories on the nature of their existence, many of which are difficult to reconcile. Herein lies one of the sources and some of some of the details of the crazy making. One approach is layers or hierarchies of understanding. Another is unifying theories. A third is smorgasbord. And then there is religion. Metaphysics. Mysticism. Philosophy. The physical sciences. Psychology. Etc. All of this endless search and self-examination is absurdly overwrought to those who can look inward and simply say "boy" or "girl." But oh so familiar to those of us who pressed down the path of nonexistence.

I am one such, and it has taken many forms, from psychological issues like depression and suicidality, to social avoidance, even to the philosophies to which I am attracted (like solipsism) and the attitudes which I've adopted (like pragmatism). All have an aspect of removing the personal from the equation. I am one who has command of many answers and who has committed to none. This despite years of effort into trying to make some of them real (e.g. religion). I set myself up to distrust any attempt at self explanation because I rejected myself. Instead, I've looked at answers dispassionately and analytically. Things to be used for the benefit of others… but not for me.

Going through a dysphoria crisis with this mindset wasn't fun! If you can't accept self truth as such to begin with, except as a working proposition at best, the idea of working toward something like gender as an absolute is far-fetched. But it gets worse! For the first advice you come across is to approach solving the problem not rationally, but experientially. And though incredibly cynical about reason as a way to find truth, however committed to it I've been as an approach, that's nothing compared with the dismissiveness with which I viewed the notion of truth through experience. But find it that way I did, and in the process unwound a lot of things I thought I knew about myself besides.

But on to OCD…. I not only agree with your comment about the tie between OCD and gender dysphoria, but thought of including a comment along those lines in one of my earlier responses. I did not because I thought it would detract from the point. OCD is straightforward to diagnose. OCD from physical causes is relatively straightforward to treat with medication. And OCD as a fundamental psychological condition is relatively straightforward to deal with as it applies to patterned behaviors and focused obsessions. But thinking further, I need to revisit my agreement because the inability to get something out of your head doesn't make it OCD by definition. Granted, someone with gender dysphoria may also truly have OCD, but they may simply be unable to escape themselves any longer. Lots of trans people are preoccupied. That is no more obsessive in a pathological sense than someone who is trapped preoccupied with being free.

This, in turn, returns me to experience as well as toward hormones. Experience – experimentation – works like a switch in transsexuals. What once seemed obsessive, incessant, lifelong, inborn, melts away so quickly when experience is validating! OCD doesn't work that way, and it is easy to test for the difference early in therapy. A good (and common) is example is dressing. How many times have you read that the preoccupation, angst, and psychological pressure to dress simply vanishes when a transsexual starts down the right path? Hormones have this effect on seeming obsessions, too. In a transsexual, the obsession with expression is typically replaced by a normal drive toward self actualization.

So, is moving beyond the barriers that blind you truly difficult? Yes and no. Yes because the fear that paralyzes people holds them back from the experience that will validate them (or not). No because once you do start taking action, having gotten by the fear one way or another, the barriers fade away on their own. They have no substance. This is also the point at which you realize how deep and wide your personal responsibility is for having created your own problems.

[GabbiSophia]

Sometimes you think you are intelligent till you actually meet or hear someone intelligent. I find myself having to realize how many others are way more intelligent than i am. Thanx Lea... i have not been able to put into words exactly what i have been going through over the last two years of therapy but you nailed square slap in the middle. I have tried everything to avoid coming to terms with the truth. Fear is part of that, actually it is a huge part of that.

I have had some serious long discussions in the past few days since writing my op. I have spent so much time tring to rationalize this that i have actually dug myself into a deeper hole. I find myself really tring to just live day to day but really i have been tring to ignore myself. I see that i am not alone in this. Though i have been told about it and yet still did it. I found what you said about dressing so true Lea. Once i start hormones, at the proper dosage, I didn't want anything to do with dressing. I actually almost purged everything because I felt like my old self or what i thought was normal. It was only a promise to my wife that i would never do it again that stopped me. Since then I went to a group meeting and for the first time I knew what it was like to relax. It's this rrealization that scared the pee out me. This one event caused me to fight even more against myself. It only when I truely let my guard down and admit things that I get a break from the noise. I find this hard still but true.

I know what i need to do to but I feel like i am a failure or that I am giving up if i do what I must. This is really where I am at in my transition and actually admitting it is part of the process. This whole experience blows what little logical mind i have and makes me confused about my beliefs. Though one thing I know for sure now.. no matter how i believe doesn't stop or change the fact of what i need to do. I am just not ready to do it this day. I guess when you realize it then you truely see all that is needed to be done to make it work.life is over whelming and then you add this...sheesh..