Latest Therapy visit and a few thoughts...

[SandraV]

Hello all,

Long time reader here. Mostly hang out at the CD forum, seldom post.

Writing to share from my recent visit to see my Therapist and a few thoughts. Lately I’ve again been feeling rather blue… or should I say, been in that dark place most of us are rather familiar with. Well, I mentioned this to my therapist and her answers left me somewhat shocked, somewhere between wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.

A little background about me, I am 40 yrs old, been dressing and struggling with GD all my life on and off, are married to a lovely lady and have two wonderful little ones. Came out to my wife a couple of years ago and, after much turmoil, have reconciled the fact that I am TG and working towards figuring this thing out.

Anyhow, as my therapist and I discussed my feelings yesterday she pointed out a couple of things which rattled me. First she said, “Perhaps you are feeling trapped between moving fwd in transition and in turn hurting your family, or staying put and continuing your never ending struggle with GD” I have to admit, though this thought had not crossed my mind, she hit the nail on the head. As someone else recently put it, it is a struggle between my mind and my hearth. My mind knows what needs to be done to resolve my GD, my heart stops me from doing it. I should mention that my wife has mentioned that, while she is willing to give this a shot and try to see where it goes, she does not feel she could be in a relationship with a woman.

I also mentioned how I often feel that…. or rather, try to convince myself that I am not TS, that I can maintain things as they are, that I can man-up and overcome this thing for the sake of those I love. That I can do what I’ve done for years: dress, enjoy, feel liberated, guilt, feeling that I can overcome, put her away for a while, GD driven depression, start over. To this, knowing that I am an engineer, she said simply “you are a science person, right? “ I answered “yes” then she said “What do you call the action of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? “ As I laughed at her wittiness, I immediately answered “it’s the definition of insanity”. Then I immediately felt as if I had just been hit with a bucket of ice water.

When I came out to my wife, I did so because I could no longer take the pain and everything else that came with keeping this in the dark. I saw a therapist soon after which helped me, and us, overcome the negativity that soon followed. Having regained her trust and love, I’ve spent the last year trying to once more convince myself that I can survive on just the occasional outing. This of course has not worked. It seems that every time I open a new door towards femininity, I can’t stop myself from wanting to open two more. Now in therapy again, these latest comments left me numb and scared. Scared because the more I look, the clearer it becomes that I’ve always known that I am TS. Numb because I feel I am at a crossroads with no clear signs or directions. And scared, once again, for my future and that of my family. :sad:

Thank you for reading…

[Bria]

Sandra, my heart goes out to you, you are in the catch22, damned if I do, damned if I don't. I won't try to tell you what you should do in this situation except to say that you must figure it out yourself. There is no "right" answer. I will remember you in my prayers'

Hugs, Bria

[Eringirl]

Hi Sandra. First off, I am sorry you are in this painful position. As for your therapist, that is exactly what I said to my therapist to which she replied that I took the words right out of her mouth
“Perhaps you are feeling trapped between moving fwd in transition and in turn hurting your family, or staying put and continuing your never ending struggle with GD”


One thing this does show is that you are a caring, loving person, aware of how this is impacting those you love. Without that, let's face it, you would be a sociopath! To your therapist's point, it is a never ending struggle. It does not go away, at least didn't for me. I tried to "man up" and push it back, and managed to do that for a few years, then it all came back with a vengeance, stronger than ever. I realize I offer little consolation, and everyone's circumstances are a bit different and unique. Only you can answer her question. But, this does not all have to happen overnight - it is not a race. Catch your breath before you start to think about how you want to move forward. And as always, feel free to keep us in the loop here. Don't go silent.

Erin

[Kris Avery]

There are always alternatives.

I am nearing my 2nd month of HRT without a plan (or more importantly an intent) for social transition and therefore making those kind of sacrifices.
The GD relief was immediate and complete (like within 48 hours).

Bottom line, it's a "middle ground" for me that appears to work.
Now, hopefully I don't win the genetic lottery for "the girls" and I'll be OK.

Every journey and transition (or apparent lack thereof) is unique.

[SandraV]

Thank you all for your kind words.

It's exactly that middle ground I've been pushing to find, except every time I feel I get close to it, I end up getting closer to the other end.

[Heidi Stevens]

Sandra, other than not having children, you and I are Exactly in the same position on where we are! The only other minor detail is I came out to my wife last spring. You're an Engineer, so am I. You're a long time dresser, so am I. You're looking for guidance for family stability versus suppressing GD, so am I. I too have just started gender therapy. The parallels are eerie! But if one reads this forum, not unusual.
Please keep us, especially me, in your progression and decisions. I shall try and do the same.

[LoriFlores]

Wow, I really understand you. We actually had our first meeting with our therapist just today. I met with her first, then my wife met with her, followed by a group meeting. I know that at least during my session I was very emotional as this was the first time I had been able to discuss everything that had been bottled up for all my life. I'm guessing my wife was emotional too as I think the box of Kleenex was sitting next to her when I entered the room. The final decision to see a therapist was following an ultimatum from my wife that I not dress at any time outside of the house (my dress has been pretty much androgynous) and that I need to seek professional care for a cure...(??) My wife wants "the man she married" and no less. Once again, I had also seriously considered suicide after her ultimatum :brokenheart:
I had expected that I was in no way a candidate for "a letter" (I was just hoping for a return to the status quo) but after my meeting one of the points that our therapist wanted to make sure I understood was that a letter was not ruled out based on what she had heard so far (although obviously further analysis needs to be completed). She seemed to definitely see GD in our discussion and that finding my comfort zone along the transition continuum would be a probable goal. So now I'm both further conflicted and feeling some genuine stress relief even as my wife remains unyielding in her expectations/demands.
So I understand your dilemma: maintain the long term marriage (in our case no kids involved) or move on to respond to my GD...

[Nikkilovesdresses]

What an astonishing therapy session Sandra. At least you have greater clarity now, and that's a positive thing. I'm too ignorant to offer any help, all I can say is that I hope you will find your way and keep love in your heart, especially for yourself.

Nikki

[Suzanne F]

Sandra
I face the same issues. My wife and I are struggling to face this issue and remain together. I am out everywhere except work when I have to be in the office or in front of customers. It is unfair to have to decide whether to be our real selves or to keep our families. I am trying to do both. Just don't feel alone!
Hugs
Suzanne

[TessaOKC]

I am at the beginning of my "Transition" with a very supportive wife and five children. I am also a business owner. I basically have free reign to transition however I would like but there are obviously numerous considerations. The first is the children and the second is my wife and third is our business. Transitioning takes many shapes and forms and there is no mold that we all fit into. I plan on starting hrt very soon, already growing my hair out and so on. I have decided that in my particular case I need to continue to present as male during work and will also present as male with the children as much as possible. Do the ponytail, dress in gender neutral clothes and off I go. I do feel that I need to preserve some parts of my male self, as much as I don't like the idea, that's just the way it is for me. Everyone else will be different as their GS will thrive at different levels of intensity. I am a tomboy type of girl so it fits well with my planning. Now, when the children are grown and I'm retired, I'll take another look. I also feel that if changes are made very slowly the acceptance without problems occurs much more easily. I feel so bad for you that you have a wife that is upset and is tearing you apart. I just feel there is always a way to walk the middle ground, some may not agree, but life itself is all about compromise. At this point in the game I am very relieved in the fact I came out, can start hrt and transitioning and am getting mostly what I want. Things are a lot less scary than they were at the beginning. I wish you very best of luck and all of my good thoughts are heading your way, hang in there and take it slow!!!

[Kaitlyn Michele]

I felt very numbed and trapped as I realized that my lifelong obsessive thinking and crossdressing was really about trying to cope with being just a plain old lady trying to live as a man.
I'm sorry to say you are likely to be going through a lot, I won't sugar coat it.

What is next is that conflict and decision replace realization, you are going to be well served by as much internal honestly as you can learn!! You are going to have to separate out the fear/anxiety/shame/overwhelming trapped feeling and the internal truth that you need to understand. You need to think in terms of overall quality of life. So many times nothing happens until the ts or tg person feels quality of life sink and sink, and its hard to experience all your old coping mechanisms becoming worthless against the GD feelings..

So one thing you can do right now is to work hard in therapy to develop more certainty around what you are going through. What I mean to say is you can work to be honest about your own self talk habits and your own coping thoughts so that you can better judge your own situation.

You should have every hope that everything will come together, that you can mitigate your GD, and keep your current life in order. It's possible.

However, you should also keep in mind that IF you are transsexual, your GD will not go away and one thing I've observed is that people that come into middle age and realize they are transsexual it seems to always get worse.
It really is kind of genetic lottery, there seem to be some people that identify as TS, take HRT and the GD goes away. I don't think it matters much what they do, its just the way it works out for them, their intensity comes way down and the quality of life balance tips to living as a man, or living as a woman for part of the time. I hope you are one of those people, it will be much easier, and you have every reason to hope for that kind of outcome and just be prepared if it doesn't seem to be working out that way.

[KellyJameson]

When I hear of someone trying to walk the middle path I am both hopeful for them because I know it is an attempt to find a compromise between two forms of torment and concerned for them because of the risk that they may be simply extending the suffering for themselves and everyone in their life.

The question I had to answer for myself was what came first, the chicken or the egg.

Was I mentally unstable and this instability was expressed as trying to make my body and life into that of a woman or was I a woman made mentally unstable from the body and life I was forced to inhabit.

This psychological experience has an intensity to it that is all consuming and pervasive. It is a quiet obsession that occasionally explodes out into the open. It is a quest to find something while "if you are under the influences of repression/rejection" also a quest to reject the very thing you are compelled to search for.

Simply put gender dysphoria is crazy making whie leaving you suspicious of the reasons you are being driven into "crazy" You end up fearing your own mind as the enemy that conspires against you.

In my opinion to the degree you are experiencing this and most importantly "have experienced this" as to childhood experiences, this will decide whether you can walk a middle path.

For me it was all or nothing. I had to either kill her or live her. Extreme gender dysphoria is an all or nothing experience that does not leave room for compromise.

The problem and the paradox is when you are inside the dysphoria you do not see this. You think you can control it but it controls you because you are trying to go against the most basic primal needs of the mind. To live as the expression of what you are at your core that "creates the knowing of what you are"

It is unnatural to live "life as a man" when you are a woman and everything about you will try to escape this situation "to the degree you are prevented from doing so" that clashes with the "intensity/need" to "do so"

For me my body made no sense to me, sex made no sense to me and certainly my social roles made no sense to me. Everything is experienced as backwards,upside down and reversed.

You used the words "liberated" This in my opinion is the key. What are you trying to be liberated from? What imprisons you from being free?

The answer will tell you what you need to do "if you can live with the consequences of the answer" because once you make the subconscious pain "conscious" as to that "accepting from knowing" and "knowing from accepting" that you "are a woman" there is no going back because you have now removed the ability of the mind to protect itself through "not seeing the truth it knows to be true"

If you have been repressing your actual gender identity and you reach a point where you can no longer repress it than Pandoras box has now been opened.

Look at your past and ask yourself, How destructive has "this thing" been to my life.

The destruction it has wrought will decide whether a middle path is possible.

If you have lived your life between obsession and repression than I have concerns for your success walking the middle path

You will have been living with the experience of death (anxiety) as always being close at hand because you are at once trying to kill yourself/her (repression) while trying to save yourself/her (obsession) and this is part of what creates the mental illness and also leaving you feeling "crazy" and wondering if the "crazy" is why you think you are a woman.

It is a perfect trap that will destroy you.

For me the only way to break this cycle of repression/obsession was to transition, freeing myself from the mental illness it imposed on me.

[Rachel Smith]

Kelly your nickname should be Kelly "the carpenter" Jameson because 99% of the time you hit the nail squarely on the head. Even the best carpenters miss once in awhile, lol.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Wow Kelly, well put..
It's the perfect trap

So much hinges on the intensity. It's important to intellectually gauge how "bad" you feel and think through options based on that.
Sorry but life is not about compromise for people suffering high intensity gender dysphoria, its about figuring out how to survive it.

[SandraV]

Wow... my head is spinning from reading all your comments...

Tessa, one thing I would like to add, it is not my wife who is tearing me apart nor is mad. She is caught in he middle of all this, yes. She is also trying hard to understand and stay the course to see where it ends. For this I am grateful. While she has said that, should I transition, she does not feel she could stay, I do believe we could at least remain best of friends. That itself is huge. It is really I who struggles when I see the hurt my GD causes on her and on an otherwise great marriage.

Kelly, you stated things rather well. I feel Pandora's box has been opened and are finding it impossible to close again. Therapy has a funny way of doing this. Believe me, I have concerns as well for being successful threading the middle path.

It is exactly that, trying to find an answer on how to survive GD with the least damage around me. Seems harder and harder to more I look... both by looking into my past and the now. Again thank you for your thoughts and responses to my ramblings. All of you have certainly given me a lot to think about for sure.

Hugs...

[ClaraKay]

I am a transsexual woman in the middle of my transition. I came out to my wife 15 months ago and experienced the same understandable reaction as so many others have. I'm posting this to remind you, Sandra, that when you are in a stable marriage, it IS possible to transition and keep the marriage intact. The marriage may even grow stronger in the process. The key is to make the transition a joint effort and adopt the view that it's the marriage that's transitioning -- you, your mate, and the relationship itself -- not just you.

I've seen too many cases where the husband and wife are working in direct opposition to each other's objectives. In those situations, little is accomplished of any lasting value. If you have a strong, stable marriage, neither you nor your spouse want to see the marriage dissolve. The key is to work toward a win-win outcome. It's critical that you both share a common vision. Hopefully, since you both care for each other, neither wants to see the other suffer. You both want a future in which your partner is happy. Translated, it means that you are free of your gender dysphoria symptoms, free to be yourself, and your wife feels safe and secure in the relationship and her position in the world. Finally, you cannot realistically get from here to there in one giant step. It has to be a progression involving many small steps, each with its own set of mutually agreed upon goals. I won't go into details of how my spouse and I worked our transition. Everyone's situation is different and needs an approach which will work for them.

My spouse and I benefited a lot from reading the real life story of Jennifer (James) and Deedie Boylan in Jennifer Finney Boylan's book "She's Not There - A Life in Two Genders". It's an interesting book for anyone to read (New York Times Best Seller), but, more importantly, it might help you pull together your own successful marriage transition plan.

Hugs,

[Kate T]

Anyhow, as my therapist and I discussed my feelings yesterday she pointed out a couple of things which rattled me. First she said, “Perhaps you are feeling trapped between moving fwd in transition and in turn hurting your family, or staying put and continuing your never ending struggle with GD”

Your therapist got it partly right. What they neglected to either point out or didn't identify was that staying put ALSO hurts your family.Really, do you think your wife enjoys seeing you tormented by your GD? She is no fool by what you have written, most wives aren't, she obviously realises to some degree how much this affects you.

You're therapist has already identified for you your main concern, that by "moving forward in transition" you will hurt your family. But your therapist presumably has no idea what will and won't hurt your family. Time to ask your wife what she feels, what scares her, what worries her. Only then can you really work out what you should do.

@Clara
Really nice to hear a positive voice on transition and marriage. Thank you.

[Barbara Ella]

Sandra, i know all too well what you are going through. This started late for me, 65, three years ago. Married 41 years at that time, we went through the ups and downs, support, dislike, non support, back to full total support, and recognizing that I am in transition. Continual disucssion, and a willingness to accept boundaries the wife feels are necessary for her sake. We go out together, dressed, out of town all the time. She supports my HRT (24 months now) and encouraged me to electrolysis, and have gone through 4 sessions of full facial removal. What comes next is an unknown. She does not want me going out in town dressed without her, and then to only two locations in our town.

We babysit our 5 yr old grandson three days a week, so there is on dressing while he is here. I am free to dress all other times

At moments the internal desires do peak, and it becomes very hard not to be true to myself, but I love my wife and two daughters...who both know and support me, and one has gone to a Chi Chapter meeting with Barbara. Their husbands know and are supportive.

i do not have the job worries, being retired, but cannot come out to friends and keep my wife. We will continue as long as both can bear up.

Just remember, if you try to remain in the middle. The middle position changes depending on where you are at the moment. As you move forward, the middle position is closer to the other end. Being an engineer too, I know you understand the concept of close enough for practical purposes, so before you know it, the middle is too close to the other end to discern a difference. Some have a longer time to realize that, some of us don't have the time.

I put the acceptance of my wife squarely on the solid marriage of now 44 years. Neither of us wants to go anywhere other than being with the one we love.

maintain the love.

Barbara

[Janelle_C]

Your story is so much how mine was a few years ago. It took me a year in therapy to admit where I was on the trangender scale, I was afraid of if I said it what was I going to do about it. I've been married 32 years at that point, and she always said if you become a woman I don't know how I'll feel because I'm not gay. Another year and a half in therapy I decided to transition, not because I wanted to but because I could no longer live the life that was not me. I would lay in bed and ask God to take me because I was afraid of losing everything. My wife, my kids, and my grandchildren. I didn't want to hurt the woman I loved more than anything. Nineteen months later I'm happier than I have ever been in my life, my wife and I are doing better than before, she says it's because I'm so much happier. She can still see the person she fell in love with. I'm not saying this will be your out come but sometimes it works out. I wish you all the happiness you deserve.

[angpai30]

I once was in the same place you were. Its a difficult place to move from because you have to tread lightly as stated by many, yet when i transitioned I got to that point where fake didn't work anymore it had to be real or else. I have not had the feeling of turning back. Once I started there was and still is no turning back. Figuring out your heading is the most difficult part of transition. I got the "we love you, but wont support you" speech from my parents. You have amazing support and it turns out different ways through different actions. I'm divorced because I could not handle being male anymore. Where there is love there is always opportunity.