Just a quick question.

[EllieMayxxx]

The last few days I have been remembering a lot of crossdressing experiences I've had when i was a child, ones I never thought i had. But once I think about my childhood and crossdressing I always remember something new. Did I keep these memories hidden so my feminine side would be hidden? Why is it only now im remembering these events, is it because im accepting myself or what? Im just a little confused and have you had the same things happen?

Thanks for reading I needed to get this off of my chest.
Charlotte x

[Stephanie47]

This morning while laying in bed I was exercising my mind. I tried to think back as far as I could into my childhood. Because my family had moved when I was three years and four months old there was somewhat of a reference point. I can remember something with clarity at age three. It can take awhile for the brain to retrieve those stored thoughts. I have one memory as a child of at least four years old of crying because my mother use to say I was suppose to be a girl because I already had an older brother. Her image of a perfect family was husband, wife, son and daughter. Obviously my father's sperm had other ideas. In my angst I acted out by donning one of my mother's floor length nightgowns while crying and telling her she did not love me because I wasn't a girl. She hugged me and assured me that she loved me. She never said anything after that about me not being a girl. I often wonder if that imprinted on me. Not necessarily that particular instance, but, maybe the constant expression of her wanting a girl instead of a boy.

While on the subject of probing the mind when I was a very young child I use to have dreams/memories of being a young woman who had an untimely death. I often wonder if there is some influence of one's being because of possible past lives? Just a thought.

[EllieMayxxx]

Hi Stephanie, I am an only child and my mum never told me that she wanted a girl or anything. I understand about the possibility of past lives im really open minded with things like that. I haven't experienced anything like that but "girly" things have always interested me, likes dolls, clothes, pinks and purples.

[Katey888]

Interesting thoughts, Charlotte...

Bearing in mind some of us have to go back a lot further for retrieval than you do... ;) I offer two explanations:

1) You're right about deliberately hiding memories. Thanks to societal conditioning we 'know' we shouldn't be having these feelings so we hide them to prevent the constant conflict with our normal, male expression - more relevant for those of us that are closeted to some degree.

2) Us oldies have just had so many little experiences - actual crossdressing; thinking about clothing; fantasizing about being female - we've run out of memory... :lol: Seriously - there are just so many that the minor and childhood ones are less relevant and so, like Stephanie says, we have to make a directed effort to remember them.

If I do this now... <pause for a coffee, check the news, put the bins out, etc.> there... I have the same feelings. By trying to think of places that might have some connection, I have remembered things that I hadn't thought about for years, possibly decades...

Self-acceptance might well release repressed memories... now if only I could remember where I put my car keys yesterday... (getting old is no fun... :()

Katey x

[MissDanielle]

Once you stop repressing, the memories are easier to come by. Take today for example, i was very anti Leo in middle school but that was only because I didn't want to accept that I had a very big crush on him just like any other girl at the time!

I've always been attracted to pink clothing and such...just had to hide that from my parents.

[pamela7]

I have the same, realising i cross-dressed without knowing i was at many ages. Many feelings forgotten

1 - jealous of sisters at ballet so pretending it was boring, instead dad made me go to the gym which i loathed (proper 60's gymnastic gym not the modern type).
2 - wearing tops my mum gave me in my teens
3 - wearing sarongs and any excuse to crossdress for stag nights or similar
4 - enjoying the girl parties from a very young age

the signs are all there once you start looking

[EllieMayxxx]

Katey, Im laughing quite a bit after reading what you put, it cant be that bad getting more mature, I don't like using 'old' lol. Like what you and Danielle said about self acceptance releasing some trapped memories is what's happening. From the age of 7-8 to 15 I have always tried my hardest to be manly and completely shut off my feminine side, but I have always felt wrong for doing so, but now im understanding that its a big part of who i am I have been feeling a lot better about it.
Pamela you are right, once you start looking the signs are there.

[flatlander_48]

I agree with the societal aspect of repression. However, I think that there is an internal aspect to it also. If you allow these untoward thoughts to surface, you will have to deal with them in some way. But, if you don't understand them, how are you going to deal with them? Better to keep them repressed.

So, I think it is two-fold. The societal part is the external impetus and not being able to figure things out (or at least thinking that we can't figure them out) provides the internal impetus. Both are pretty strong reasons to let sleeping dog lie...

DeeAnn

[Pat]

Memory is funny stuff. Totally unreliable but completely relied upon every day. I have often noticed that people search their memories for events that presaged their current state of affairs and in doing so find the supporting memories they seek. Does it mean the memories are false? Does it mean a new spin has been applied to old memories? Don't know. (Can't know.)

It's possible that many men put on some article of their Mom's clothing at an early age and then forgot all about it -- they weren't crossdressers; it was not significant. For us when we accepted being crossdressers we recovered that common memory and found it made us feel better in that it seemed to indicate this was a baked-in part of us. I have no way to prove it's the case or that it's not the case, so I have to ask what does it change? Nothing.

It would be nice if it was true that crossdressing is baked-in and that early in your childhood someone could notice an event, realize what it means and guide us to a happy future of self-acceptance and fulfillment. Maybe that will happen in the future as society comes to accept transgender behaviors (if it does.) For now we can only speculate. Looking back over my life, I've identified spots along my road where clearly I was feeling the feelings and taking the actions that lead me here. Was it destiny or selective memory? Don't know (Can't know.)

[Robin414]

I do come to think of it, I remember back in junior high school...I wasn't CD at the time but I did notice what the girls were wearing and I honestly thought, I'd sooo love to be able to wear that...now I can...and do...

Don't like it!? Ya, I'll still fight ya! 😠

[sometimes_miss]

I've never believed in past lives, though I have a theory about it. As far as repressing memories, our minds do some amazing things in order to survive. We can block out memories for decades, even entire lifetimes if for some reason it could render us incapable of being able to function. You can read about patients 'suddenly' remembering all kinds of horrible things that happened to them 30, 40 even 50 or more years ago. It all gets 'buried' deep into our minds, to keep us able to focus on what's important today. What most often brings those memories back, from the people I've spoken to about it, is some sort of 'trigger' event: The sight of something, smell, hearing something that links them to that past event. Could be almost anything, and sometimes the person has to really go over everything they were doing and where, when the memory suddenly returned.
The 'past lives' thing. We all know that we have 'brain waves', which can be measured on an electroencephalograph machine (the one where they stick electrodes to your head). Thoughts could be considered as electrical waves. So, there is a frequency to them, moving from one part of the mind to another. Now, we also know that radio waves continue on indefinitely out into space. Do those much weaker waves from a person's mind also continue on? If they are much weaker, are they held in a certain part of space rather than continue outside our planet? We don't know. We can't measure that yet. Now suppose that you take someone's eeg. And match it up to someone who lived oh, maybe 200 years ago. If you 'match up' with that person's 'frequencies', perhaps your mind will pick up traces of the energy that person left when they were alive. Far fetched, I know. And, of course, we don't have any way to measure such things if indeed they do occur. Maybe in the future new technology will help us decipher what is going on when we remember something that we could not have experienced ourselves.

[Martina]

I do remember when I was about 4 or 5 my mother saying that she hoped I was a girl, having 3 boys before me.

My older brothers picked up on this and teased me that I should have been a girl, I got very upset and said that I didn't want to be a girl at the time.

Now thinking back I wish that I had been born a girl, so many things would have been so wright for me, and I would not have had to pretend that I was a boy when all the time I later felt that I was a girl inside a boys body.

Martina

[PaulaQ]

The reason you didn't remember those feelings is most likely because such feelings were probably invalidated at every turn by everyone, and everything around you. You internalized that invalidation and erasure, and, in turn, suppressed the feelings and memories, as best you could. Also, sometimes we lose track of memories because, at the time we get them, their significance isn't obvious. After coming to terms with yourself as a CD, some things that before didn't really seem significant take on a whole new meaning, and they surface again.

[TaraGrace]

wow.. this topic hits close to me :)

I've been trying to puzzle through my memory for the last weeks in search of early memories.
There's this thread in this section about "what's the first item" which is a daily confrontation too, love the tread, hate that I can't answer.. I just don't know ;)

As bits and pieces are still slipping into mind, it's still fun remembering certain things.. but I also decided to stop forcing myself to remember.. like an old computer.. there's only so much you can take untill the "right, and that's the last drop" ;)

[Allisa]

Now that you've opened up my memories from your query, I do recall numerous incidents from my young childhood about doing things that were considered "girly" but not so much about CDing. All I need is a catalyst to open my memories, I feel I've never lost them it's just that with the good also come the bad and we tend to repress those things. And as Katey said us olders have to go back a lot further and the model "T" takes a lot longer to navigate those dirt roads.

[Sarah Beth]

Not to long ago while going through some old pictures with my mom there were some of me wearing some of her of course way over sized clothes when I was around four or five. She said she didn't know why she had kept them and that she was glad I hadn't turned out to be "one of those" because I seemed to like to wear her clothes. I had no memories of that at all but since then I keep remembering little things that happened that I hadn't remembered before. There were some years from when I was around 17 until I was mid twenties that I blocked everything about my cross dressing out. I refuse to let my mind go there.

I have to remember that I grew up in another time when there were no home computers or cell phones and less acceptance ( although I swear were I live its like being in the 50's) than there is now. So I guess there was a lot more there to make someone feel ashamed of things.

[JanePeterson]

When I was a kid, I used to go to summer camp in North Carolina for a month each summer... It was paradise, really fun, mostly centered on boats etc... , One summer when maybe I was 7, one of the counsellors took a "special interest" in me... In hindsight, I'm almost 100% sure he was a pedophile and was singling me out, luckily he never got the chance to abuse me... But one night at camp we were all in the cabin preparing for a skit, one in which one of the campers would dress like a girl and just kind of good off and dance around with the counselor (writing that, I now realize that this skit was not real but just part of this guys act... Creepy!!!) anyway, of course he picked me to be the girl, and I had to put on this silly dress and wig, and all of the other kids there, maybe 10 of us, we're all laughing at me, and I remember losing it and running away... took two counselors to talk me back into the cabin after that. I haven't thought about that day or those feelings until recently, and i find it explains how i managed to be so deeply in denial for so long... right when the bud was forming it was met with ridicule and humiliation, so I've been working in one way or another to protect myself ever since...

[EllieMayxxx]

I understand, I remember at primary school, about 6 years old we was learning about india, the teacher bought in a sari , sorry if I spelled it wrong, and i think a jacket like they have on the bollywood films. The teacher asked who wanted to wear the sari, and I put my hand up because I really liked how it looked. The othe kids laughed and the teacher said you can't wear that because its for girls. I remember feeling upset because i wanted to wear it and because i was being laughed at.

[ReineD]

I don't crossdress nor do I have gender issues (I'm a GG), but I have experienced the same thing. I've remembered long forgotten memories at various times in my life. I've no idea what the triggers were, but I think this happens to everyone.