Complete Suppression

I've been wondering why identity issues have had such urgency over the last year. Why now? Why not 10 or 20 years ago? A recent response in another thread from Bree perhaps hints at an answer:

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Originally Posted by Bree_K

I didn't know I was transexual from a young age, but I did know a lot of other things.

I knew I didn't know how to be a boy. Being a boy didn't seem to fit right and I was ALWAYS studying other boys and mimicking how they would act. I hated this acting and would be alone as much as possible so I didn't have to pretend.

I crossdressed from a young age. I think with all the repression, it was the only outlet my inner-self could find.

I envied girls. I hated that they were able to be girls and I wasn't.

I knew I was hiding who I really was. I knew I would lose my friends if they found out.

I just didn't know WHAT I was hiding from until I got a reality check a couple years ago and had to face the facts.

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What this triggered in me was the memory of envying girls, of hiding from my friends. I had totally forgotten what it felt like to look at girls like that, and it happened over decades from my earliest years. I STILL do it without consciously realizing it. How can you NOT remember something like that? That, plus other emerging, forgotten or suppressed memories makes me wonder if one starts having identity emergence problems at the point when you lose control of the memories, when, as a result, you can no longer actively track and channel your responses. In other words, when you lose control of your false front. I feel like a leaky vessel. Perversely, suppression may be the key to identity for some.

Just random thoughts.

Lea

I cannot speak for others, but my Gender Identity Disorder was not triggered by losing control of memories from my youth. It is possible that the dysphoria escalated in part due to depression that was also linked to other elements in my life, but the fact is that I had been increasingly unable to live with being perceived as the man I have never been.

In the past, when the need to express my true self had become acute, I would "reason" with myself that no-one would want to know an ugly woman. Over time I changed that to ugly old woman. I would then hide behind that lie to try to suppress the knowledge of who I am. Luckily for my sanity, the lie wore too thin.

I didn't so much lose control of my false front as lose faith in it's ability to keep me alive.

Lea,

You totally get it. Once the wall starts coming down, your ability to cope by repressing, supressing, lying to yourself just goes away.. I've posted before that I can't believe the crazy thoughts I had...how did I make it?

What Bree described is almost exactly how I experienced this, but I was in my mid forties...

Fwiw, I asked my therapist, who has exclusively seen tg patients for twenty years,about this exact thing

Her answer was she didn't know for sure, but it was very common in her ts patients. She said that our "arcs" are incredibly similar, with only the life details being different.

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Originally Posted by Kaitlyn Michele

Her answer was she didn't know for sure, but it was very common in her ts patients. She said that our "arcs" are incredibly similar, with only the life details being different.

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I wonder why this happens to only some people (who previously thought they were CDers) and not others. And why, according to the distribution of posts in this forum, it seemingly happens to a small percentage?

And as Lea asked, why now and not when she was a child or a teenager? There are people who always knew?

I'd like to understand more about this too.

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Originally Posted by ReineD

I wonder why this happens to only some people (who previously thought they were CDers) and not others. And why, according to the distribution of posts in this forum, it seemingly happens to a small percentage?

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Most people on this site are not transsexual, that's why. :)

As to your other question, entire books could be written on that subject! And probably have.

Point taken. I should know better. :)

I always have a million questions in my head and this time I just typed them out. :p

The mind must become strong enough to accept the consequences of truth and wise enough to recognize truth when it finds it. Before this there must be the discovery that there is value in truth to make the effort of searching for it worthwhile. Suffering fuels the search but the mind is trapped between muliple and opposing forms of suffering with apathy and confusion the result.

Life is lived between a rock and a hard place and thinking is just so much static. Suppresion buys time and quiets the mind so the immediate task of survival can be met. The walk from sickness to health( movement toward truth) must be done within the limits of a minds capacity to survive (not become more sick, continued movement toward falsehood)
while being confronted with the paradox that much of what is called health is actually sickness and vice versa, (lies are truths and truths are lies) a confused mind is surrounded by other confused minds but each in its own way and all fighting to defend their idea of reality/truth even when it is based on falsehood.

Insanity (falsehood/sickness) and sanity(truth/health) are only opinions because there is a measure of both in everyone. The closer our opinions/behavior are representative of truth (reality) the healthier we become.

Great tension exists between those who live closer to truth/reality as opposed to those who live closer to falsehood because both defend their ideas of truth to protect their sensation of reality/sanity for them. To discover truth you must give up the need for argument and move beyond others, the individual must stand alone. Life is a search for and movement toward truth.

Hi,

Im one of those who did not have a identity problem or issues, as far as knowing what & who i was, as to clothes that did not factor in .

I did have a lot of other issues to work through as a person & that had nothing at all to do with wether i ...was ....or.... am.... male or female .
Being both is really what keeped me sane,

The ? & i dont know, this is what bugged me i was not quite like the boys & not quite like the girls that i did not understand, thats the problem yet when your nether or both you come to the ? im different yet quite happy being that way. i dont have the answer ,

So being different just means iv accepted that & just get on being who i am.
what has been so fantastic & lovely is i can express my self as being a female / woman in a way i was not able to years ago.
So being supressed or closed down would be a detail for many depending on the person.

We can get through that just takes time,

...noeleena...

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Originally Posted by Kristin A

Most people on this site are not transsexual, that's why. :)

As to your other question, entire books could be written on that subject! And probably have.

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Originally Posted by ReineD

Point taken. I should know better. :)

I always have a million questions in my head and this time I just typed them out. :p

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An unresolved Identity struggle from a young age through life seems to be a transsexual marker. It basically has nothing to do with sex or clothing etc.

Being careful with exclusionary language that tends to stifle those who are trying desperately to find answers to their own personal struggles might be construed as supportive!

I believe that I know why I didn't figure this out until I was fifty eight years old. First of all, being a transsexual doesn't come with instructions. I was two when my only sister was born. By the time I was four I knew that I wanted to be treated like her. She had long hair. She wore dresses. She was treated like a girl and I wanted that as well. When I was four my mother caught me wearing a hand-me-down dress intended for my sister. As my mother removed my dress she told me that, " boys don't wear dresses." When I asked her "why", she just said," because." So I learned that it was wrong for boys to wear dresses. And from then on I had to sneak to dress up in private, because I had to wear dresses. In grade school I died with envy watching the girls in my class wearing their full skirts and petticoats. As I got older I learned that some people were gay. So I decided that I must be gay as well. But there was a problem with that theory. I was attracted to girls, not boys. That ruled out my gay theory. In my early twenty's I decided that I must be a hetero transvestite. I hated the sound of that word, transvestite. It sounded like a bad thing to me. So I declared myself to be a cross-dresser. Yes, that must be it. Over the years I did all of the "male" things. I married a wonderful woman; became a father; and then grandfather. But still, something wasn't right. What was I searching for? Then the internet was invented. For the first time a wealth of information was open to me and I couldn't soak it up fast enough. Eventually I realized that I was a M to F transsexual but my wires were crossed. I was attracted to women. If I had been attracted to men I would have believed that I was gay. I would not have married a woman and lived a hetero life. If that had happened then my path to transition would have been so much easier. But I wasn't recognized as transgender as a child so my horribly disfiguring puberty happened. I am bitter about that but not mad at my mother. The world wasn't aware of these possibilities sixty two years ago. Today a child can be diagnosed as transgender and given drugs to delay puberty until they can decide for sure what they are. I know what my decision would have been; to live my life as the woman that I am. I'm sorry that this is so long. This thread struck a nerve so I had to vent. Thank you, Leanne

Great points. There is suppression and there is also repression which is pretty much what happened to me. I have always had amazing awareness as to my true being but I grew up and came of age actively repressing this knowledge. Not so much by indulging in too many hyper-masculine pursuits (although I was a pretty good skateboarder & surfer while growing up). Rather, it was that feeling of aloneness that led me to run through some of the check-downs that Leanne described. Mostly, it was that classic "CD'er" phase because that is what kind of made sense at the time. I was alone with this struggle, right? Might as well medicate the issue with clothing. But even in my youth, I was open with girls that I dated about the dressing part and absent an internet to learn of others like us, I found myself "out & about" in my early-20's with zero thought as to why I felt compelled to do so (along with very little fear). My story then merges with many others in that my own self-awareness came to a head as I approached middle age. This is where I am now, in a daily struggle to find balance between the life I have built and the desire to be who I am.

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Originally Posted by ReineD

I wonder why this happens to only some people (who previously thought they were CDers) and not others. And why, according to the distribution of posts in this forum, it seemingly happens to a small percentage?

And as Lea asked, why now and not when she was a child or a teenager? There are people who always knew?

I'd like to understand more about this too.

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Right..Great question...
and Kristin's answer is the right one...

of course, that doesn't help you with the question you always ask, which is how do you know which is which??

What are the best "tells" that a husbands dressing is a manifestation of her transsexuality. I don't think we can really ever know as Kristen points out.

That all being said, if someone is dressing up for "identity" and wanting to do it all the time, goes by a female name, socializes with friends as a woman, takes risks with being outed publicly, etc etc...no matter what he(she) says, there is a chance he(she) is going to leave the barn.

Lea's title for this thread is very wise.

COMPLETE suppression. I always called my suppression brutal because it tore me up so badly. I like the word Lea used....it implies that one little chink in the armor (sorry Jeremy) can have a big impact

That is almost my same story Leanne.

I always thought I had to like men to be a woman. Then as I grew older I figure I was to tall or had to big of feet or anything else I could come up with in my mind to keep me from transitioning.

Then the internet came along. What a blessing that was to me. It might have even save my life.

The internet gave me my life back and a reason to live. I have never been happier in my life.

Kristy

Leanne described my life perfectly I couldn't have written it any better. Nice to have others here who know what I have gone thru day to day. Thankyou!

What makes this question much more difficult for many of us is the idea that we have identity issues in ways other than gender. In living a good chunk of my life as an artist/writer, one almost cultivates this "outsiderness" so that one can observe and understand the world and make sense of it in an artistic/writerly way. That's essentially what the work is. However, feeling outside the gender norms is a different kind of outsiderism, and I have found it very hard to sort and separate the two. I'm sure there are other forms of outsiderness which can help keep a repressive/suppressive CD/TG/TS confused for many years.

e.

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Originally Posted by Lea Paine

What this triggered in me was the memory of envying girls, of hiding from my friends. I had totally forgotten what it felt like to look at girls like that, and it happened over decades from my earliest years. I STILL do it without consciously realizing it. How can you NOT remember something like that?

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Dont we all?
I used to be extremely angry at Transmen because they were ruining the body that I wanted and taking for granted they were a woman.
Boiled my blood to just under the point of loosing control. but i kept my cool long enough to relize they were in the same damn boat as me.

Lea,

I knew since age four that things were not what they seemed.
Once transition has commenced in earnest and the excuses as to why one can't have been stripped away, it becomes a truly life saving process.
After five years of full time I have had difficulty remembering what I had to be for so long.
You would think that this would be a good thing and in many ways it is but in ways it disturbed me deeply.
Attempting to remember things and everyday life prior to December of 2006 was, for a while, a serious issue with me so much so that I had to seek therapy for it.
Having this "amnesia " of sorts caused me a great deal of panic due to not being able to remember my life very well before transition.
Now I'm able to remember what my life was with all the good and bad that went with it.

My point is that you have to know where you have been in order to know where your going.


Julia

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Originally Posted by ReineD

I wonder why this happens to only some people (who previously thought they were CDers) and not others. And why, according to the distribution of posts in this forum, it seemingly happens to a small percentage?

And as Lea asked, why now and not when she was a child or a teenager? There are people who always knew?

I'd like to understand more about this too.

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I was in an amazing state of repression and denial. It wasn't until a friend of mine found out that I was a crossdresser that I was basically forced to look at myself in the mirror. Once someone else caught a hint of what was going on, it's like it became real. There really was something going on with me. I could no longer convince myself that I was normal.

"OMG I'm a crossdresser!!!!! ........ WHHHYYY?!?!?!?!?!?!"

And that very first question about why I am the way I am lead to another. And another... and another.

As Kaitlyn said:

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Originally Posted by Kaitlyn Michele

Once the wall starts coming down, your ability to cope by repressing, supressing, lying to yourself just goes away..

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The nature of these memories is strange. They sometimes pop in like a normal memory - the typical "I never would have remembered that if you hadn't said ..."

Some feel like they were suppressed. My therapist had me reading "True Selves" and there was a story about a TS whose father would give her crew cuts as a child. That happened to me, too, and I always retained that memory, hating the experience. What I had forgotten, though, and what the story brought back was how desperately I wanted long hair. I would beg to be allowed to have long hair. And it was off to the back yard for the crew cut. That long hair memory feels like it was pushed away.

The particular memories triggered by Bree's post are different again. These are memories coming into focus, slowly returning. I can bring up scenes and feelings that include specific timeperiods and groups of girls. Childhood, High School, etc. Me observing, the girls typically in groups. I envied their closeness, laughing, touch, appearance, play, their relationships and felt completely outside - sometimes sad, but mostly chilled by the exclusion.

I may have been set up or more receptive to remembering this because of recent experiences. I've had the repeated experience over the last couple of months where I would pass a woman in a hallway at work, on the street, or at the mall (my office building opens into one), greet them and see their defenses go up. What I realized last week that *I* was doing that was different was looking at them as myself openly and to connect, rather than through my usual front, which would be cursory and cold (maybe formal would be a better word). Their reactions are completely normal, of course. My state of mind in these episodes is such that it triggers that same playground chill and subsequent sadness. Kudos to my therapist for telling me to look for times when I felt "connection." I subsequently wrote to her that I didn't have a clue what she meant, but I'm beginning to, and it was on my mind.

I never believed in real suppression except in psychosis cases. To find it in yourself is, as several of you put it (Julia directly) deeply disturbing. I'm also starting to get quite angry. Great - just what I needed ...

Lea

I have struggled with this this question off and on for about 30 yrs before i was a teenager i wanted to feel what it was like to be a girl .In the 70's and 80's and living in a small community i repressed and supressed fought and clawed to try and stop these feelings .It was not until about 5 yrs ago when my wife and i split (yes the cding had plenty to do with it ) i was able to freely go on the net and to let Ally sort of out of the closet and on the road to self accepptance
I feel much better about myself and most of my self destuctive behavior has stopped .I knew this behavior was caused by my hiding and repression to me when i hid it was shameful and the x did not help either. Now im free at least in my own home to be me and eventually to go to a cd friendly group is my next goal !

Lea I can really relate to this due to my recent "awakening". As a child we gravitate towards things we like, in my case girlie stuff. Then parental guidance due to gender concerns puts a stop to it. We are moulded into our birth gender by parents and society. So in my case I just snuck around when the urges were too strong. I always knew I was different as a child, I always remember feeling like being on the outside looking in. I never put 2 & 2 together.

This went on through most of my life with the usual dressing fix that I knew needed to be hidden from everybody. I was always attracted to women, but if they dressed feminine I noticed their clothes was more important to me. I just loved girls that wore pantyhose and short skirts. I wonder if anybody noticed me staring at them each day in class?

The human mind is a powerful and complex thing. In my case things got buried away probably as a form of self protection. I also overcompensated unknowingly as a male so as not to show the girl within. Everything is now making sense since I let the genie out of the bottle. Memories are coming back, and things are now making sense.

I hid my secret for my whole life not knowing who I was and how I fit from nursery school days. It wasn' until a girlfriend of mine
discovered my crossdressing and I was confronted with myself in 2006. The failure of a 25year marriage, the death of a close friend, the death of my father, the death of my brother and the total loss of eveything I owned through divorce and bankruptsy pushed my identity crisis over the edge! To top it off I was sure that I had always been and was some perverted freak! It has taken six years, the failure of numerous relationships, and some heavy introspection and counseling
to get to a place where I could accept myself as I am and to admit and understand just what was going on with me. I was a fraud my whole life and now my coping mechanisms are gone and lies are useless.

I was told not to long ago by a wise person that this condition can be treated but if you treat it you're probably going to want the cure!!

Kelsy

The crew cut is a good example of adults being insensitive to the boundaries and emotional needs of the child, this was done to me only once when I was eight and I felt so ugly and violated I ran away from home sleeping in the woods for three days until found by a neighbor.

It is rare that a child is respected enough to be allowed to express who they naturally want to be as an extension of who they already are.

Connectivity is a wonderful word, for me connectivity is the same experience as love, it is love experienced (felt). It makes you want to shout for joy, give a little dance,skip,clap,good shivers and chills, spine tingling happiness,happy tears or just looking into the mirror at the person staring back and realizing how much you like that person.

So much of connectivity is dependant on rejecting the worlds rejection of us, rejecting the cruelty,hate and fear directed at us. Realizing that the sickness in us (self loathing)was put there by others particularly when we were small and defenseless, the mind becomes more sensitive as it becomes stronger (heals) from past wounds by letting go of beliefs that were formed that we think belong to us but were really created by others and than the doors to old memories open helping to maintain the momentum of healing. We no longer defend our minds by closing our mind from our own awareness but we open our minds out of necessity because the cost of denial (suppresion of awareness of self) becomes to great.

Everything starts in childhood.

To 'Know Thyself' is a lifelong journey...
I too, suppressed for a long, long time...
Always new I felt 'different'...
Finally...enough...
I let go...was honest with myself...truly honest...
Life got better...much better....
Now I 'Know Myself'...but still work on learning everyday.

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Originally Posted by Lea Paine

.....I never believed in real suppression except in psychosis cases. To find it in yourself is, as several of you put it (Julia directly) deeply disturbing. I'm also starting to get quite angry. Great - just what I needed .....

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Lea, I believe that life opens doors at the right times of our lives. Maybe we were not ready before. Maybe others were not ready. Sort of a spiritual/karma thing. Being angry about the way things should have been is normal, but maybe life meant for us to become who we are now, at this time of our life, instead of earlier.

To be honest, I don't know *what* I'm angry at or why. I just am.

Lea

Well, it's good that you are facing the feeling, instead of suppressing it. Sometimes when I or others don't know what it is, I say "Just guess". Usually you can figure it out.

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I don't think the ability to cope has much to do with gender.

What I mean is this; I think there are more TS that repress memory and simply have not got to a point their 'inner self' is comfortable with release. Or to another point, their 'inner self' is busting out whether or not the body lives past the trauma that is sure to result from that action.

Memory or lack of control of it is not part of gender, so it makes sense that not all TS have repression issues. For me, I don't know why, at lest to all of the repressed memory issues, but I do know that, when the 'inner self' feels safe, more memories surface. It is work.. hard work, but I like having to deal with these types of memories when they surface. For me this means I am healing and it would be great if I get to heal all of them prior to dieing.

Hi Lea, You are fortunate in that you acknowledge to yourself that you are angry because unacknowledged anger causes blindness of self.

"Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem."
Jiddu Krishnamurti

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Originally Posted by Lea Paine

To be honest, I don't know *what* I'm angry at or why. I just am.

Lea

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IMHO...anger is about helplessness. our dysphoria is somewhat a product of the same helplessness...it is a feeling that displaces the emptiness

btw...its often in the context of anger at your helplessness to change others that people talk about anger this way (think of parental abuse, cheating/alcoholic spouse)
in our cases it may be kind of the same thing... your helpless "real" self raging at your "fake" self (thats too metaphysical for my taste but it makes some sense)
its a life or death feeling sometimes...this life or death feeling is very often the final straw for those of us that transition....

Kelly is right...anger is blinding..it masks your lifetime of built up wisdom.. why is it everytime i've punched the wall i've regretted it?? (outside of it hurts my hand)

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Originally Posted by Kaitlyn Michele

....it implies that one little chink in the armor (sorry Jeremy) can have a big impact

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The "chink" in my armor came in the form of a question from my sister. After I really started working it over in my mind, the revelations slammed into my mind. After that, I couldn't lie to myself any more. The biggest obstacle has been my fear of change but that is slowly being dealt with.

EDIT:I just remembered a memory as I was re-reading a few posts. I had crossdressed a few times as a child around the time puberty started. Only once did I stop to ask myself why. The answer chilled me, a child at the time, to the bone. "Because it's natural. It's right. More natural than being a boy." Needless to say, that was when my complete repression started. Repression became impossible once the "chink" described above happened.

If ya think about it older chix are way more of the majority than younger ones . An I think its all about oportunity an convenance ,,, Think about what Im saying when your young ya have to work an conform to requrments but the older ya get the more free time an liberal jobs an self employment jobs an parents are gone an siblings and kids are moved away so no direct everyday in an out judgment. An when I say kinda like weight lose think for a second when you were PUSHED at work physical labor you could an would lose weight like hell . But the older ya get an ya realy dont have to work like hell an usualy get the superviser jobs an management spot an we get lazy an are not pushed so its harder to lose weight see. so that being said if you have no one pushing ya to be a man an act a certain way at work orhome all the time you can let go an be yourself finaly , Just my thinking ,, An PLEASE this is not for EVERYONE just some of us :D :D :D GEEZ P.S. Again just my thoughts :2c::2c::2c:

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Originally Posted by Kaitlyn Michele

IMHO...anger is about helplessness. our dysphoria is somewhat a product of the same helplessness...it is a feeling that displaces the emptiness

btw...its often in the context of anger at your helplessness to change others that people talk about anger this way (think of parental abuse, cheating/alcoholic spouse)
in our cases it may be kind of the same thing... your helpless "real" self raging at your "fake" self (thats too metaphysical for my taste but it makes some sense)
its a life or death feeling sometimes...this life or death feeling is very often the final straw for those of us that transition....

Kelly is right...anger is blinding..it masks your lifetime of built up wisdom.. why is it everytime i've punched the wall i've regretted it?? (outside of it hurts my hand)

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I tend to think of the emotionalism and drama as having a lot more to do with survival, to preserve myself as I have been, than about what is emerging. That is, the emerging identity might be the threat, but it's not the source of the reaction. I'm feeling like a complete and total drama queen these days - waaaaay over the top for me. The emotion feels self-indulgent.

[edit] - It occurred to me after re-reading that it might not be clear how this was a response to your comment. It's this: Anger out of the current persona is an assertion of control. As far as it masking build-up wisdom, it simultaneously invokes it (or tries to) as well as tries to bury the threat. The latter is where blindness comes in.

By the way, don't punch pictures on the wall with cover glass. The amount of blood was unbelievable ...

And speaking of anger, this time without regard to persona, threat, or considerations of blindness ...

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Originally Posted by STACY B

If ya think about it older chix are way more of the majority than younger ones . An I think its all about oportunity an convenance ,,, Think about what Im saying when your young ya have to work an conform to requrments but the older ya get the more free time an liberal jobs an self employment jobs an parents are gone an siblings and kids are moved away so no direct everyday in an out judgment. An when I say kinda like weight lose think for a second when you were PUSHED at work physical labor you could an would lose weight like hell . But the older ya get an ya realy dont have to work like hell an usualy get the superviser jobs an management spot an we get lazy an are not pushed so its harder to lose weight see. so that being said if you have no one pushing ya to be a man an act a certain way at work orhome all the time you can let go an be yourself finaly , Just my thinking ,, An PLEASE this is not for EVERYONE just some of us :D :D :D GEEZ P.S. Again just my thoughts :2c::2c::2c:

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Stacy, I'll keep this in mind as I face a senior management meeting stuffed with some of most brilliant, accomplished, driven, competitive, and political people I've ever known. Yeah, none of us have to work anymore. it's easy and things just sorta work for us as we sip cocktails and flog the underlings occasionally. I have plenty of time to devote to my emotional issues - after all, I only typically work a 12-15 hour day, 6 days/week ... when I'm not traveling, on calls with Europe or Asia, or dealing with some problem in the middle of the night.

Just WHAT did you think a comment that insinuates gender identity issues are the province of fat, lazy, old people cruising by on the minimum added to this? Get a f'in clue. This is my life at stake. Now with THAT I know what I'm angry about.

Lea

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Originally Posted by ReineD

And as Lea asked, why now and not when she was a child or a teenager? There are people who always knew?

I'd like to understand more about this too.

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It DID happen when I was a child and a teen...

I am one of the "classic" girls who ALWAYS knew. I fell asleep almost every night of my childhood praying, begging, bargaining God to change me, to make me right, to make me the girl I knew I was. And every morning I woke up dismayed at my lack of results. How THAT experience mapped into my decision to become a member of the clergy I will likely never figure out.

And I can remember very distinctly the moment in 7th grade where, after shooting up from about 5'0"-6'1" in about 4 months time, and having suddenly woken up one morning with a radio announcers bass voice, (instead of the vagina I had been asking for) I KNEW without question or hesitation that I would never be able to be presentable as a girl. I KNEW that I would NEVER be able to be a girl. And I can't tell you how that knowledge crushed my soul. I am suppressed I survived the day - not because I would have taken my own life, but one's soul can simply not take that sort of destruction and continue... The fact that I didn't just stop living seemed like little more than a sick joke.

But I did keep living. And I knew that I wasn't ever going to be a girl. That door had been closed to me by my rebellious body. And so I started to build the appearance of a normal male life. If I couldn't have what I wanted, i would at least have something "nice." I closed the door on the girl and NEVER looked in that room unless I HAD to. Looking in there would only bring pain and longing, and it was easier to deal with if I never seriously considered it ever again. Testosterone helped a lot with that.

At one of my first sessions with my therapist she asked me a question that still haunts me to some extent. She asked me if I had any insight into "why now?" Why was I seeking her out at this point in my life? I didn't have a good answer, I told her I didn't really know, and I asked her if she had any insight. Her response has made a lot of sense to me in the last few years: "You have reached a point where you have the resources and time to deal with it."

Previously I had been in college, or grad school, or I was getting married, or I was starting my careers and trying to get my bearings. But in my early-mid thirties at some point... I came to the point where I could finally relaxant focus on something other than building that "nice life" I had been trying so hard for since Jr. high. And when I did that - along with relaxing and taking a breath for a second, came the shudder inducing, soul crushing, whole-body-scream-inducing, agony, of that day when I first knew I couldn't ever be who I was. Only this time I wasn't a scared adolescent without social or familial support (my mother had been particularly hard on me when I behaved in gender variant ways as a "boy"). I was an adult, an emotionally competent (more or less) adult, with a supportive wife, a set of car keys, and health insurance that could be used to purchase things like therapy. And so when I went to therapy to figure out what I was, and how to live with myself, and how to make the pain go away, I learned that my adolescent self had bought into a lie built on fear and fed by insecurity - two things in ample supply to every adolescent. I learned, very slowly, very timidly, VERY cautiously through experimentation, and through meeting some other girls that I COULD do this. That I COULD be the girl I knew I was. Even at 6'2", even with a bass voice, BIG paws, and a receding hairline.

And my soul sang. For the first time in 20 years I knew joy. There was light, and hope in the deepest darkest pit of my being, a place where all hope had been taken away for a very long time. There was no way I was ever going to go back, I survived it once, but if I had to do it a second time, it would kill me, there is no way I could endure that a second time.

OMG!!!!!!!!! did you ever hit the nail on the head with me , thank you for your thread:) thank you thank you very much

Hope, that was an extraordinarily personal response. Thank you. This line in particular is visceral:

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... the shudder inducing, soul crushing, whole-body-scream-inducing, agony, of that day when I first knew I couldn't ever be who I was.

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The time and resources points differ for all of us. I'm in my 50s and make less than I did 15 years ago when I was a rising star instead of an experienced hired gun. Divorce and the recession decimated my retirement savings and I don't have 20-30 years to make up the difference. On the time point, I may have fewer family needs to attend (children are grown), but again, job demands are extremely heavy.

For me the urgency - the identity crisis - started with feeling the need to crossdress more, and more openly. Coming out at home blew Pandora's box wide open and the consequences of what seemed like such an innocuous action are still flowing. Really, it just poured out and it has *nothing* to do narcissism, taking advantage, or any of the myriad things that are often accused on this site (usually in the CD section). It hasn't been fun. It's been dismaying and destructive, with emotional consequences that are worse for me than even my wife at least in one respect.

I turned to therapy in large part because of memories coming back. The other major therapy factor was flashes of feeling female. Not thinking, not imagining. Feeling. My therapist tells me all of these are common experiences. She mentioned, however, that for all the differences among her patients, there is exactly one thing ALL those who are trans have in common: at some point in their lives they start seeing life through a female lens. For me, it also means coming to terms with the realization that that perspective has always been there but that I've brutally (yes indeed, Kaitlyn) decapitated it at every opportunity. You can take pleasure in pain and self-denial, thinking you are doing it for things like self-discipline, not realizing that you are killing yourself.

Would that I had gone into a more humanistic discipline, Hope. I was encouraged by people close to me to go into counseling or the clergy when I was younger. Perhaps it would have led me to a better place, earlier in life.

Lea

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Originally Posted by STACY B

If ya think about it older chix are way more of the majority than younger ones . An I think its all about oportunity an convenance ,,, Think about what Im saying when your young ya have to work an conform to requrments but the older ya get the more free time an liberal jobs an self employment jobs an parents are gone an siblings and kids are moved away so no direct everyday in an out judgment. An when I say kinda like weight lose think for a second when you were PUSHED at work physical labor you could an would lose weight like hell . But the older ya get an ya realy dont have to work like hell an usualy get the superviser jobs an management spot an we get lazy an are not pushed so its harder to lose weight see. so that being said if you have no one pushing ya to be a man an act a certain way at work orhome all the time you can let go an be yourself finaly , Just my thinking ,, An PLEASE this is not for EVERYONE just some of us :D :D :D GEEZ P.S. Again just my thoughts :2c::2c::2c:

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thank you

i consider this an advertisement for safe haven

Just WHAT did you think a comment that insinuates gender identity issues are the province of fat, lazy, old people cruising by on the minimum added to this? Get a f'in clue. This is my life at stake. Now with THAT I know what I'm angry about.

Lea[/QUOTE] { I SAID IT WAS NOT } FOR !!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERYBODY ,,,,, SEE cant help somepeople ??? :Angry3:

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Originally Posted by Kelsy

An unresolved Identity struggle from a young age through life seems to be a transsexual marker. It basically has nothing to do with sex or clothing etc.

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I had it in reverse. I was me, and I knew I was a boy, and I knew from my parental education and my reading that my natural behavior pretty much matched the model polite boy (be nice, don't be destructive, avoid rough-housing, be helpful, don't interrupt, listen when people are talking, etc..) And especially considering that I really did like the forest, I was like the natural boy scout (except that I wasn't a leader.) I was doing things right, I knew, but why do all these other boys have to be so strange and insensitive? I didn't try to fit in because what the others were doing was wrong. I didn't belong with the others, but that didn't mean that I wasn't a boy. I didn't question my identity, I questioned theirs.

And eventually, not very long ago, my sense of present identity changed. What-ever I might have been then, I am as I am now.

At times I have wondered whether I was (or am) insane, to maintain my relatively firm sense of acting properly (or reasonably) when my behavior appears to be fairly different than other people's. I am told, though, that No, my grasp on reality is unusually good.

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Originally Posted by Kaitlyn Michele

That all being said, if someone is dressing up for "identity" and wanting to do it all the time, goes by a female name, socializes with friends as a woman, takes risks with being outed publicly, etc etc...no matter what he(she) says, there is a chance he(she) is going to leave the barn.

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Yup, I've definitely left the barn. But I didn't move into the next barn over either. I'm wandering out alone, thinking about staying out and pondering what life would be like in the other barn. :sigh:

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Originally Posted by Lea Paine

My therapist had me reading "True Selves" and there was a story about a TS whose father would give her crew cuts as a child.

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I seldom initiated or volunteered for hair cuts. Someone would take me and get my hair cut short because my hair had grown long and shaggy: left to myself I would grow it long. I usually didn't really want to go, not unless my hair was really getting into my eyes (sweaty hair against eyeballs is not comfortable.) And my hair would get pretty short, and after the haircut my hair would feel so light, and would look good, and I wasn't carrying around all that heavy hair in hot weather, and I would say, "Oh, I feel so free, I wonder why I resisted?!"

I remember that I would argue, "But I like long hair." In those days, I never knew why, I just did. No, I wasn't aware of feeling any more feminine with long hair. It was just a preference that to me didn't have to be justified any more than someone would have to justify preferring one kind of food to another.

Okay, so I didn't act like the other boys. Playing jump rope and hopscotch didn't make me feel like a girl, even if it did differentiate me from the boys who would never do that.

It's sort of like this: left to themselves in small groups away from the peer pressure, boys and girls will often play together. Brothers will play with sisters and friends because they are there, and it's something to do, and maybe there is some fun in the skills. Games will get played together in privacy that would not be admitted in crowds. Except that I would play those games in school. Not because I felt like a girl, but because I didn't make nearly as much distinction between what was "acceptable" at home and at school; if it was not wrong at home, then it wasn't wrong at school. And the guys were doing something uninteresting or that I wasn't welcome to join (not athletic enough)... and the girls were there and it was something to do, and there was some fun in the skills.

So perhaps rather than an unresolved Identity struggle being the key, perhaps an unresolved sense of difference is a key. Or maybe that's just me being different again :D

Lea,
supression of memories is a survival mechanism for transsexuals. without it very few of us would live long enough to transition. I know I wouldn't have made it without it.

Stacy,
your comments about gender issues being predominatly among the older ones of us here is completely in error. there are more in their 20's and 30's to mid 40's than there are over 55+. the older ones of us are just more vocal and open about our status than the younger ones normally.

issues of GID manifest at different times for different people, some younger and some older. it all depends of each persons individual circumstances in how it expresses itself and to the extent it interferes with your "normal" life. no two people react the same, and no two lives are the same. Gid is something that none of us ever wanted or desired,it just is.
dealing with it is hard and time consuming, occuping more and more time and emotional capital. robbing each and everyone.

maybe a dose of reality is needed for those who think that this is being a "DRAMA QUEEN" .

GID is a serious condition and deserves all the attention that can be brought to bear on it from the medical profession. Both from therapy to handle the stress it causes to medical intervention when necessary. be that in the form of hormone therapy up to and including surgery. this not only is a disease of males but also of females. listen to the FTM here and you will hear identical stories as you do from the MTF, there are no differences. we will sink or swim together, one can't make it without the other. we are all born with one or the other, male or female bodies, do they always match with our gender identity, no and they never will.

Danni