Originally Posted by ReineD
I hope that you will start seeing a good gender therapist who is able to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff. I gather that therapists vary in terms of training and ability, and also perhaps bias depending on their own life experiences. I'm not a gender therapist, but this is the way that I see the choices in a nutshell:
1.Obviously if you are not TS, then it would be a mistake to transition.
2. If you are TS, if living in the male gender role with your male primary and secondary sexual characteristics is severely and negatively impacting the quality of your life causing you a deep sense of emptiness and depression, then NOT transitioning would be a mistake.
3. If you are one of the rather large blocks of people who are not part of the gender binary, if your gender is rather fluid and your male life is not causing you the deep distress described above even if there are aspects of your female life that you enjoy infinitely more than being male, then it might OR might not be a mistake to transition, based on your life circumstances and how much you stand to lose job-wise and relationship-wise should you go ahead with transition (combined with your ability to cope with the potential losses). I think there are people whose sense of well-being will be the same no matter what gender they live as and much of this depends on how others will see them post-transition and how much their expectations of living in their target genders will come true.
4. Conversely, if you are not yet sure whether or not you are TS, then beginning a transition right now would be a mistake just in case it turns out that you are not TS. But if you are TS, then it will eventually become unbearable to keep your male body and continue to live as a male.
If you don't mind, I'm going to post just my response to you in the thread without mentioning your name. It illustrates the fundamentals of what I'm trying to get at.