Big uh oh...but so easy!

[Darla]

Hi ladies.

So I hit a moment in therapy today where I had a huge uh oh moment in where I think my therapist is getting a handle on me, as well as I'm getting a handle on me. Like where the comment is "It's not really just crossdressing for you is it?" Type of comment. And my stomach sank like 20 floors. Oh s**t. I think I've been found out. I think I might have to admit to whatever that "it" is.

Last two sessions I've gone dressed and surprised myself by slipping into an absolutely natural and without effort-type of being where I shocked myself as to how easily I assumed a feminine persona. I don't mean to brag, but I have the start to a really good feminine self. So why was it so easy? Seriously - I never knew this part of me existed, and it's natural and joyful and liberating and beautiful. Have any of you girls had this weird break with your masculine self, only to discover how truly (like truly truly to your roots) you are overwhelmingly more woman than man?

Oh yeah - and it terrified you worse than any Exorcist movie? Because movies don't really destroy your life....

Thanks
Darla

[Rogina B]

So,why the therapist? Something wrong? Did someone tell you to go?

[mikiSJ]

Yes, late last year. I have gone a couple of times dressed as Miki and have had a nice girl to girl conversation. Even when I do not go dressed, I still represent as Miki as that is where I am heading.

[kellycan27]

Don't count your chickens before they hatch... If your plan is transition, you ain't seen nuttin yet! Just a word to the wise.

[celeste26]

OK Darla it seems like something good, maybe scary, but good scary. Hopefully that male part will simply disappear and you wont be able to find it again. Isn't that the goal?

[Jorja]

Good for you! I am glad to hear your therapy is starting to pay off. Don't get too excited yet, there are many more uh ho moments to come. Like the one where you realize that you are not destroying life but saving one.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

slipping into a feminine persona is meaningless with regards to who and what you are.

Obviously if you are going to address issues that lead you to a real life type of path it will be a positive for your quality of life.
If you do go down that path you can't overestimate the amount of change and difficulties but the rewards can be more meaningful than anything you can imagine.

Don't brag, you'll be sorry later

[Katelyn B]

... Last two sessions I've gone dressed and surprised myself by slipping into an absolutely natural and without effort-type of being where I shocked myself as to how easily I assumed a feminine persona. I don't mean to brag, but I have the start to a really good feminine self...

If you really were a trans woman you wouldn't need to adopt a persona, or work on one, you would just want to deal with the issues (pain) of the world and your body constantly being wrong and treating you in a way so discordant to you it hurts. If you want to be feminine, that's a completely valid expression of gender for someone AMAB, that society doesn't dee it that way blame patriarchy and misogyny. Living your life as a woman has nothing to do with playing a role, it's about being who you are despite what cards you were dealt. It sounds like your therapist is conflating wanting to being a woman and actually being one, there is nothing wrong with it being "more than cross dressing" but that "more" doesn't necessarily mean transsexual.

[Darla]

Rule number one: Never use the word brag in describing what is difficult road.
Two: Expect brutally honest opinions on this forum in TS and TG issues.

Thanks. I think it's good to have a counterpoint to therapy and the limited experiences I've had in life. I didn't really mean to brag, it sounds so naive. I was just bowled away by how I just "bang" was able to be me. NOT adopt a persona. Katelyn, I think that's what's happening. It's a gradual thing, where I'm discovering way more about who I am. I don't think it's the case that I' playing a role or adopting a persona (despite my OP). I'm being myself for the first time in forever. And it scares me. Who doesn't want to be who they are? I haven't for a long time. You have no ideas of the power I've exerted to conform and be "Normal". I'm practically a superhero. My regrets are that if I could have let myself be me where would all that energy have been expended in a positive way?

And Rogina; I'm in therapy for those very reasons (besides it being a safe venue that society deems appropriate). I've been angry, depressed, confused and hate my body on some days. I knew I had to speak to someone when I look at my legs and see women's legs but for some inexplicable reason they have hair all over them. I feel like a sculptors block of marble, and there's the real me inside, but the exterior is rough and wrong. I envy and am jealous of women, their being who they are.

I've always been a grass is always greener type of person, and I know that there's no magical solution. I appreciate the posts, every one of them especially the ones with dire warnings.

I don't know if I'll be a CD and be happy to express myself, or come to realize that this life I've been living didn't have to be this hard, and that I'll trade it for another life that you ladies assure me is equally as hard, if not more so. All I know is that I feel like I've finally started in the journey that might just get me some answers.

Thanks for framing it from all your viewpoints, it's really invaluable.

Darla

[LeaP]

In answer to your question - no. While I have experienced a variety of changes, I would not say any of them changed my basic persona. I say that even knowing how I have projected myself falsely over my life. If I'm less reclusive and more engaged, more animated, happier, etc., it is all still me and no-one would really think otherwise ... other than maybe thinking they hit me on a (formerly) rare good day. I have a pervasive sense of my identity - when I think about it - but even that is mostly unconscious as I have become accustomed. Does a man think about being a man all of the time, or a woman a woman?

And why would my personality change? Hiding within myself has been fundamental to my life, not by way of hiding a different persona, but in order to protect myself. I experience learned behaviors as part of myself, too. They ARE part of me. Though I termed projecting myself "false," above, I have incorporated some of that in a more natural manner. I.e., I've become better-integrated. It's all me. I also feel that I have better control of what I am in the sense of what I will allow myself. Those choices no longer feel coerced and pressured. Even things I've "learned" about myself over the last couple of years are things that I've always known in some way. Half-known, felt but not lived, occasionally surfaced, dormant, etc.

Maybe this is different for some people, that they integrate a completely different personality. Short of pathology, though, I don't see how. Most report either little no basic persona change, and/or or they experience change as a releasing of what they already were. Allowing yourself some outward behaviors that were suppressed can make you feel quite different at first, but is that really a change of the type you are talking about?

[Darla]

I think I was taken aback by how allowing me some outward behaviors was just allowing me to manifest who I am. I am not allowed in daily life to act feminine. It would confuse people if I were to do so, make my wife scared, make people at work wonder if I was having a breakdown. So the epiphany was that it came so naturally, it was part of me that needed expression.

Rule number three: Don't use the word persona when you're describing what is really a state of being.

I think I'm getting posts that are confusing persona, personality and what I'd call identity. I wasn't clear in my post, and will hopefully be able to articulate this better in the future. But where I felt this exhilaration of being me, I described it as donning a persona. Wrong. I acted as I wanted to, how it felt naturally, and was me. It just so happens that it was feminine.

Which brings up a question; is gender a learned behavior, or is it innate, and outward expressions are a manefestation of that state of being. This is where we all see the most masculine women who always read as women. There's a physical state of being, an expressive set of actions and an internal identity. I have just come to see my internal identity and my external mannerisms are helping facilitate. Now if I could just get that damn physical part in line with the rest of me.

Make sense?

Darla

[Emily83]

Yep. It happened to my husband, but it was through our seperation as opposed to a therapist.
Happy to report we're back together & she is 3 months into HRT.
All the best & good luck.

[Darla]

Really! I'm very happy to hear that, although I can understand there's more challenges than one can shake a stick at. That's very inspirational and probably deserves its own thread! My best to the both of you.

[LeaP]

It makes better sense. Regarding rules, Darla, there are none. I don't know that this is exactly what you implied, but one thing to be careful of is changing your personal story - your "narrative" to meet any perceived norms or expectations here. Clarity is not the same thing. We ARE all different in the end, and I know some of the things that I experience aren't shared by some others, and vice-versa.

Gender is a complex concept. Because of THAT, I would say it's both innate and learned. My personal take is that my core sense of self is innate (and female). Beyond that, I sense that some of my attitudes and behaviors trace somehow to that identity while others don't. Still others are completely indifferent either way. All of it is personal and doesn't necessarily track to conventional man/woman notions. I also attribute aspects of HOW I present my gender to how I have lived (i.e., male). Again, some of these have become part of me. On the other hand, I clearly occupy a male-gendered role in the world. I may attempt to minimize certain conventional aspects of that which I detest, but it is a male role nonetheless.

[Sandieland]

Darla, I was struck with a particular sentence in your post..."So the epiphany was that it came so naturally, it was part of me that needed expression". After recently moving to a new city where no one knows me and with much more free time on my hands, my dormant feminine side finally burst forth... and I was also quite surprised at how natural all this seemed. Now, every day I ask myself "why did I wait?". I don't know if I was shocked at how natural it all seems as much as surprised. Yes, I too have had an epiphany... a little late, but better late than never.

[Darla]

I think that's where I'm at too. Why wait? Well - I have a marriage that's on rocky ground some days, blissfully happy the next. I was posting about how I'll be getting a divorce - now I'm figuring out boundaries as well as going through a well guided self discovery. Moving somewhere, having few ties - that ain't me right now. So I'll reply in typically feminine fashion - "I'm so jealous!"

With implied "good for you!" Happy you're finding your way.

Darla

I think you struck something that who you are can be as deep as being gender neutral here too. Part of me feels neither male nor female, just me. The next layer I'm thinking has a surprisingly more female component to it than previously thought. It's nice to be who you are regardless, but to fully realize it you kind of have to go with what gender describes you best. In my case I'm having second thoughts about this guy person.

Oh - and not that it needs to be brought up but we haven't touched sexuality.

Life is very complicated.

Darla

[Kaitlyn Michele]

its much less complicated than life...are you a woman? yes or no. of course answering that question is not a straight line for a subset of us, and depending on that answer, then life does get complicated

based only on this thread...

You have brought up a number of canards now including sexuality...sexuality is irrelevant..
You do not have to kind of have to go with what gender serves you best...you are best served to go with the gender that you are..

You continue to talk about personas, layers, components

Based on your posts here, you not going to be transitioning anytime soon and you are trying way to hard to take a bunch of behaviours and thoughts and conflate them with being a woman.

you are honest and sincere and that's going to help you a lot..hopefully you are open to wherever this goes...

i'd urge you to do your best to avoid "being TS" for now ...

if you were my best friend, I would still call you girlfriend but i'd tell you the same thing I just wrote..

[mary something]

I am not allowed in daily life to act feminine. It would confuse people if I were to do so, make my wife scared, make people at work wonder if I was having a breakdown.
Darla

How do you know?

[Angela Campbell]

Yes for most of my life I wasn't allowed to act feminine in any way, and in fact learned to do the opposite so well I kind of forgot who I was. When things began to change for me I didn't try to act feminine, I just did what felt right and natural. I didn't really think too much about it and started getting comments about looking and acting kind of girly. Now it is difficult to act masculine and I actually work hard at it at times when I need to.

Destroyed your life? Not for me it hasn't. Besides....who has to allow you to be you?

[groove67]

I have felt feminine most of my life had nothing to do with wearing female attire. It was whom and what i am and now living fulltime female last three years i dress as woman everyday of my life. I must say i enjoy wearing skirts and dresses but transition goes way deeper than that.

[Marleena]

Somehow easy and being TS just don't go together. Glad you're getting answers though Darla.

[Darla]

You know - I think this crowd is a little hard too. I am getting some answers, and a wonderful story, but I don't really have that much experience with this stuff. If some of my comments sound naive, they come from a place of honesty at least. Thanks all. There might be a lot more uh oh moments, and I may only go so far. I'm not diagnosing myself as TS, just wondering if other people have had some of the same experiences. And maybe 8'll be able to test other people's reactions. Maybe it won't be so bad. I do know it'll affect my home life, that much I'm sure. And the only person not letting me be me is ...yes ...me. I have a lot to sort out.

Onward.

Darla

[emma5410]

I know what you mean. My therapist was the first person, who knew me, to see me dressed. It was incredibly liberating and I felt very natural and normal. I had told her how much effort I had always put into acting masculine. Having seen me in my natural state, for want of a better phrase, she said she appreciated how much effort it took me to be male.
As others have said this does not mean you are TS. I am impressed how open you are to challenge. This is very important. You have to be prepared to constantly question yourself and your motives. I have started living full time and it can be a struggle although it is getting better for me. All I can say is do not transition unless you are sure you are TS. It is a very hard road. If you are TS then you will have no choice and this is the path you should take. Pray that you are not.
I think you are exploring and will wander off on tangents but this is a part of the process. The TS section can be tough but that is because transitioning is such a tough road.

[melissakozak]

Gone to therapy, specifically, a gender therapist for one year and it has made a mountain of difference for me. I have gone dressed, and yes, it is natural. Yes, it way, way beyond simply wearing clothing. Yes, I self identify as 'other.' Yes, if I was 19, I would transition. But, as many of my friends who have transitioned have said, don't do it unless you have to. I don't have to right now. I have 'learned' to like the person I have been and happen to be. My soul will never change....keep an open mind about yourself....the road for all of us is uniquely different, and I certainly cannot speak about transition in anyway, shape or form because I have not done it...

I honestly believe we exist on some sort of spectrum. Some of us are truly dual gendered, and that is how I classify myself BUT, and I say BUT, the male gender I present as is simply the default. Am I comfortable with it? No. Do I bend the rules of male behavior? You bet your ass. I get my hair highlighted, my nails done, and I get pegged as a gay male when I am in so called drab. At this point in my life, I don't really care what others think....keep going to your therapist. She will enlighten and challenge you.....

[kimdl93]

I'm not sure I could recognize that break entirely. I don't really change...I'm me however I'm dressed. I do have to admit feeling very much at home when I'm dressed as a woman...and increasingly less so when I'm in male mode. But I don't feel there's a shift of persona from male to female in my case.