Therapy helped me figure who I am and helped me understand choices I made in my past.
I was also worried about how to talk to my wife about my self discovery. My self realization came years after our marriage, and I would often interpret things she would say in a negative way. So therapy helped me (us) improve our communication skills and move us to a better place.
I found that once I told my wife about it, the feeling of shame and guilt had become less. So much so that I wear things more often now knowing that its not a problem with her. My anxiety levels are way less now too, nothing to hide which is where I feel the guilt/shame feelings always came into play.
My rather atypical progression into cross dressing probably makes me unqualified to comment from the stand point of personal experience but from a logical and psychological perspective my thoughts are that there is nothing to feel guilt or shame about.
If it is a compulsion issue, it is not so very different to smoking, drinking or gambling (and a sight less detrimental to one?s health).
If it is a hobby, then it is not so very different from someone obsessed with motocross or football.
In each case, the only reason dressing is different is because of the stigma attached and these usually come about as a result of people being reluctant to change or who fear change; but all good changes, from the way Gallileo?s theory was approached to the way race, gender and sexuality issues have changed in more recent decades, become majority views in time.
The first duty of anyone is to themselves so I would alter the premise of the original question. Does dressing prevent me from doing something which I would enjoy or would be to my benefit? Is dressing in balance with my other interests and responsibilities?
I wouldn't say I feel any guilt at all. There is no reason to, cross dressing isn't illegal and I bought everything which I use to cd with my own money as well, so no guilt of taking stuff from anyone. Shame I have not yet experienced, but no one in real life really knows about me CDing, so that may why. I would say for me all I ever really feel is maybe a little bit of fear and anxiety when I go out in public as I do fear being 'discovered' by anyone who may know me, but usually both of those die down after about 15 minutes after leaving my house. I suppose at the end of the day even if I was discovered the most I would have to deal with is some embarrassment and possibly shame, but nothing truly bad would happen since I live by myself anyways.
Last edited by Brandi17; 06-23-2020 at 06:17 PM.
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Hi Pixie,
I wish I had an easy answer for you, but I don't. I know guilt and shame can be overcome, because I've done it myself. But how exactly I did it is another question!
It reminds me of a guy in a bowling league who now and then would put in a star performance. The rest of us asked him "How do you do that?" In response, he took a ball in his hand, swung it down the lane, and said "Well, you go like this!"--as pins tumbled left and right in yet another strike. But how exactly you "go like this" is hard to describe, let alone emulate. Don't worry though, you'll "get the hang of it" some day.
Out of interest, your post prompted me to ask "What's the difference between 'guilt' and 'shame'?" Is there any? I guess there is. Going by some people's opinions, "guilt" is the perception that we've "done something wrong," something that harms others. It might be a bad thing to do, but it doesn't condemn us forever. Except in serious cases, like killing someone by driving drunk for instance, most things we "do wrong" to others can be redeemed. We're all human. We all make mistakes. Most of them are forgivable. In any case "guilt" is irrelevant to crossdressing, because we're harming nobody by doing so. Not unless we "feel guilty" for disappointing someone else's expectation of us: parents, a wife, or "society," say. So compared with shame, "guilt" is the less damaging and the less corrosive of the two.
"Shame" is another matter. Shame is when we take it upon ourselves, not just that we "did" something wrong, but that we ourselves are irredeemably "bad" in some fashion, or anyway that something is "wrong" with us. I have to confess that I, like so many others here, suffered from "shame" in my earliest teenage years of crossdressing. I couldn't resist the urge. But once the urge was consummated, I couldn't wait to get out of female clothes and get back into "male mode"--as though I were somehow "contaminated" by dressing as a girl. It wasn't that I was hurting anyone by doing so. It wasn't fear of discovery either. It was just that I was at war with myself in those days.
Thankfully I'm not like that any longer. But that's the nature of "shame"--a negative valuation of the self. Still, I have to agree with what others have said: essentially that "shame" of this kind results from "buying into" and internalizing our perception of other people's valuation of ourselves, whether that's fair or not. "What would others think of me if they saw me doing this?"
I don't think this is different in principle from what some people go through if they were abused as children, internalizing the message of abuse--that "you're no good"--and had their self esteem destroyed as a result. Luckily that was never my own experience, but the problem is that even if we realize intellectually that what has been done to us is unfair and wrong, that we ought to dismiss such negative thoughts as nonsense, the emotional effects still linger. It's been said that "cognitive" and "emotional" memories are stored in different parts of the brain. We can argue away the cognitive memories, but the emotional memories need far more "working through" to get rid of their toxic effects.
That, unfortunately, is where I can't be of much help in relating from my own experience how I "got rid of" the shame and learned to accept myself comfortably. I can say it happened with time, so "time is the great healer." I do know I seem to have had a kind of "epiphany" round about the age of thirty, when I felt I didn't give a damn any more and learned to enjoy exploring my feminine self in comfort. I guess waiting until thirty is a long time, starting from my first urges to crossdress at twelve or thirteen. But there wasn't any societal support in those days. Possibly being "forced to face reality" about myself helped along the way. That included at least one, maybe two "purges" (can't remember now) in my teen years, hoping the urge would go away--but as we all know, if never did. And the final, "Great Purge" when I moved in to live with a girlfriend--but that didn't cure my urges either, and I was soon into her clothes! That didn't last, but when we're faced with reality, that we're not going to change, we can either deny it... or come to terms with it.
However, I will say that having a nice, accepting wife may have made a lot of difference. I wasn't "fully out" to her to begin with, but I used to "play dressup" in her clothes now and then, and it didn't freak her out. She thought it was fun. So I felt accepted.
That's the only advice I can give you. Surround yourself with accepting people. Shun those who are prejudiced, or reject you. I'm sure therapy can belp, if you need it, but many of us have succeeded without it. Give it time. You will learn to accept yourself and be happy with yourself as you are. Good luck!
I don't have much support my wife does't believe in crossdressing and doesn't think men should wear women's cloths. That doesn't help me in loving crossdressing.
Johnboy,
No it doesn't help at all ! I hope your wife realises the implications of her actions , OK it depends on your needs or depth of dysphoria but long term suppression isn't a good thing mentally , eventually the cork has to burst out the bottle !
Same old story , you need to decide what it really means to you and then get that together and have the talk with her , the fact she doesn't like it doesn't make it go away .
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