Gender counselling

[Shananigans]

"What you are describing is called SSRI Withdrawl, and it's a very real phenomenon."

...which implies that at some point it lifts? when?

If you are coming off of an SSRI, it should be under the supervision of your healthcare provider. He/she can lower your dosage gradually over time so that you do not experience withdrawl symptoms. You can't just start lowering or not taking it on your own. Every woman in my family is on Lexapro and has tried just getting off it cold turkey, and it really scares me. They aren't really drugs to monkey with like that.

However, you have to weigh the pros and cons. My family members stay on Lexapro because it makes them feel normal and has very few side effects (aside from GI problems). If you are on Prozac and it is therapeutic for you, then this is a strong positive. If you want to try other therapies, you should talk to your healthcare provider. If it's decided that another option might be therapeutic, he/she will slowly take you off of the SSRI and try something else.

[AnitaH]

I have been in therapy for 3 years now. Most of that time dealing with sever suppression issues. I think the two biggest helps of my therapist has been, first he has helped me to see things or accept some things in a new light, sometimes radically different. These things would never have occurred to me on my own. And two, being non-judgemental I can talk to him about anything, I have no-one else that I can say that about.

AnitaH

[sometimes_miss]

The best therapy I ever got was a warm, affectionate woman cuddling up with me. An hour of that and I feel fine. A huge percentage of the population is affection deprived; in the rush for sex, more men are, than they are aware of it.

[Kate T]

No doubt psychoactive meds have their place. I think we should all agree that they should be taken and used under the direct and preferably careful monitoring of your health care provider. NONE of the psychoactives should be stopped cold turkey. You should also not mix and match psychoactives (i.e. prozac this month, zoloft or whatever next).

I would prefer it if we kept this thread about counselling and dropped out the pills stuff though.

Absolutely no offence meant to anyone. Shan, perhaps we could start our own little soapbox thread on the uses and unfortunately misuses of psychoactive medications!

[sandra-leigh]

Anti-depressants: I've been on a number of different ones over time. I didn't keep track of them.

The first one I tried, seemed to work fairly well for me, at least from the point of view of getting me out of the "practical non-functional" up to the functional even though not exactly wonderful. (I know that might not sound like a recommendation, but the gap between where I started and where it took me was pretty big!)

Some of the others were okay-ish but I was still feeling like I was sub-par and not really getting better. More than once I drifted off of them, stopped taking them, to see whether it made a difference. A lot of the time for me, stopping didn't really change anything for me, or didn't change enough for me. I wasn't seeing enough benefit to justify continuing taking them.

Along the way I tried several anti-depressants that were okay-ish with mood, but disturbed my sleep quite a bit, including one that gave me all-night full-sensory dreams more vivid than real life. The dreams were pretty interesting, but when they happen night after night, you get exhausted, so I was falling apart because of that. (There are different kinds of sleep; while you are dreaming your body and mind are not getting restored, so you need a decent time without dreams.)

One of the anti-depressants I tried, even on half the introductory dose, knocked me out and kept me so groggy I only managed to ever take 4 pills.

And one... one of the ones I tried, made me feel absolutely horrible, like back to the days when I was flat on my back and helpless.

Probably for me the worst time was after I started getting better. When I was really bad, I couldn't keep a thought train in my head, just endure. Once I had recovered enough to be able to put three sentences together, that was the time I was able to start processing how awful I felt. That was the time that thoughts of suicide would latch in and circle around with just enough spare thought-power to stray to "how?". I mention this because this effect is the reason why they say that starting anti-depressants is the most dangerous time, the most suicides: as you get out of rock-bottom, you pass through the stage of being able to process your misery and put together thoughts on getting out of your situation. Anti-depressants are not to be started without supervision!

The most recent I've been on is the same Cymbalta that was mentioned earlier in this thread. It seems to be doing okay for me. I think it is bothering my sleep, but it is livable -- and these days the cypro (testosterone blocker) seems to be affecting me more that way.

Therapy: Oddly, this is related for me. After yet another anti-depressant try-out that was okay-ish but still left me feeling no especially hopeful about the long term, my family doctor recommended that I try therapy. There were probably many times before that during which I would have benefited, but by the time he recommended it, I was ready for it and eager to really work on getting my life in shape.

I went dual-fork at the time, individual therapy for me, and joint relationship therapy with my wife. The relationship therapy didn't work out (the therapist was no-nonsense, cut to the bone, and asked us some difficult and necessary questions that we weren't ready to deal with as a couple.)

I have continued to see the individual therapist, who has been wonderful over time on a wide variety of topics. It is not uncommon for me to be thinking, as I prepare to go to the appointment, that I have nothing worth talking about, but once I "thaw out" I almost always have much more to say than there is available time.

7-ish months after that, after a particularly stressful time in my relationship, I decided to start gender therapy as well. I have been going to both, the individual therapy and the gender therapy. There ends up being overlap between the two. (There have been times when I was at the gender therapist, but what I really needed to deal that day was a relationship issue. And my CD / TG / gender issues are fair game for my general therapy, since they form part of the background of my life and relationship.)

When I started individual therapy, my primary question was, "How do I take these good things I found through cross-dressing and bring them in to my everyday life?" I did not have an articulated question for gender therapy: it was the generalized, "Who am I? What's happening? What do I do?"

My gender therapist is more neutral than my general therapist; my gender therapist seldom recommends particular action to me. I would say that my gender therapist did not really take my early statements as absolute fact. Not in the sense that she exactly disbelieved them, but rather that she asked questions and cross-correlated over time. It takes time to get desires and priorities sorted.

I do sometimes wonder what benefit I get from the gender therapy, but then I remember where I started and where I am now, and really it wasn't very long. I have been thinking of cutting back, though, as my life these days isn't so centered on gender issues; not that there isn't more yet to do, but I don't have any short-term aim now. I'm not living 24/7 as female and but I am not fighting myself over that. I am living 24/7 as transgendered: I've already gone a fair distance that way. The stages of "transition": I have already gone through a number of them, and the ones I am considering undertaking, I am not in a hurry for.

Overall, therapy has certainly worked for me. Never "immediately", but exploring feelings and solutions has led to much more inner confidence that I really am sane, that I am handling things decently -- even that the seemingly petty feelings have real and important basis.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

the pills do help counseling sometimes by helping to create a better climate for the patient to use the tools...

therapy is about teaching you coping skills, and giving you tools to survive and improve your quality of life...

if you are so depressed or anxious that you can't even begin to cope, you gotta take a step towards the meds...like all things, they are risky, unpredictable and can be abused..but they can also be highly effective..

If you already have good coping skills, along with a good sense of self and self esteem, then therapy is unlikely to help you except to perhaps introduce to others in groups...one or two group sessions could change your mind about therapy helping you more than you think, or it could cement the thought that you never need to step into therapy again..

[Shananigans]

The best therapy I ever got was a warm, affectionate woman cuddling up with me. An hour of that and I feel fine. A huge percentage of the population is affection deprived; in the rush for sex, more men are, than they are aware of it.

You know what?...I do feel a lot better when I get home, cuddle a couple of pugs, and snuggle on the couch with my SO. I think there's a lot of truth in this because one of the things that is taking me so long to get right is therapeutic touch. (Conveying empathy and understanding through touch). They make it look really easy in the movies. I also get super excited when the dogs come to the hospitals and see the kids hugging on them. It just seems like it makes them feel so much better than anything that could have been done in therapy or by a pill.

But, therapeutic touch is this huge part of learning nursing therapy...and, it's just not my skill as of right now. It always feels a little forced haha

[KylieQ]

I needed some answers about my gender issues before I proceeded. I didn't need someone to tell me how I felt, I needed someone to put how I was feeling in perspective.

That's exactly how I feel right now...I know how I feel, but I've reached this sort of critical mass point where it's just too much for me to make sense of on my own. I've made my first appointment for this coming week and I'm really looking forward to it.

[LeAnnWa]

For me gender issues and mental health were two separate issues. I had major mental health issues for 30 years. The treatment was Lithium Carbonate.
After 25 years on Lithium my kidneys were being damaged. The therapist help me solve those issues. I now enjoy good and stable mental health.
However the therapist was no help on my being a CD. For being a CD help came through my wife, www.tri-ess.org, gender groups of others like me,
and most important self acceptance.