Ramifications of living with undiagnosed, untreated GID for decades ?

[Hypatia]

Ugh. It did serious damage deep inside me. In retrospect I can see my soul was just rotting away. I knew something was drastically wrong for many years, but put off taking a good honest look to find the source of the rot and how to cure it. Although to most people I looked good on the outside, I became so foul and ugly inside I can scarcely bear to look back on those years, let alone talk about it. The hypocrisy just made it that much worse. All I can bring myself to tell anyone about it is... it was very, very bad. I don't even want to tell my therapist about what happened to me during those years. The point is, I got out of that and my healing is underway. I just feel relieved I got out before it really destroyed me. There is clearly no way I could have remained any longer like that. I've been to some dark places on my journey, but... This is the darkest subject of all for me. I shudder now to remember it. Literally shudder.

All I can say to people is-- please don't let this happen to you. Get it taken care of ASAP, for heaven's sake.

Thank providence I got out of it and now feel rescued from a very nasty end. It's how I know with absolute certainty I can never go back to denial, to the false identity I hid behind for too many years. I look forward to full transition to help me get clear of the yuck from my benighted past... and forgive myself.

Posted on: June 30, 2007, 01:15:46 AM

frankly, I saw no point in nurturing a life that I despised. 

That is the crux of the matter. This reminds me of how some American Indian braves had a traditional war chant that went:

Is it real, this life I'm living?
Is it real, this life I'm living?

The question needed to be asked by warriors like us, who are fighting a tough battle for our very existence... life is too short and too precious to be wasted in living fake.

[cindianna_jones]

Wow.... I can't relate to those of you in your 40's and 50's and still suffering from this.  I can easily see how it gets put off and postponed however.  You sacrifice your own happiness for your family.  That's all there is to it.

I hate to throw out this lemon, but after transition, you'll still likely have serious depression issues to deal with.  That doesn't magically go away ya know.  You'll also have these little nagging thoughts (at least once in a while) that you are not "real".  There are also a host of other real life problems to deal with after transition.  Some of use manage to defeat these demons.  It's best if you plan to deal with them when they come knocking.

Cindi

[RebeccaFog]

I hate to throw out this lemon, but after transition, you'll still likely have serious depression issues to deal with.  That doesn't magically go away ya know.  You'll also have these little nagging thoughts (at least once in a while) that you are not "real".  There are also a host of other real life problems to deal with after transition.  Some of use manage to defeat these demons.  It's best if you plan to deal with them when they come knocking.

Cindi

   It's strange because once I realized I am most likely androgyne, I am feeling absolutely fab.  However, before this I thought I was TS.  I have been paying attention to Jillieann. She thought she might be androgyne for a while, but realized she really is TS.  I don't know if I will have the same experience yet and I'm hoping that after about a year, by next summer, I'll have a handle on whether I'm androgyne or not.
   If it does turn out that I am TS, I know there will be a lot of issues returning that will need to be addressed, but I'm okay with that. I've seen the worst any anything else will just be annoying.

   The thing about being an androgyne is that there seems to be so little decent research on it. For me, it wasn't even a consideration until about 2 or 3 months ago when I began to question why I have trouble seeing myself as a woman. I didn't care about having breasts and I didn't care so much about the bottom stuff. 
   To be honest (and I may take a hit for this) until I found myself targeting myself as androgyne, I couldn't really conceive that such people even exist. I accepted that people were identifying as such, but I couldn't figure out why.

  Anyway, I only meant to agree with Cindi, the rest was just me babbling.   

[tinkerbell]

Can someone actually live with untreated GID for decades?  I know what you are going to say; I can read your mind!  >  but seriously though, we can only deny ourselves for a period of time (i.e, decades in this instance), not forever.

Ramifications? Chronic depression, suicide, mental insanity....just my thoughts!

tink

[SusanK]

Wow.... I can't relate to those of you in your 40's and 50's and still suffering from this.  I can easily see how it gets put off and postponed however.  You sacrifice your own happiness for your family.  That's all there is to it.

Maybe, but also work, career, money, health and other priorities or needs in life. There's more to it than just family.

I hate to throw out this lemon, but after transition, you'll still likely have serious depression issues to deal with.  That doesn't magically go away ya know.  You'll also have these little nagging thoughts (at least once in a while) that you are not "real".  There are also a host of other real life problems to deal with after transition.  Some of use manage to defeat these demons.  It's best if you plan to deal with them when they come knocking.

Sorry if my response to this quote here offended anyone. It was meant in humor in response to what I read as a statement of the obvious, and apparently some may not have seen my reply as humor. I apologize if anyone mistook the words.

Interesting thread and responses. Thanks.

--Susan--

[Hypatia]

Wow.... I can't relate to those of you in your 40's and 50's and still suffering from this.

Yeah, I know, I hear from young-transitioned people all the time who can't relate to what I've been through. Sometimes I feel seriously othered, if not alienated, by this disconnect within the trans community. This is why I plead for withholding judgment of others when you don't know what it's been like for them. At times it's been really hard to talk about my suffering with trans people who can't relate to it. Maybe I should just keep a lid on it, except for my therapist who is professionally trained to listen and help without judging. Not that you're judging me here, Cindi, but the disconnect you're describing has at times brought me some real disrespect and I'm still kind of sensitive.

I hate to throw out this lemon, but after transition, you'll still likely have serious depression issues to deal with.  That doesn't magically go away ya know.

I know that, of course. Nothing I said above can be taken to mean I expect it to "magically go away." (I knew to expect this reaction, though, it's pretty standard.) I said I look forward to full transition to help me with the past, with the understanding that I have plenty of work to do on it, am working on it now, finding it hard though. Especially if someone can't relate to how I damaged myself, I doubt it would be worthwhile to go into it here. Just wanted to note that it does cause serious damage, to warn youngsters not to make the mistakes I made.

[Manyfaces]

My life has been very much larger and more complicated than simply undiagnosed, untreated GID, and I honestly don't feel I would have been ABLE to deal with it sooner than I have.  For me it's more like okay, now it's time to deal with this, and it's a huge and important piece of who I am, but I don't feel my life up until now has been wasted.  It has been hugely difficult and painful in some ways, but it has been very rich and interesting in many ways, too.

I find that for myself regrets are mostly fueled by hindsight, illuminated by knowledge and resources that I have now that simply did not exist or were unknown to me then.

I grew up in a deeply fundamentalist repressive and suppressive Christian family, and although my family has always laughingly told stories of how when I was a toddler I wanted to be a boy, if I had persisted in that beyond an age when they could find it "cute" they would have put me in a mental institution, or worse.  Seriously.  I'm sure many people here can tell similar stories.  I grew up simply making the hard shell around myself thicker and thicker, so it's taken me years longer than some people to dismantle it and break myself free.

This is my life, and this is where I am in it, at 51, and I'm okay with that.  And I've been through enough major stuff to know that nothing is a magic bullet that's going to fix everything.  I will always have the same genetic tendency to depression, and I'll still have whatever relationship issues I've always had, and so I'll keep working on those things and learning how to manage them, and some of them will get better, and some of them I'm sure I will struggle with in various ways for the rest of my life on earth. 

I'll still be me after my better-late-than-never transition, I'll just be wearing, as Ram Das puts it, a different and more comfortable "spacesuit."

[rhonda13000]

This query blows me away, my brother.

Hmmmm......having lived nearly all of my 51 years with undiagnosed and therefore untreated TS.......gotta think about this one [albeit not with much effort]....

--A constant and nominal state of gnawing anxiety.

--Depression.

--Eating [Bulimia, for example] disorders.

--A constant and nominal state of psycho-emotional confusion.

--A constant and nominal state of psycho-emotional agony, anguish and pain.

--Discordance in any intimate relationship.

--Sexual dysfunction in a 'traditional' heterosexual [in reference to the phenotypical body] relationship.

--Constantly feeling like I belonged or fit in nowhere. This is one area in which high intellect actually exacerbated my agony.

--In my case, a severe crippling of intellectual and cognitive function.

--RAGE.

[Nero]

My life has been very much larger and more complicated than simply undiagnosed, untreated GID, and I honestly don't feel I would have been ABLE to deal with it sooner than I have.  For me it's more like okay, now it's time to deal with this, and it's a huge and important piece of who I am, but I don't feel my life up until now has been wasted.  It has been hugely difficult and painful in some ways, but it has been very rich and interesting in many ways, too.

Me too. I really had too much on my plate to even think about this any sooner than I have.

[Nick]

Confusion grows over time.
Alienation from peers came naturally for me, I never talked to my peers since I didn't feel like they did about stuff like puberty. I didn't want a boyfriend, didn't want to shop, have sleepovers, and put on make up. I wanted to play football. Thus I became a loner most of my life, not fitting in with any of my peers. Now that I'm living as male I'm going through a late adolescense.

Nick

[Hypatia]

I wanted to play football. Thus I became a loner most of my life, not fitting in with any of my peers. Now that I'm living as male I'm going through a late adolescense.

I know just how you feel--because I hated football--this marked me as a Gender Traitor, as an Unboy. I was fine playing hopscotch with the girls at recess, until in 3rd grade I was ordered over to the boys' side of the playground where I was bullied and called "pu$$y," "->-bleeped-<-got," "girl."

Banished from the world of girls where I naturally belonged, and forced into the world of boys where I could not function, I became a very isolated child, for many years afterward I had hardly any friends. Everyone in my family always complained that I isolated myself. It was only upon coming out and living as a woman that I suddenly found it was easy and rewarding to belong to society and make lots of friends. I became just like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.

Now I am reaching out to the rest of my family so they will know I'm done with being isolated and I always belonged with the girls.

[rhonda13000]

I wanted to play football. Thus I became a loner most of my life, not fitting in with any of my peers. Now that I'm living as male I'm going through a late adolescense.

I know just how you feel--because I hated football--this marked me as a Gender Traitor, as an Unboy. I was fine playing hopscotch with the girls at recess, until in 3rd grade I was ordered over to the boys' side of the playground where I was bullied and called "pu$$y," "->-bleeped-<-got," "girl."

Banished from the world of girls where I naturally belonged, and forced into the world of boys where I could not function, I became a very isolated child, for many years afterward I had hardly any friends. Everyone in my family always complained that I isolated myself. It was only upon coming out and living as a woman that I suddenly found it was easy and rewarding to belong to society and make lots of friends. I became just like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.

Now I am reaching out to the rest of my family so they will know I'm done with being isolated and I always belonged with the girls.

Remarkable. 

I could have written that very same account.

[Hypatia]

Remarkable. 

I could have written that very same account.

Thanks, Rhonda, it's very helpful to know I'm not the only one like this. I came from a socially conservative Catholic upbringing where any perspective like mine that was perceived to deviate from the norm was automatically delegitimized. Where anyone who wasn't able to conform to a narrow set of expectations was assumed to be just a troublemaker. Just to know that you're there and share similar experience is comforting.

[RebeccaFog]

Remarkable. 

I could have written that very same account.

Thanks, Rhonda, it's very helpful to know I'm not the only one like this. I came from a socially conservative Catholic upbringing where any perspective like mine that was perceived to deviate from the norm was automatically delegitimized. Where anyone who wasn't able to conform to a narrow set of expectations was assumed to be just a troublemaker. Just to know that you're there and share similar experience is comforting.

Hi Hypatia,

   Are you trying to deny this in your case?   

[rhonda13000]

Remarkable. 

I could have written that very same account.

Thanks, Rhonda, it's very helpful to know I'm not the only one like this. I came from a socially conservative Catholic upbringing where any perspective like mine that was perceived to deviate from the norm was automatically delegitimized. Where anyone who wasn't able to conform to a narrow set of expectations was assumed to be just a troublemaker. Just to know that you're there and share similar experience is comforting.

Hi Hypatia,

   Are you trying to deny this in your case?   

[shaking her head, laughing]

You know, you are a NUT, girl.