Quote from: suzifrommd on November 17, 2013, 06:25:02 AM
I try not to use the words "you" and "should" in the same sentence because it is so hard to know what's right for someone else. I experience my transgender so different from a lot of other women. You and I have talked about this before. I'm not among the "always knew" crowd. It took decades to understand that I was transgender. I tend to be a more deliberate person and think carefully about things. I've been certain about enouch things in my life that turned out to be completely wrong, that I've learned to distrust certainty.
I think those words are great and I try to live by this myself. I am in no position to tell someone else what may or may not make then happy. That's why I try and avoid topics like "is srs for me" or "is ffs for me" or "is transitioning for me". If one doesn't know then how the heck am I supposed to know a complete stranger from thousands of miles away on a computer screen.
One thing I learned when I was in Montreal getting my surgery is the myriad paths that people took to arrive at the same spot and on the same day as me. None of us led identical lives. We were all completely different. What we did have in common is the realization of who were and it was all being resolved at the same time by the same doctor. That was it. We shared an OP and nothing more.
I always preface statements, like the one I am about to make with: what I will say next applies to me and only me. I only know when it was my turn, I just did whatever it was that was asked of me. I had a therapist that wanted me to do a session a week for the entire year of RLE. I wanted that surgery so badly, that I just jumped up and down and did whatever it was that they asked of me. If my endo wanted 5 tubes of blood every year, I gave him what he wanted.
I worried about many of the same things you and everyone else does. What if I was what "they" thought was NOT the right candidate for surgery? What if they said no, then what? I was so afraid they would say no, that I self-medicated because I felt I needed to "prove" that I was right for this, even though I had only lived an insignificant fraction of my life in my target gender.
My personal experiences is that they were not gatekeepers. When my RLE was rolling around my therapist was a great person for me to pitch ideas to of what my approach would be, and to help me come up with the words. That wasn't gatekeeping that was genuine help. As I lived through my RLE and landed back on my feet, I used sessions to talk about other things, sometimes things having nothing to do with my transition but were important to me. None of that I felt was gatekeeping. At the end of my RLE I asked for a letter and she said she would be honored to write it for me. Shortly after that, I felt and I'm sure that my therapist did as well, that my boat set sail and was doing okay so therapy was not needed anymore. After I had the letters I thought, well this is it, I'm on my own now. Even when I did my second letter and the psychiatrist said to me..I am going to give you this as a diagnosis (hypomania I think). I was like okay. What else could I say? I took my letter and walked away never to be seen again.
The therapy helped me to deal with legal aspects of the transition, the social changes I was living through and most of all to me, dealing with some childhood trauma I had been living with. In the end I felt that by being 100% honest with my therapist I felt much better. We talked through everything, in fact we talked many things to death, but it was all good.
The day after my surgery, I looked back and thought about how the h*ll did I make it this far? It was nothing short of a miracle and tons and tons of personal sacrifice. But all of the standards, all of the therapy, everything faded into complete insignificance in that moment. It just didn't seem like a big deal anymore. I had proved my readiness by living several years in my new gender (of my own doing as well). When it came time for me to do surgery I was very methodical. I planned everything twice, maybe thrice, before committing to anything. But that's me. A 90% outcome wouldn't do. I wanted to shoot for 100% outcome and would settle for 90% if that's the best I could get.
I do hope you reach your goals and in the manner you wish. Again all I can say is I never felt like my time with the world of therapy was ever adversarial. Some times therapists want to ask questions and for good reasons too. I tried to keep my eye on the prize and not let myself be distracted. Like I said, the day after surgery, it's not like anyone could say no, I was done and that was that
