How Did You Cope?

[Tanya W]

Over in the 'When Did You Know You Were...' thread, many have spoken of how they coped with being (fill in the blank), before beginning the very challenging work of surrender, discovery, and acceptance. This has, for me, been a very affecting theme running through the posts, through people's lives! It has encouraged me to ask, 'How did I cope?'. And this, of course, lead to me wondering how everyone else has managed - what kind of strategies others have used to stay alive until the time came to actually live.

And this has been one of many interesting things to come out of this line of consideration for me: When I started giving this matter some thought, I was very down on my main methods of coping with being trans while (a) not really understanding this and (b) not wanting to be this way. I saw the strategies I employed as basically messed up (Translation: I saw myself as messed up.)

Sitting with them these last few days, though, I have remembered that, as screwy as they might have been (and let's leave this up to debate), they kept me alive. Addiction is not a way of life I would suggest to anybody and while my experience with this did take me to some very scary places, it also helped me cope with something so big I just couldn't handle it any other way; it kept me breathing.

So what were your main ways of coping? Looking back myself I see many, but four stick out:

1. Addiction - This started with sexual fantasy. First one was guess what? Being turned into a girl! Things developed from there: Masturbation, skin magazines, phone lines, online pornography, chat lines... Until I started recovery a number of years ago, this became a nearly full time way for me to mask my pain and confusion, whilst simultaneously imagining myself a girl - just like that very first fantasy. Drugs also became an addictive out for me, but nowhere near as longstanding or pervasive.

2. Perfection - Not having a clear sense of self, I became very good at reading others' expectations and filling in the blanks with my life. Good student, good athlete, good this, good that. Not a recipe for happiness, this, but a way to feel temporarily okay about myself, to win some measure of identity - flimsy though it was. A way to, for a while at least, forget. Funny, I realize now the one set of expectations I could never master were those around being a boy/man.

3. Isolation - I isolated in addiction. I isolated in perfection. I isolated in music, reading, writing, busyness, spirituality, judgement... At the time, I thought many of these things evidence of my being better than others. Really, though, I was masking my sense of being fundamentally broken, hiding from the dysphoric insanity that being with others ignited in my being.   

4. Filing Away - All those hints about being transgender that popped up through the years, where did they go? That sense of not fitting. That feeling of difference. That longing to be with the girls? Those moments in which I innocently do what feels natural, only to be informed I have crossed some sort of line. These and so many more happened again and again over the decades - only to be expertly, masterfully filed away somewhere just out of reach. Out of reach I can feel them, of course, but I can't get at them, not really. So the reality of my self remains vague, distant, and not real. Easier - for a while...   



Edited for language.
Cindy

[Jessica Merriman]

I dealt with it by perfecting my career. I also took unnecessary risks inside structure fires and high risk situations kind of hoping something would happen to me and I would not have to deal with it. I also became a robot devoid of any basic human emotions. I could work a fatal school bus wreck and only worry my crew and unit would be late for lunch. I sound like a total A-hole, but there were times we had a rookie with us and laughed when they either could not eat or throw up after a bad call. I projected my misery on others feeling if I was hurting they should also. Finally I sort of got what I wanted. I was hurt badly in the line of duty and had to retire. Let me tell you sitting around all day in an empty house because you chased people away gives you more than enough time to think. I hit a level of depression that really scared me and considered ending my life. I then found this family and all at once everything made sense to me. Since starting the transition process and HRT I have become a totally different person. I stopped all of my pain medications which were making things worse and started to eat healthier. I found acceptance, emotions and have spent a lot of time apologizing for my past actions. I have become someone others like to have around now. Everyone deals with the Dysphoria monster differently. I did it the wrong way until now. You just have to find the inner strength to deal with your situation and over come it. Thinking positive about yourself is the first step. We are not monsters or freaks, we are people with issues different from anyone else. We are unique. I met all four of your categories and survived, you can too.

[Sammy]

1.   Ignorance / avoidance / denial ,,Wishing to be a girl?" – Push that thought away. Dont think about, dont call it back into Your memory – and it will go away or You will forget about wishing that.  And do not even think about looking up stuff in the internet – people might notice...  Sadly, but this does not work that way.

2.   Escapism  /addiction - engaging in activities which entertain and keep busy Your mind. Reading books, playing computer games, dreaming.

3.   Oblivion. Engaging into activities which keep busy Your body to the point that Your brain will shut down. Overloading Your body with normal hormones like adrenaline and dopamine to create that state of oblivion when every single piece of Your body hurts but You somehow feel happy. Crazy workouts, endurance tests, extreme sports, simply dangerous sports (parkour, full contact martial arts, full contact armored swordfighting, jousting, cliffhanging). It makes that false belief that You are ,,manning up" and You feel like a real man. Sadly, but when hormone rush has subsided, it all goes back into previous routine. Besides, that feeling that You are now ,,man's man" will evaporate as soon as You engage into social conversations with other guys, who, given specifics or activities, are often those alpha types or very close to that. That comparison becomes even more striking when they talk about women. Somehow, You realise that all those manly fighters and knights are not really gentlemen inside. And You keep wondering – why it is so?

4.   Reclusion. Simply going away. Walking the forests in the city outskirts, walking empty city streets during rain, pointlessly cycling through the city after dawn. Listening to music in the process and letting Your thoughts go their own course. And sooner or later, they will come to this:

- ,,What the hell is wrong with You and why cant You simply be like others?"
-,,Because I wish I was a girl"
- ,,Push that thought away! Now!!!"

And everything starts anew...

[Cindy]

Sculling bottles of whiskey to kill a past of pain.

Finally - see a therapist and realise I am allowed to be a human.

A female human.

[big kim]

 Fighting,booze,speed and weed not recommended!I obsessed with my interests and hobbies always making models or fishing as a kid then being a serious petrolhead mad about muscle and classic cars and bikes and rock music.It didn't go away,I also remember telling myself this wasn't happening to me,I had no feelings also

[Emmaline]

Okay, Emmalines list of stupid things to do whilst avoiding her real identity...

Ecstacy, which took away the self loathing for a few hours (it would come back hard when coming down and worsens depression).  One weekend I took well over 10 strong pills on a party binge- my friends and I lost track.  It was self destruction, but also a few hours where I could look in the mirror and love my reflection.

Perfectionism:  My career was all that mattered to me because it was my only way to have self esteem.  I was great at my job, therefore worthwhile.  That works fine until work starts failing due to management making bad calls, or the industry going into collapse.  I was hell on my staff as I became eliteist.

Promiscuity:  "She fancies me/accepts me as a man, so I must be alright."  yep, that don't hold back the tide much either. 

Fantasy:  Books, roleplaying games, video games.  Anything that was not me, or this stupid world.

Marriage:  Be a grown up, responsible man... get married.

Of course I cannot be too hard on myself, I didnt know what transgender was until may this year.  Oh, had I known sooner...

[JoanneB]

I think my 3D's sum up the specific behaviors:
Diversions
Distractions
Denial

I relied on them more and more for several decades. To the outside world I was doing great. Behind the facade a far different story. THe coping strategies also led to some major life disasters like divorce and job loss. I became that facade I created, a lifeless, soulless shell of a person that merely existed.

In taking the trans beast head on I know I am far better off as a person. I feel alive, I feel joy, passion.

However, irony tends to rule my life, more so in the trans arena it seems. In perhaps the ultimate of ironies I see this path to fulfillment I am on possibly leading to the same major life disasters previous coping mechanisms led to. If the time comes when I feel the need to go full-time to be right answer for me, then once again divorce and job loss may be the cost.

[Northern Jane]

Having grown up in the 1950s and 60s and knowing what was wrong with me from an early age, the only thing that kept me from being one of those with no chance of survival was fighting against the inevitable. I had heard of Christine Jorgensen so  I knew something could be done  - the only question was when and by whom and my quest was to find that out!

The first step was to learn about hormones and how to get them and by 13 I had figured that out (illegal and probably not the smartest but I was desperate!) I heard about Dr. Benjamin when I was 15 and got myself to New York at 16 to see him and get a diagnosis.  The following year was totally dedicated to finding a doctor at home in Canada to prescribe hormones (not easy in 1968!). From age 17 onward SRS was the quest but it was not easy. The only surgery was being done in Europe and was WAY out of the realm of financial possibility. By the time Dr. Biber opened his practice in Colorado, I was at my  rope's end but I made it by the skin of my teeth.

I guess you could say I "coped" by fighting constantly for the next step and I fought hard because it was "do or die", literally.

[Ms Grace]

I think my 3D's sum up the specific behaviors:
Diversions
Distractions
Denial

Me too!
Distractions in particular were the main thing...I love reading comics, especially those with strong female protagonists who weren't just a life support for a 42DDDD and/or covered by less cloth than offered by a handkerchief (fairly rare, but increasingly less so). If not in comics then fantasy/scifi TV shows. I find I relate very strongly to clever, sexy, independent women characters and have now lived my life through them for many, many years.

[KabitTarah]

I've said it all before... but here it is!

1. Obesity & food. It cuts testosterone in half (not that I knew that). After high school, I couldn't get skinny for the life of me.

2. Transgender transformations (stories, interactive fiction games, artwork). I basically fetishized the legitimate condition I was born with .

3. Denial... lots and lots of denial.

Any time the thought that I might be transgender surfaced partially (it was never entirely lucid until I actually DID come OOTC) I pushed it down again with thoughts my parents supplied me with as a teen (when I came OOTC the first time): I wasn't gay and you had to be (though I probably am bi - at least post transition), I wouldn't make a good looking woman (who cares? Plus... probably not true), I'd never find love (well... I ruined the love I had - so how well did that work out)?

I don't even see having a wife and kids as coping. They made it more difficult to come OOTC, but at the same time it was part of the trigger I eventually had to come out. Perhaps I would have come out sooner if I were alone and they count as a coping mechanism... but I just consider them as people I love very much and people I couldn't possibly hurt except by who and what I am.

[ErinM]

For me it basically boiled down to getting high and pushing all painful thoughts down.

I would get up, force myself through the day, come home get high, burn out and go to bed. Rinse and repeat day in and day out until I couldn't push the thoughts away. By then the weed was only giving me anxiety attacks. I was finally forced to sober up and deal with it.

[Lo]

I still cope, I will always be in a state of coping. "Full" transition doesn't exist for me.

Surprisingly enough, my drinking was for a lot of my other problems. I'm not supposed to drink while taking my antidepressants anymore, so I've had to cut down by a lot. But as far as the trans* woes, I cope through fantasy/art/storytelling. I create characters who have parts that I wish I could have been born with or at least get through surgery. I also watch cartoons and read stories that have characters I identify with (like my avatar!) for the catharsis of "being" vicariously through someone else. I also draw pictures of what I wish I looked like a lot.

I spend a lot of time alone and working. This is something I'll probably be doing for the rest of my life, I'm sure. It limits my interaction with a binary world. I don't get "sir"d or "maam"d on the internet. Or by my cat. I don't have to fret about how what I'm wearing will get me gendered or whether people will think that I'm my mom's younger girlfriend when we go out together because I dress a little on the butch side most of the time.

It's a sucky dance I'll be doing forever.