Quote from: Ultimus on December 02, 2013, 04:06:17 PM
That's really good advice, thank you. And that's something I have never looked into before. Coincidentally enough, I happen to see both my psychiatrist and therapist on Wednesday. I will bring this up and see what they think.
Perhaps the psychiatrist will try medication and the therapist can try the cognitive behavior therapy.
Honestly, I don't want to let my crossdreaming and crossdressing define me. They are such a small fraction of life as a whole.
But thanks again, and I can report back what they say.
Yep! Exactly. I was gonna say for me, my cross-sex fantasies tend to be quite positive. Sometimes when I lucid dream and I'm a girl in the dream I just don't want to get up because I'm so content in that moment, and then when I do get up I get depressed that it was all a dream. So if dreams like that cause you upset and anxiety that may be a sign that as was previously said, that it's because it feels somehow adverse to your actual gender identity.
For me I often have doubts about transitioning, but most are linked to external factors (will I pass? what will others think? can I deal with potential discrimination?) but if I could snap my fingers and magically be completely female I would do it in a heartbeat without ever looking back. That alone says something. It's the actual act of transitioning that scares me and occasionally instills doubt, however I know for sure that I'm not a man so I don't really have a choice since trying to be one has gotten increasingly difficult. So if you feel that male identity fits you and you are a man, but the crossdreaming bothers you, then it probably is more of a psychological issue than an identity one.
All of this said, I think that there's a general avoidance of talking about sex with trans people. Sex being at all a motivator for transition has become taboo and because of this I at one point convinced myself I just must have a fetish and that's that. I am attracted to men and always have been, and even now pre-transition, the idea of being a woman having sex with a man turns me on. So I would always masturbate thinking about that and then I would feel guilty afterwards. So I was like, well I fit right into the crossdresser box. But it ignored that my desire to be female still continued despite orgasm, and it was not driven by a compulsion to dress up, have an orgasm and then go back to being a man. Eventually I sorta went... Girls have a sex drive and sexual fantasies. Straight girls fantasize about having sex. So if I'm female identifying, my desire to have sex as a woman doesn't mean that my issues are a compulsion or fetishistic in nature. Now of course it becomes problematic if, the idea of being a woman having sex with a man turns you on and your motivation to transition is to fulfill a purely sexual fantasy. In my case it was that I convinced myself it was just a sexual fantasy, partially to avoid transitioning and convince myself I didn't need to, but in fact sexual desire was just one part of my altogether female identity.
I guess what I'm trying to get at here is! O:-) don't feel the need to put yourself in a box. There's no checklist of what makes someone trans or not, or a paraphiliac or not, or whether transition is right for someone or not. I think that exploring the OCD aspect is definitely worth it, as it seems like from what you're saying, the crossdreaming partially bugs you because it seems at odds with your gender identity.
Good luck!
