Serious Doubts About My Motives

[Rose City Rose]

As I come out of a really awful 3 years of my life when I first had the thought to transition, I'm starting to wonder if I'm really doing it for me any more.

I'm starting to feel like my number 1 motivation is to avoid ridicule by family and by ex-friends who know about the transition.  It seems I don't look at myself in the mirror every day and think "I'm doing it for me" any more, but "I'll show them."

I just don't want to back down and be raked over the coals by all these people who doubted me.  I'm so confused and frustrated and I don't feel I understand my own motives any more.

Can anyone offer any advice?

[DEANA]

I won't name the city. Are you from Ontario?

[Rose City Rose]

No, Portland.

By the way, I should also explain something: I was raised by a VERY controlling mother and I have a hard time not internalizing others' doubts, so it makes my ability to understand my own motives almost nonexistent.  At times I'm very confused about whether I'm being "myself" or just being contrarian because I'm trying to break free for once in my life.  So when someone accuses me of transitioning just to create a new image or because I'm unhappy with how I spent my life as a man, I really have no defense for that because to me it sounds 100% plausible.

[RosieD]

I am afraid I don't really have any advice that might conceivably be of any use as the only person who can answer your question is you. A thing that I find helpful is to run through the original train of thought that led me to the eureka moment and check that each of the assumptions and/or premises that I based the decision on are still valid.

Rosie.

[Rose City Rose]

I am afraid I don't really have any advice that might conceivably be of any use as the only person who can answer your question is you. A thing that I find helpful is to run through the original train of thought that led me to the eureka moment and check that each of the assumptions and/or premises that I based the decision on are still valid.

Rosie.

Unfortunately, I've forgotten what my original thought process was. 

I guess body dysphoria had something to do with it but even that comes and goes and at times I wonder if it was really so bad being a gay man. 

At the same time, a lot of my life was sex-centered when I was gay, and although my habits weren't healthy I did have to walk away from a lot of my social activities, so it could be that I just miss the social/sexual aspect of being a gay man...

[mountainhun]

...or just being contrarian because I'm trying to break free for once in my life.  So when someone accuses me of transitioning just to create a new image or because I'm unhappy with how I spent my life as a man, I really have no defense for that because to me it sounds 100% plausible.

I felt a great connection there, because I felt the same way when I first began.  My dad was always pressuring me to put out his masculine image, to cut my hair, don't stand or sit a certain way, etc.  Through a long time of being isolated from society outside of my family, I had lost an enormous sense of self, or had never developed it.
So when I began transitioning, I was also worried about my motives.  I was wondering whether I was just over-reacting to my dad's gendering pressures, or if I was just trying to grab attention.  But as I began thinking about it, there was a few important things I discovered.  It was *me* who decided that *I* couldn't go on like this, that *I* was not capable of being a man in our society.

Likewise, even if you're having doubts now, it was *you* who determined *your* needs, *you* who made the changes to try to make *yourself* happy.  So to me it's encouraging to know that, even if you're having your doubts now, in the past it was all up to you. 

[Megumi]

This is something you have to ask your deepest self. Why do you want to transition? How do you feel about yourself right now? What got you to this point in the first place? Can you see yourself living as "the gender you were born as" for the rest of your life?

I asked myself all of these things during my self acceptance phase. Are you seeing a therapist right now? This is something that should be brought up in discussion if you are.

[Rose City Rose]

This is something you have to ask your deepest self. Why do you want to transition? How do you feel about yourself right now? What got you to this point in the first place? Can you see yourself living as "the gender you were born as" for the rest of your life?

I asked myself all of these things during my self acceptance phase. Are you seeing a therapist right now? This is something that should be brought up in discussion if you are.

I have been seeing a therapist, but I'm no closer to an answer.  The therapists I've seen follow one of two extremes: they either think "unstable sense of self=Bordelrine=should not transition EVER" or they think "everything is fine and you're just dealing with a lot."

As far as seeing myself living as anything for the rest of my life, I can't answer that because my future just feels like a nebulous cloud of uncertainty.  I really can't see myself living as a woman or as a man because I have no sense of my future beyond maybe the next 1-2 years.

[RosieD]

Unfortunately, I've forgotten what my original thought process was.

I was hoping you weren't going to say that  .

Okey-do, back to first principles then. Run it through from the start, google chain analysis,  draw pictures, see where you end up. If you land in Dysphoria Towers again then maybe that's where you were all along, if not maybe not. Either way you will have something you can check back against later.

Rosie

[Rose City Rose]

I was hoping you weren't going to say that  .

Okey-do, back to first principles then. Run it through from the start, google chain analysis,  draw pictures, see where you end up. If you land in Dysphoria Towers again then maybe that's where you were all along, if not maybe not. Either way you will have something you can check back against later.

Rosie

Hmm, I've looked up chain analysis but I find it confusing on how to apply to my specific case because I've always been unclear of the exact origins of my dysphoria.  I get hung up on the "prompting event" stage and I'm kind of vague on what constitutes the actual "problem behavior."

[Jamie D]

As I come out of a really awful 3 years of my life when I first had the thought to transition, I'm starting to wonder if I'm really doing it for me any more.

I'm starting to feel like my number 1 motivation is to avoid ridicule by family and by ex-friends who know about the transition.  It seems I don't look at myself in the mirror every day and think "I'm doing it for me" any more, but "I'll show them."

I just don't want to back down and be raked over the coals by all these people who doubted me.  I'm so confused and frustrated and I don't feel I understand my own motives any more.

Can anyone offer any advice?

Rose, it seems to me that the primary motivating reason to transition is to help alleviate gender dysphoria.  For some of us the dysphoria is so bad that the option literally becomes transition or die.  For others, the dysphoria can be managed, but the disconnect between mind and body is still significant.

It is your physical, emotional, and mental well-being that should come first.  What others have to say is much less important than how you feel about yourself.

[Seras]

I just asked myself a simple question.

If I am not transgender then why would I question these issues to the extent that I do?

I could not come up with a satisfactory alternate explanation. Happy CIS people do not question these things and if they ever do certainly not to the extent that I do.

[Rose City Rose]

OK, thinking about why I'm confused yields some key points I'm unclear on.

I've had genital dysphoria off and on.  It started in 2011 after finding it increasingly difficult/tedious to finish while penetrating another man because my body "felt wrong."

But around this same time, I was under tremendous distress and under the influence of alcohol and drugs, plus I was dealing with major social fallout from some of the sex-centered friendships I made living as a gay man.

And here's where it gets tricky: It sort of becomes a chicken and egg question for me.  Did I fall out with the sex-centered promiscuous lifestyle because I was trans, or did I get the idea I was trans because I was so burned out on a sex-centered lifestyle?  And I can't seem to suss out the answer with any clarity.

[Jessica Merriman]

My question to you would be this "Can you live happy and be productive without transitioning"?

[Rose City Rose]

My question to you would be this "Can you live happy and be productive without transitioning"?

I don't know.  I have a really hard time seeing any sort of future beyond a year or two, so I can't really see my life being happy or productive, period.  I can't see my life being anything but a nebulous and possibly brief uncertainty.  Ever since the events of the last 3 years of my life, I've felt a sort of bleakness and absence of any real future.

So it would be easy for me to just be a nihilist and say "well, does it really matter if I transition?" except the logical part of me knows better, knows that this is the hurt inside me talking and not a pragmatic way of thinking.  But breaking that thought pattern has been next to impossible.  I feel like I'm living with blinders on.

[Jessica Merriman]

I feel for you baby! Hang in there, we will help you get it sorted out somehow.  PM if you need to, anytime.

[Rose City Rose]

I feel like maybe I'm closer to an answer but I'm not sure.

I still have a lot of hurt to sort out and that seems to be what's blocking me from an answer.

Also, looking it up, this vagueness about my future kind of confirms my suspicions of complex PTSD from a very unpleasant series of setbacks in 2010-2013.  But I had questions about my gender identity as far back as 2007 so I can't say honestly that the trauma caused me to be this way.

Up until the trauma, I felt I could live with my gender dysphoria, though.  That's what I'm concerned about.