What Were Your Doubts?

[Rayne]

I have had a problem over the last few months, and i hope that by addressing them here that it might help others as well. While i have had cross gender daydreams and desires since at least my pre-teens, i have also had daydreams as a male commonly as well. My childhood was full of hearing homicidal and suicidal voices, so i had no space left to thing about gender. Doctors could find no issues in their scans and tests, but after i got saved and got a bit closer to god they went away.  As a result i have no idea how i felt as a little boy.  i am supposed to be on T, but i do not want to go through puberty so i am not taking it right now. I took a shot of T and recorded my feelings before and after in great detail. A week later i had 3 days where i felt so much like a girl that i war very happy and giggly, not to mention i had a few moments in those days were i almost physicaly felt female. It was great, though a week later i had more depression than before the shot by far. But i cannot help but worry that i am lying to myself or that i am simply falling for a kind of placebo effect or something, hard to explain. I cant help wondering about how much or what other people doubted themselves and their gender.                                                                                    ps on phone, please forgive any typos, i tried to fix them, but i may have missed them, this would be easier on a smart phone.

[Edge]

When I first started accepting and exploring my gender, I thought I was genderfluid. I gradually came to realize I'm actually a guy, but for awhile, I was pretty upset because I worried that, if I transitioned, I'd later feel like a woman and be equally dysphoric. What helped me sort it out was writing every day how I felt about my gender. It helped me see it from a wider angle as opposed to how I was feeling in the moment. If that makes sense.

[E-Brennan]

I have the same kind of doubt - I worry that I'll transition and then want to be a guy again.  That's the main roadblock in my transition actually.  Were I 100% sure that transition was the right decision, I'd be moving forward far less cautiously than I am now.

[PoeticHeart]

I'm just going to ditto what they other two said.

I have to fight an internal battle most days just to believe myself when I say I'm trans.

[Jill F]

I was in the same boat at first when I was coming to grips with my snowballing dysphoria.  I could basically keep it in check until a couple of years ago, when it really grabbed me by the balls and I was forced to do something about it.   I had yet to even present myself as female, but it was getting to the point where I "had to" or go crazy.

Because my dysphoria had ebbs and flows, there were times where I could doubt or deny it and others where I felt distinctly female.  This was confusing to say the least.  At first I thought I was probably androgynous, genderfluid or bigender.  Gender variant for sure, but the one thing I didn't want to be was transsexual.  I feared that if I transitioned fully, that my sense of maleness would feel equally dysphoric if I went too far, and that I would probably still always need to present myself as male once in awhile.  I also did not feel that I could transition socially, that I would never "pass", and telling my family and friends might spell the end of every relationship I had.  Fear of the unknowns were definitely a factor.  I feared that HRT might not agree with my mind and/or body or even put my health at risk.  I had also just got into good physical shape after years of being overweight and unhealthy, and I didn't want to have to hide breasts.  I also did not want to do something so permanent that I would end up with a lifetime of regret.  Part of me hoped that I could have a work-around that didn't involve HRT or transition.  I mean, I was programmed that getting rid of Mr. Happy was tantamount to crazy talk, and you definitely don't want to regret that one.  There was a war brewing inside my head between my true self and my defense mechanisms, and it almost killed me.

My therapist convinced me to at least try a low dose of estrogen, and it changed everything pretty quickly.   It made me feel so good that I just wanted more.  The more E and the less T in me, the better I felt.   The ebbs and flows of dysphoria went away, my doubts began to vanish and I was finally able to sort thing out with a clear head.  I sensed my gender to truly be so far enough over to the "F" side of the spectrum that it probably warranted transitioning.   When I could be completely honest with myself, the fact was that I really never wanted to wear boy clothes ever again.  After I had spent considerable time in "girl mode" and on estrogen, I felt I was truly comfortable in my own skin for the first time in my life, and I could never, ever go back to the way things were.  As soon as I realized this, I bought a package of five laser sessions to get rid of the thing I hid behind for over a decade.   

I still have a sense of self-preservation, and do not want to regret anything I do transitionwise.  My solution was to take baby steps and make sure every single one seemed right.  Some you can reverse, some you can't.  I don't want to ever have to regret anything.   I know for sure the orchiectomy has to be done, and I'm 100% on that one now.  I will cross the other bridges when I get there.

[E-Brennan]

Jill, it's like you climbed into my head and wrote exactly what I'm going through.  And it's good to hear that by taking a few cautious, slow steps (low-dose estrogen for example), you were able to find out that you were in fact on the right path all along.  After many months of being on the fence, my therapist convinced me that low-dose was one of the best diagnostic techniques available - it'll tell me pretty conclusively whether or not I need to transition.  Counting the days...

[Carrie Liz]

I had doubts all throughout transition.

But the real thing is, I realized that my doubts were all based on fear... fear of others judging me, fear of acceptance, fear of being rejected by women and seen as a freak and an invader of their spaces, fear of how embarrassing it would be to go before people I knew as a guy but now with a female body, (my dad especially,) and just something about the binary label of "woman" and all of the social connotations that came with it didn't quite click with actually seeing myself as one, even though I was still constantly jealous of them. Plus, as others have mentioned, a fear that I would change my mind and have to go back.

What kept me going was realizing that all of these fears were all completely based on other people's reactions, and all based on cultural binary notions of femininity. When I thought about it at an absolute level, there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to see a girl in the mirror, I wanted smooth skin, I wanted SRS, I wanted long hair, I wanted boobs, I wanted to wear female clothes, and I wanted to be a girl physically in every single way. I realized that in a vacuum or on a deserted island or something, where I was completely by myself and never had to interact with anyone else, and I would never have to worry about a single person judging me or even looking at me, I would transition in an instant with no doubts whatsoever. The only thing that was holding me back was fear of other people's reactions and acceptance, and fear of being a trans woman in society at large.

I guess a big thing was that every single time I had a dream where I was a girl, it was one of the happiest dreams I'd ever had. I'd look at myself and feel like my heart was leaping out of my chest because I was so happy. Where dreams of masculinizing further, such as going bald or looking in the mirror and seeing a middle-aged guy looking back at me, were always complete and total nightmares. (The only bad "girl" dream I ever had was one where I turned into a girl and I was naked and I had people staring at me and laughing. )

So while all of my fears were indeed genuine fears, which are still causing me problems, they are a reflection of society's attitude toward trans people, and gender in general, not genuine doubts about my gender identity. In regards to that, my premonition was correct. And now I'm at the point where, for the first time in my entire life, I'm actually starting to like my appearance and be happy with who I am.

I think that's the key. Just explore your motivations, explore your fears, and figure out whether they're coming from social pressure, or what you yourself would want if not a single other person was involved.

[Rayne]

Sorry i was banned while replying to the first post for ?continual rule abuse? I never got a warning either. Maybe a mod thought my voices references was me trolling the forum. Man i cried when i hit send ane found  myself banned. Please be sure i am no troll, that memory has plagued me all my life and added doubt. Anyway thanks for you replys, and to whoever unbanned me. I have friends here i would never do such things!

[Blue Senpai]

I had doubts coming out as transgender due to fear of not finding someone to love me for the way I am. I also had the general fears of losing a job, losing my friends and family and end up alone forever in this journey to becoming the man I was meant to be. Now that I'm taking the steps necessary to get HRT, the first appointment next Friday, I'm having fears of doing something for myself since I've always acted and did what others wanted or expected of me because it seemed easier to just follow. While I do have fears of getting treated cruelly or beaten to death by my neighbors, who are friendly to me now but we shall see later on how they'll see me once I starti changing.

[Kaydee]

I had doubts all throughout transition.

But the real thing is, I realized that my doubts were all based on fear... fear of others judging me, fear of acceptance, fear of being rejected by women and seen as a freak and an invader of their spaces, fear of how embarrassing it would be to go before people I knew as a guy but now with a female body, (my dad especially,) and just something about the binary label of "woman" and all of the social connotations that came with it didn't quite click with actually seeing myself as one, even though I was still constantly jealous of them. Plus, as others have mentioned, a fear that I would change my mind and have to go back.

What kept me going was realizing that all of these fears were all completely based on other people's reactions, and all based on cultural binary notions of femininity

Carrie Liz,
  Thanks.   That is really where I am at.   Knowing others have dealt with the fears will help me in moving forward.   I need to remember the fears are based on the cultural norms that I have been taught for over 50 years and move forward to do what I need to do for myself.   What others think does matter.   But not enough for me to continue being that geeky guy any longer.
It is my time.


KayDee

[Kaydee]

I had doubts coming out as transgender due to fear of not finding someone to love me for the way I am. I also had the general fears of losing a job, losing my friends and family and end up alone forever in this journey to becoming the man I was meant to be. Now that I'm taking the steps necessary to get HRT, the first appointment next Friday, I'm having fears of doing something for myself since I've always acted and did what others wanted or expected of me because it seemed easier to just follow. While I do have fears of getting treated cruelly or beaten to death by my neighbors, who are friendly to me now but we shall see later on how they'll see me once I starti changing.

Now that I know who I am I do not want to continue doing things just to make others happy.  But it does feel selfish after so many years of self-denial.   

[Rachel]

I see myself in a lot of the posts. Fear, alone, social norms, being outcast and frightened I would try to end it.

Being gender selfish, what every cis never had to deal with. They can not comprehend. Gender is something a cis-gender would never compromise.

I smile a lot now. I am more social and confident. People I work with ( they must be lying) seam to like me. 

[jaybutterfly]

I still have some doubts, but I think thats down to my therapist and doctors more than myself. I personally dont identify as male, but aside from one medical student, this is what I'm hearing

- You have depression, this is escapism
- You have a poor sense of identity due to your depression, this is it manifesting
- You dont know if you want to have a full sex change so you most likely aren't trans (only reason Im not jumping on this is that Im still exploring this myself, I don't just 'know' and I dont want to go too far too soon, especially until after I have kids. But no, trans people all feel suicidal dysphoria and dont want kids and want to get on the table asap is what Im being told here.)

Stuff like that being thrown at me all the time. Plus my family seem to have upped the male pronouns since they found out I wear make up and want to look more feminine and keep bugging me about hair length, clothing, colour choices (they are still in the blue for boys, pink for girls school of thought) even how I speak, that my voice is too soft (training myself to sound less masculine). I guess people reinforcing stuff like that wont help.

I am however finding the level my dysphoria hits me is fluctuating. Sometimes I see this as 'it is what it is' and sometimes I feel its horrendous, to the point i dont like being called 'son, brother, man' and dont look in mirrors becase even stubble sets me off. Sometimes I want to just be more androgynous, but then Im developing other desires through time including

- wanting breasts and hips
- recurring dreams of pregnancy (an impossibility sadly)
- wanting to be recognized as female by others around me.

I think my greatest worry has been being accepted as I percieve myself to be, rather than how others THINK I SHOULD be....

[helen2010]

Lots of doubts.  Just working through them one by one.   Doubted myself, questioned my needs, doubted my wife, doubted my sanity,  frozen by my fears, thought I had some weird kink, doubted that I was trans, didn't want to be trans ..  Then low dose hrt arrived.  Dysphoria abated and I slowly realised that rather than MTF I was non binary and most probably MTA/Q.   Realised that I was over thinking and stressing the detail rather being and living in the moment.

Aisla

[Rayne]

Well i see a lot of myself. I worry that my dysphoria is not strong enough myself. But that changes a lot. I can say i have daydreamed often of being a mom. It gets harder to deny my gender. I have also had a daydream or 2 about being married and not being the husband...-blush-  Li knows vaguely about that daydream but if he reads this post i will blush hugely and hide my face. He is a member here, thought Li is not his real name. But hey relationships should be based in honesty. My sister thinks i am lying to myself ane need to go through male puberty. One doubt is that i only feel this way because i never went more than a little aait through male puberty eue to my medical issues, and even that was after the age of 20. But for now a am holding those thoughts away.

[Ephemeral]

My biggest problem is that I seemingly do not fit the typical trans narrative of knowing from a young age, refusing girly things like girl's toys and rather preferring boy's toys etc. I played with both I think, though if I had to choose, I think I tended to gravitate towards playing with the boys at kindergarten and I was overall definitely a tomboy as a child. Right now I think I am feel insecure and afraid of the doctors telling me I am not transgender or more specifically transsexual because I know someone who only saw them a couple of times at the clinic we are both attending and got hormones very early and I haven't gotten any help at all from them despite that I asked them for it several times and have begun to self-med too. I have a very problematic physical past when it comes to my gender in that I had endometriosis so I resented my period though I never liked it, even when I took birth control pills to help with the pain etc. I am afraid they will tell me that because I played with girl's toys I am not a transsexual or because of my problematic physical health I simply imagined it was better to be born a boy as a way to escape my pain etc.

Yet I've had questions about my gender identity since I was a teenager at least, first thinking I was androgynous when I was in my mid-teens, then bigender and thinking that explained why I felt male in a female body (I frankly didn't understand the term or rather, I filtered the term through my own understanding which I now understand is likely removed from actual bigendered individuals) and since then always felt uncomfortable choosing a side because I knew what was asked of me but I didn't really feel it. I got confused when I saw ciswomen go "I'm female" as if it's the most natural thing in the world for them. I never felt like that. I'm afraid they will tell me that I am just confused because mom died so I lacked a female role model in my life or something.

I really don't know. Yet when I think of doing something like de-transitioning I know I cannot go back to that anymore. It's not me. That person and that identity isn't me at all. It doesn't feel right. That voice, that appearance, etc it just feels fake and not real. I get so confused because I don't fit the typical narrative. I wish it was so simple as to say I knew when I was 3. I don't remember anything really from when I was 3.

[Carrie Liz]

My biggest problem is that I seemingly do not fit the typical trans narrative of knowing from a young age, refusing girly things like girl's toys and rather preferring boy's toys etc. I played with both I think, though if I had to choose, I think I tended to gravitate towards playing with the boys at kindergarten and I was overall definitely a tomboy as a child. Right now I think I am feel insecure and afraid of the doctors telling me I am not transgender or more specifically transsexual because I know someone who only saw them a couple of times at the clinic we are both attending and got hormones very early and I haven't gotten any help at all from them despite that I asked them for it several times and have begun to self-med too. I have a very problematic physical past when it comes to my gender in that I had endometriosis so I resented my period though I never liked it, even when I took birth control pills to help with the pain etc. I am afraid they will tell me that because I played with girl's toys I am not a transsexual or because of my problematic physical health I simply imagined it was better to be born a boy as a way to escape my pain etc.

Yet I've had questions about my gender identity since I was a teenager at least, first thinking I was androgynous when I was in my mid-teens, then bigender and thinking that explained why I felt male in a female body (I frankly didn't understand the term or rather, I filtered the term through my own understanding which I now understand is likely removed from actual bigendered individuals) and since then always felt uncomfortable choosing a side because I knew what was asked of me but I didn't really feel it. I got confused when I saw ciswomen go "I'm female" as if it's the most natural thing in the world for them. I never felt like that. I'm afraid they will tell me that I am just confused because mom died so I lacked a female role model in my life or something.

I really don't know. Yet when I think of doing something like de-transitioning I know I cannot go back to that anymore. It's not me. That person and that identity isn't me at all. It doesn't feel right. That voice, that appearance, etc it just feels fake and not real. I get so confused because I don't fit the typical narrative. I wish it was so simple as to say I knew when I was 3. I don't remember anything really from when I was 3.

You might like this passage from WPATH's Standards of Care:

"Yet many adolescents and adults presenting with gender dysphoria do not report a history of childhood gender-nonconforming behaviors (Docter, 1988; Landen, Walinder, & Lundstrom, 1998). Therefore, it may comeas a surprise to others (parents, other family members, friends, and community members) when a youth's gender dysphoria first becomes evident in adolescence."

And it also states that while most youth expressing gender-nonconforming behavior will grow out of it by early adolescence, (and that only 6%-23% of gender-nonconforming male children and 12%-26% of gender-nonconforming female children will still identify as transgender into adolescence,) once you do hit adolecense, all 70 of a group of young teenagers who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and took puberty-blocking hormones persisted with their trans identity into adulthood. WPATH basically acknowledges that the primary signifier of someone being transgender is the body aversion that happens as one goes through the early stages of puberty, and not just gender-nonconforming behavior.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

I was one of those who never really expressed any gender-nonconforming behavior either as a kid, but then when puberty hit all hell broke loose and I hated every minute of it.

[Ms Grace]

I wouldn't say I fit the "always wanted to be a girl" box of being m2f trans. I know I didn't didn't like being treated as a boy but couldn't see that there was an option or solution to that. I kept to myself, avoided associating with other boys who were the slightest bit rough and survived that way. I kind of expanded on that pattern of behaviour as I grew into adolescence, not easy considering I had to go to a boys only high school. But there was only so far I could stuff that down inside myself and my dysphoria broke through in a big way when I was at university, again there wasn't a name I could put to it until I heard about people who "changed sex" during a lecture. When I attempted transition the first time (1989) I was deeply concerned that I hadn't exhibited the "always wanted to be a girl" characteristics that were then regarded as essential to diagnosis. So I just lied to the shrink. 

These days it doesn't bother me, I was quite up front about how my dysphoria unfolded. What matters most is how you feel now, not when you were a 5 year old.

[Rayne]

can you post a limk to that article? That would be great to show family members of those having family issues like myself. It also matched up with me, my depression hit most when i was taking T. I am thrilled that i had to stop taking it for insurance reasons. I escaped before i got real facial hair or voice deepening. It was to start the puberty my medical issues long delayed.

[EmmaD]

I do wonder if what I feel is real.  Am I deluding myself?  Will I be "found out"?  I don't have supporters really.  My Doctors are low key and therapist doesn't really encourage much.  Therapy is a bit stressful too.  My family accept but it isn't their journey. I don't ram this down their throats either.  Don't really have detractors so that is a plus.

Grace: I also did 6 years at all-boys schools (boarding so away from home from age 10).  I developed as an avoider and just drifted for all that time. Crap at everything attempted. How the hell I ended up very well employed with a happy family is beyond me. Those schools caused a fair bit of damage. I was way too young to be sent away.

My biggest fear and cause for doubt is that my social disengagement is going stuff my transition up altogether.

I have a lot of work to do to push through.