Does it get better?

[noah732]

Everyday I wake up, look at myself in the mirror, and recognize a boy in the mirror. I think to myself, 'I feel like a boy, so maybe I could transition okay.' And then I remember my transphobic parents, the countless number of sex change regret stories, and all the emotional obstacles that come with transition.

I start doubting myself and wondering if I myself would regret transition. Possibly the worst part is that I realize I COULD live like a girl for the rest of my life. It would be bleak, disappointing, and awkward but I COULD.

The transphobic people I'm around discourage me. Sex change regret stories discourage me.

http://waltheyer.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/sex-change-51-attempt-suicide-have-deep-regret-or-will-not-adjust.html

I feel depressed and hopeless.

For the post-transitioned, are you happy? Did your life get better?

[Jessica Merriman]

First, the feelings you are having are very normal for pre transition. You are in a very hostile situation it sounds and that tends to compound your feelings and thought's. We call it a toxic environment.

Now for your question, does it get better.
I can only tell you my personal experience and YES, for me it got better to the point of miraculous. My mind and physical body were both in very grave danger of collapsing totally. After getting involved in therapy it felt like a huge weight was lifted because I did not have to silently carry this very heavy burden. Now on HRT and living full time my mind is in a wonderful place and medical problems which had plagued me for years started to change. Before transition based on mental, physical and lab reports I was given 3-8 years to live. Those very same reports done recently give me 30 - 40 years of life left. I no longer have high blood pressure and have had the diagnosis of diabetes removed from my file. In my personal life transition actually saved my life and has given me renewed hope and happiness. Hiding a problem like this will take a toll on you somehow. As to potential problems of regret, etc. If you approach transition well educated and with support both here and real life the rate of regret is very low. Most who regret transition did it recklessly or way to fast. Please start with a Therapist who has gender experience. That is the first crucial step in taking as possible much future regret out of the equation. It seems like it takes forever to get there and it is frustrating at times, but something this big should not be rushed for instant gratification. 

[noah732]

First, the feelings you are having are very normal for pre transition. You are in a very hostile situation it sounds and that tends to compound your feelings and thought's. We call it a toxic environment.

Now for your question, does it get better.
I can only tell you my personal experience and YES, for me it got better to the point of miraculous. My mind and physical body were both in very grave danger of collapsing totally. After getting involved in therapy it felt like a huge weight was lifted because I did not have to silently carry this very heavy burden. Now on HRT and living full time my mind is in a wonderful place and medical problems which had plagued me for years started to change. Before transition based on mental, physical and lab reports I was given 3-8 years to live. Those very same reports done recently give me 30 - 40 years of life left. I no longer have high blood pressure and have had the diagnosis of diabetes removed from my file. In my personal life transition actually saved my life and has given me renewed hope and happiness. Hiding a problem like this will take a toll on you somehow. As to potential problems of regret, etc. If you approach transition well educated and with support both here and real life the rate of regret is very low. Most who regret transition did it recklessly or way to fast. Please start with a Therapist who has gender experience. That is the first crucial step in taking as possible much future regret out of the equation. It seems like it takes forever to get there and it is frustrating at times, but something this big should not be rushed for instant gratification. 

Oh my gosh. Thank you!!

[Jessica Merriman]

Always feel free to PM if you ever need anything! 

[Carrie Liz]

I think you've definitely been looking at the wrong statistics.

The link that you posted was a blogger with an agenda making assumptions and pulling statistics out of his ass from studies which he'd barely even read to prove a bigoted point.

So let's set the record straight.

The 41% attempted-suicide rate he quoted isn't among post-transition people. It's amongst the entire transitioning spectrum. So most of those suicide attempts are pre-transition. (Not to mention most of the people who do attempt it fail, and then come to regret attempting it later.) He made ONE valid statistical link in his post... "one in twenty post-op transsexuals change their mind after surgery," and "one in ten never adjusts and becomes depressed." He didn't cite the studies, but those numbers sound somewhat legit, more or less in line with other studies that I've read. So let's look at those "one in twenty" and "one in ten" regret numbers a different way... that means that 95% DON'T change their mind after surgery. And 90% DO adjust. Doesn't look so bleak then, now does it? And take away the wrongful 41% suicide attempt rate which he cited out-of-context, and his argument completely collapses into itself.

Here... here is an official scientific study that was done on the trans community. It was done in Sweden, and followed 324 sex-reassigned people for up to 30 years after transition and tracked their mortality, suicide attempts, and psychiatric hospitalization. Here are the results for the 133 FtMs in the study: (only including FtMs since that's what the OP presumably is.)

Post-Transition suicide attempts: 7/133 (5.3%)

Post-Transition deaths from suicide: 4/133 (3.0%)

Overall Post-Transition Mortality: 11/133 (8.3%) [the other 7 deaths were from causes like cancer and cardiovascular disease]

Psychiatric Hospitalization: (for non-trans-related issues)
Pre-Transition: 22/133 (16.5%)
Post-Transition: 21/133 (15.8%)

Source:
http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0016885.t001&representation=PNG_M
http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/previews.figshare.com/398398/860/p_01.png

So, yeah... MUCH different picture. In actuality, only 5% of post-transition FtMs attempt suicide. Not 41%. And, well, all that the psychiatric hospitalization stats show is that those who had other non-trans-related mental issues pre-transition still had those same non-trans-related mental issues post-transition. And this paints a MUCH different picture than the widely-quoted 41% attempted suicide rate that you seem so worried about.



Here's another study, this time of trans youth.

In this one, 433 trans youth were studied. And these numbers are VERY encouraging.





So yeah... as you can see, the picture is anything but bleak for people who transition. The blogger had an agenda, and was pulling together a bunch of statistics from different sources to wrongly make the claim that a majority of trans people are unhappy with it. They're not. Over 90% are perfectly happy with transition, and this claim is supported by every single study I've ever read.




Also, as a successfully post-transition person, for me, it did get better. I went through a lot of mental hell during transition, wondering if I was ever going to make it, ever be happy, ever pass, etc, etc. And now I'm through the other side, with a job, family support, friends, and a great life.

[FTMDiaries]

Jessica and Carrie nailed it... but there's another perspective to think of too.

Gender Dysphoria doesn't magically evaporate. If untreated, it very often gets worse. There are many people here who could attest to that, but I'll offer you some highlights of my own personal story.

I first realised something was wrong with my gender when I was 5. I struggled through childhood, puberty and my teenage years but didn't hear the word 'transsexual' until I was 19 and read about the experiences of a trans woman. I finally realised that this was what was 'wrong' with me, but the options for FtM transition at the time were unsatisfactory so I decided I was just going to suck it up and try to figure out how to live as a woman.

So I shoved myself into the closet. I found a boyfriend, settled down, eventually got married and produced two kids. All the while I was struggling to be taken seriously in a male-oriented field, which felt 10 times worse because of the underlying dysphoria I was trying to deny. Whilst all this was going on I was suffering daily anger and anxiety issues caused by being forced to accept the humiliation of being treated like something I'm not... and all because I thought I could hack it. I thought I was smart enough to just figure out how to cope. It was like death by 1000 cuts: each degrading moment of forcing myself to perform an act for other people built up into this huge, festering mess of anger, resentment, guilt, self-loathing and deep-seated frustration over a period of many years.

So fast-forward 20 years and I found myself at crisis point. My years of self-denial and closeting had built up an incredible amount of trauma for me, and the dam finally burst when I saw a video of a teenager undergoing transition and I was overwhelmed with regret. I was in my 40s, half-way between being a young adult and being a retiree, and I knew that this one-and-only life I have to live was going to waste and time was starting to run out. I realised that it isn't long until I start to lose my health and youthful vigour and that if I didn't do something about it soon, I would wind up being too old & frail to ever do anything about it, and that I would deeply regret never having made things better whilst I still had the chance.

So yeah. I thought I could live as a woman. I thought it would be bleak, disappointing and awkward, but that I COULD. But instead it got worse... and I couldn't. So I did what I had to do to make it get better. And then it did get better.

[crowcrow223]

The sex change articles remind me of people's fear of flying. There's significantly more car accidents than plane accidents, yet media will always always post a plane crash news, same goes for sex change, they won't post about how happy and fulfilled one may be, it won't sell.

Shock sells, happiness rarely.

Go for it! Transition, buddy!:) good luck

[FTMDiaries]

I thought I should also mention: there is a Wiki here at Susan's about the blogger mentioned by the OP: https://www.susans.org/wiki/Walt_Heyer

I remember reading his story some time back: if my memory serves, he's a cisgendered male who was misdiagnosed as having gender identity disorder (as it was called back then) when in actual fact, he was suffering from a dissociative disorder.* He campaigns against gender reassignment, probably with good intentions, because he suffered greatly as a result of having been misdiagnosed. That's understandable... but agendas like his wind up undermining the rights and needs of people who genuinely do have gender dysphoria and for whom transition might be beneficial.

It's sad and regrettable when people are misdiagnosed, as he was. Of course gender reassignment is likely to be a huge mistake for somebody who is not gender dysphoric. But his case is an exception to the rule, and doctors are very careful to weed out these sort of misdiagnoses, so thankfully they are few and far between. So for every 'sex change regret' story you might read, there must be at least 100 stories of people whose lives have improved enormously post-transition. But instead of writing about it, many of us are just quietly getting on with our lives, finally content to be who we truly are.

As an aside, you can generally tell how well-informed a source is by their use of the outdated term 'sex change'. It hasn't been called that for some time, and the term can be considered offensive by many in our community.

*According to his website.

[kelly_aus]

But instead of writing about it, many of us are just quietly getting on with our lives, finally content to be who we truly are.

And some of us have tried to tell our positive stories and are shouted down. This is why I can be a little blunt and cynical around here, if no one wants to hear good news, I'll revert to my default state - being a spit-stirring rebel..

In the meantime, I've just gotten on with my life - a life that doesn't include other trans people on a regular basis... Just the life of a late-30's Aussie lesbian. Admittedly one that has a little more 'luck' than most in my position, I wonder why?

[Adam (birkin)]

I'm happier. I am still dysphoric sometimes and I can't be stealth in 100% of situations, but it has gotten better in many ways. Before, being pre-hormones and not passing as male, transition was a topic of my every day life. It ALWAYS came up whether it was ignorance from people about my presentation, misgendering, or trying to get my transition started. Now, there are some problems but they come up much less frequently. I've only been required to out myself when I presented paperwork for a job, and if I plan on dating someone. Or if my dysphoria is really bad that day. Other than that, everywhere I go I'm just like any other guy, and transition is a non-issue unless I choose to bring it up.

[noah732]

Thank you guys. You don't know what you've done.

[Rachel]

So fast-forward 20 years and I found myself at crisis point. My years of self-denial and closeting had built up an incredible amount of trauma for me, and the dam finally burst when I saw a video of a teenager undergoing transition and I was overwhelmed with regret. I was in my 40s, half-way between being a young adult and being a retiree, and I knew that this one-and-only life I have to live was going to waste and time was starting to run out. I realised that it isn't long until I start to lose my health and youthful vigour and that if I didn't do something about it soon, I would wind up being too old & frail to ever do anything about it, and that I would deeply regret never having made things better whilst I still had the chance.

Believe me when I tell you (for me) the above is true. True to the point of one day I had a choice. I have beaten the odds this far and getting more stable every day. Dysphoria gets worse as you age and it is a killer.

[JenniferGreen]

Jessica and FTMdiary have yet again made the point that I now accept.  I have tried to deny that I am transgender for years and all that has happened is that I became an anxious, moody, insecure, nervous wreck. I drank too much and was very depressed.  I am only at the start of my journey to transition but I accepted that doing nothing will only make me more miserable.  I don't want that to be how my life remains until I die.  I don't have my answers about how that is going to turn out but I have accepted that doing nothing is not good for my health both mentally and physically.  I am happy to be doing something about it and have had my conclusion confirmed by my drs and friends.  This is me and I am not going to remain hidden.  Its all about small steps and exploration of who you really are.  There is nothing wrong about being yourself.  Its just that its tough when you know that so many people do not understand trans gendered people.  Thats not going to get any better if they continue to scare us into being hidden away.  I feel like I am in a toxic environment but I know that once I progress more towards full transition then I will have spent time sorting through these things.  It is a tough journey to be making but its that or dying young and miserable.  I want to be me and be happy.  being a man is never going to do that for me.  I hope you find your way but please get some help from a therapist.  There is no harm in talking about it with someone who will not judge you.  It has helped me to stop being in denial and realise that I am not some sort of freak or mentally ill.  I also am more healthy and less anxious.  That alone has helped me in my work and social life.  There are all sorts of people who do not understand but thats their problem, not mine.  Good luck and best wishes.  Jennifer xx

[Emmaline]

It gets astronomically better.

Taking hormones was like plugging my brain in for the first time.  I felt normal, alive, everything became lighter and easier to do, color became more vivid and emotions become real.

At the very least, fight the depression and hold, hold, hold on for that alone.

When I was where you are I realized something.  Life was going to be hard being trans- but Female me was absolutely kick ass and glorious.  She could handle it, and conquer it, and still have energy left to make the world better for others.  I like her, I want to be her and yippeee... I actually get to BE her.

Big hugs.  We have all been where you are, and yes, it absolutely gets better.

[Taka]

my life got considerably better when i just stopped pretending to be my mama's little girl. the more unnecessary pretense i can get rid of, the better life gets. i'm me, even though my body doesn't reflect it. i totally believe it when people say that transition helps.

try to at least tell yourself that you're a boy, no matter how girly you look. be a boy in all situations where it's possible (that would mostly be online, i think). wear what you want to wear in all situations where it's not totally improper. cut your hair the way you want. see if that makes you happier. do it for a while, and then ask yourself if you could go back to being the "normal" girl that "everybody" says you are. i can't even think of myself as one, not in situations where gender matters. not when i imagine my body (though it's still female). even when wearing a dress, i'm mystified when people refer to me as a woman. just because i changed the way i'm thinking about myself, and this way works so much better i can't go back to thinking the way my parents tried to raise me to think.

[Felix]

"Sex change regret" is an odd thing. There are some sensationalized stories, but they don't represent the average trans experience. Most people I've known before and after transition were very happy with their changes. Transition is not easy for anyone, and no amount of transition efforts will erase all dysphoria, but it is usually much much better than the alternative.

It got better for me. I tried really hard to be a "real" woman, to learn to do it right, to be okay, and I didn't realize how much of my suffering was due to staying closeted until I let it go and came out as trans. Even before any hormones or surgery or name change, just being able to stop pretending was like letting go of a backpack full of bricks. I went slowly, and I did my research and talked to people and went to support groups etc, and I didn't take any step until it felt comfortable, and I'm very happy with my changes so far. Most people who interact with me see me as just a normal guy. I've had to mourn for some of what I left behind, but the tradeoffs have been worth it to me. I don't regret a thing.

I'm not always happy. If you are living as the wrong gender, fixing that doesn't fix whatever else might be wrong with your life.

[Emmaline]

Oh yeah... dysphoria is one problem, that bag of bricks is another...

In the first year I came to terms with the fact that I am not female, nor will ever be completely- I am a transwoman, a blend of the two physically but wired up with a female brain identity.  I consider myself part of the 1 in 100 perfectly great people of this world who are intersex. 
  That was part of my battle- the next part is getting society to see and accept intersex people which felt like a massive war to fight, until I realized it meant I had purpose, a huge extended family and I can make a difference to the world, day by day, person by person.
I now spend a portion of my time becoming more female in both body and presentation, and each little bit gained feels great. Sure, I will never be 100% happy with my body (unless science comes to our rescue in new ways) but find me a woman who is? 
One I put down the bricks, I could carry life. 

It is only a year and three months since I read the diagnostics criteria for transgender children and realized it was my childhood- that I finally had solved my life puzzle.  My life is astronomically better, and it is early days.

[mrs izzy]

Yes it does.

You need to take the steps to get there and just do not look back.

Each of us has a given path.

One step at a time and YES THERE A BETTER DAY.

[Blue Senpai]

I'd like to think that it does get better which might explain which why I have never attempted suicide even once. I'm pre-T like yourself and while I know the first months of testosterone will be rough depending on how fast the changes come, it will get better in the long run and I'm doing myself a great favor and for the people around me. Before I even discovered that I was transgender, I was an unhappy being overall ready to snap at anyone, isolated myself from everyone, felt jealous of my older brother's happiness and spent so much effort just getting through the day without knowing why that was. I felt like a boy but that seemed wrong for a while and tried living like a girl, albeit a tomboy but it was no use. I never really knew why but there was something off about me since I was a child but I didn't realize it was transgender until 6 months ago.

My mother didn't feel so shocked so I'm guess at some level she must have known due to how I've acted throughout the years.

[Taka]

i think sex change regret is something that might happen more often in a rigid systen where a course is set, and only those who fulfill the right criteria can get on the boat. there are people in norway who have had to lie about aspects of their life and/or personality to get any treatment at all. when telilng the truth will get you nothing, and the doctors decide what's right for you based on half truths and lies, some people might end up getting the wrong treatment. like a trans guy going in for top surgery, then waking up with one less uterus as well. things like that will easily lead to regret. only way to avoid regret is for the patient to make their own well informed choices every step of the process, but not all health care systems work that way.