Do you need to hit rock bottom before truly accepting yourself???

[Jayne01]

Aha! Thanks Deborah.

Jayne

[AnonyMs]

Hi AnonyMs,

Forgive my ignorance, but how can you transition medically without doing it socially? Doesn't medical cause physical changes that would "out" you socially? I only ask because I don't know and that might be a possibility for me to explore for myself.

Jayne

I've been on low dose HRT for more than 5 years, and full transitioning dose for over a year and I have no problems passing as male. No one has a clue. I have a light beard or stubble, and its impossible to see past that. I hide my breasts with baggy clothes, but they are only about c-cup so its still possible. It might start to get uncomfortable if they were much larger. Nothing else is visible. You mileage may vary of course. You might find it very hard to stop in the middle once you've started though. I've had some problems with that.

I regard medical as all those things which are medical, and social as presenting female. For me medical things I'm prepared to do include HRT and SRS, but not electrolysis, FFS or BA. I'd like to do them but I don't think I can't continue to pass male if I do. Its a very common myth that you can't get SRS in this situation, but its not correct. In some countries/doctors you won't get HRT if you don't intended to fully transition, but there's ways around that, for some people at least.

My current plan is to socially transition only if my personal situation changes sufficiently or I get truly desperate, and if/when that happens I'll do it all as quickly as I can. I've been planning for all the possible outcomes ever since I realized I was trans, and I've gone to excessive lengths working out how to do things and make myself safe.

[Qrachel]

Dear Jayne:

First, there's a reason why trans-people have awful well-being stats.  What you did was something, not sure what but suggest your therapist and you need to talk ASAP. 

Rock bottom ain't a place you want to go.  I attempted suicide and for certain the other side of that event was nothing I ever want to experience again. 

Rachel

[Jayne01]

Thanks AnonyMs for the detailed reply. I have a couple more questions for you.

You mentioned that you have had some problems with stopping in the middle once you started. What do you mean by that? Medical problems, or resistance to stop because you don't want to?

Also, are you in Australia? I thought I might have read one of your posts somewhere else which made me think you are in Australia. I'm from Sydney myself.

Rachel, thank you for caring. I don't know what exactly it was that I attempted, but it is definitely on the top of my list for my therapist. I don't even remotely feel depressed right now. I definitely don't want to be at rock bottom. I'm pretty close now, but I'm confident that I won't do anything idiotic! The world is such a beautiful and wonderful place. There is so much I want to see and do, I don't want to miss out. And I most certainly do not want to ruin my wife's life by being a selfish, cowardly moron and do something stupid, just to have her live her life with pain and sorrow. NO WAY. I will do that to her.

I wasn't attempting suicide. But for the life of me, I don't know what I was trying to do. Dumb!!!! I guess that was me using up all my dumb credits up at once. I just need to be rational and smart from now on.

Thank you all again for caring. That means so much to me.

Jayne

[Anna R]

Well, I knew that I had to do something serious about my "Trans" issues as I had reached the point that if I was to have a heart attack, I would not have called for help !
So, I decided that it was going to be Hormones and as of Tomorrow, I am on Estradiol and I have done something positive.
Call it life affirmation, not life rejection.
when you feel like crap , take a positive step, there is life after Disphoria
Anna

[WorkingOnThomas]

For me, it took hitting rock bottom. I was drinking pretty heavily, lost my marriage, and was on the verge of quitting my PhD research. The constant anxiety and depression was making offing myself look more and more attractive every day. Then I slowly started to give in. Dressing in private. Going out (at least) androgynous. Seeing a therapist. And finally, deciding to come out and start taking the steps necessary to get HRT. My life is so much better today than it was a year ago.

[Kylo]

Hi T.K.G.W.

Yes, I am pre everything. I've been seeing avtherapust for a couple of months now, been on this website for a couple months more, and have told my wife. That's it. Oh.... And frequent mental breakdowns where I don't know who or what I am.

I don't want anything in my life to change except my body. I keep trying to imagine my life as a woman and I can't seem to make myself fit in. I'm just not interested in any of the girlie type things. I know I'm stereotyping, but I don't know many people so I have very little to compare to and I don't compare to any woman I know. In a mans world I feel like a square peg in a round hole and in a woman's world I feel like a round peg in a square hole. I'm not a very outgoing person so it is extremely difficult for me to make friends. I can count my friends on 2 fingers, 3 fingers if I count a childhood friend from the 2nd grade. I have my work colleagues, but mostly they are just that. Good people, but not close friends. So, if I was to lose the only friends I had....
I'm not sure what I am trying to say here. I lost my train of thought.

Jayne

If you mean it's the body specifically that is your problem, and not so much the roles, I understand. My body is the only problem I have - otherwise there is nothing else about myself that will change. But then I am completely happy with who I am (after much struggle to reach this point, mind you) and I know I am not going to fit some male stereotype the moment I can consider myself legally male.

In my case, the pegs in the wrong hole doesn't matter because I've always been a social misfit, I'm very used to it. If you are also, then I wouldn't worry to much about the implications of changing your body. You'll just continue to be you, except you will be less dysphoric about the things that matter to you.

Don't people always say to be yourself no matter what? Even in cis circles. Being yourself is the quality of not caring what others think of you more than what you yourself think of yourself. It's a difficult thing to do but worth the effort in this case I think.

[AnonyMs]

Thanks AnonyMs for the detailed reply. I have a couple more questions for you.

You mentioned that you have had some problems with stopping in the middle once you started. What do you mean by that? Medical problems, or resistance to stop because you don't want to?

Also, are you in Australia? I thought I might have read one of your posts somewhere else which made me think you are in Australia. I'm from Sydney myself.

I'm in Sydney and I've found some really good support here. I've had no issues getting what I need, and the psych and endo both know I have no intention of transitioning. It helps to know who to speak to.

The problem in stopping is that when you start HRT you (I) start you suddenly feel really really good, maybe like you've never lived before. You can't go back (I tried stopping HRT a bunch of times), and you begin to see what life might be like and its hard to give it up. Easier if you never knew what you're missing. I think there' may also mental changes on HRT that push you along, but I'm not sure. I do know that as the years pass that my feeling have got much stronger and that what was ok before is no longer so. I think its a common story.

I didn't want to cause my family problems, but not doing enough was driving me crazy. The depression was making me unfit to live with, and its was getting worse. A therapist pointed out that it might be better to be divorced than what I was doing to my family, and he had a very good point. And it was getting worse. My depression has been so bad its affected my blood test results in a very bad way, and yet I wasn't yet suicidal - its hard to imagine how awful that must be.  So you can get to the point where you're not helping anyone at all by not transitioning, and really you're actively harming them.

I'm attempting to balance on the edge between not transitioning and keeping my sanity. I've no idea how its going to work out, but I've been ok for the last year. I don't think its a ideal solution, but I'm all out of those. This is the least bad thing I can think if.

[rosinstraya]

Hi Jayne,

I've read some of your recent posts. I can well understand how you wouldn't want to be this person transitioning. You want to maintain and control it intellectually. But that is difficult.

I always thought that I could think/act away my transgender feelings just by choosing to do so: I've got willpower, I can do this.

But. It's hard, with the best will in the world, to keep battling within yourself and against yourself. It becomes nigh on impossible to function. And it's as though everything, in as much as you're able to focus on it, is suspended- waiting for you to make the decision that you have to make, the one you've always known about, but have never wanted to confront.

And then - when you bring it out in the open.........whilst there's a sense of liberation, there is also massive trepidation- where is it all going? The cat's out of the bag, and you can't really go back.

For me, trying to push it away (having come out to my partner) was what drove me very close to the edge. Denial was only going to lead me over it.

My experience certainly isn't everybody's but, yes, I think there is a sense of having to get to, or very near, rock bottom ( and that can be a painful, slow process in itself) before realising that you have to make that decision- whatever that may be.

You're doing all the right things with therapy etc. I hope you can make the decision/s you need to make and that you're happy with them.

[Deborah]

Thanks AnonyMs for the detailed reply. I have a couple more questions for you.

You mentioned that you have had some problems with stopping in the middle once you started. What do you mean by that? Medical problems, or resistance to stop because you don't want to? .

Jayne

i'll add my experience here.  I did DIY hormones about 10 years ago and stopped them after I became afraid of health complications and because I thought I really had a handle on it all since the dysphoria had gotten a lot lower.

Health wise I was worried because I had gained a lot of weight, gotten really high blood pressure, and was feeling chest pains.  [Most of these bad things I think I can attribute to a combination of not getting counseling and having a really unbalanced DIY hormone schedule].  This time around with a Dr I am not having those issues.

Anyway, after stopping it was all good for a while but the badness gradually crept back in.   Finally, after exhausting every coping mechanism possible I was starting to feel the black depths I was in before the first time around when I was rehearsing ending it with my pistol.

Maybe now it was even worse because I knew from experience that there was a solution.  I just needed to seize it.  So finally I did.

As for how far you might need to go, for me I think of it as an analogy of living your life in a dark cave, absent of light.  When you start HRT you catch a glimpse of the light at the cave entrance and start moving towards it.  As HRT progresses you move closer and closer to the entrance without stepping out into the lush green forest. 

The question then becomes in your mind is living at the edge of the cave good enough or do you need to go further into the bright unknown.  Each of us has to answer that question individually, but at this stage I can tell you that mentally living at the edge of the cave is a whole lot better than in the complete darkness I left behind.

What do I mean by that?  HRT without social transition has given me clarity of thought.  I actually feel like my mind works better without the fog of dysphoria dampening every waking moment.  It has removed a constant anger and anxiousness I always felt before.  And the physical changes as they come seem to be bringing my mind and body in synch.  It just feels righter looking in the mirror.  I didn't really hate myself before and actually had a pretty good physique for a male but it always felt discordant, like an avatar rather than myself.

I think taking those first steps up and out are so important.  You can always stop at any point or go back anytime you want if that works for you.  Or you can stop along the way and rest a while considering the benefits and risks.  I am moving slowly along but as the light gets brighter it also becomes more alluring

Ask yourself this?  Is what you are doing now working and do you foresee it getting better by intellect and willpower alone?  If not, then maybe it's time to take the first step, to see how far you need to go and don't need to go.




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[Rina]

I didn't accept myself until I hit rock bottom, but I don't think that's universal. And I most definitely don't recommend letting yourself hit rock bottom, as it took me quite some time to crawl back out. Since you already acknowledge that things are difficult, you're also in a much better place than I was to work things out before it comes to that.

[Jayne01]

Wow! So many responses. Thank you all so much.

Anna, I have had similar feelings and thoughts, except mine did not involve a heart attack. I keep thinking if I was crossing the street and I tripped and fell, and I saw a truck coming, I'm not entirely sure I would be in a hurry to get up out of the way. I would never jump in front of a truck intentionally, but if it happened accidentally, there are times that I wonder what I would do. That kind of scares me a bit.

WorkingOnThomas, thankfully I don't drink, because I could probably quite easily have become an alcoholic. My therapist once asked me if I was interested in HRT. I said I didn't know, but if I said I want it, I'm pretty sure she is ready and willing to give me the necessary letter. By the way, if it's OK for me to ask, what is your PhD research about?

T.K.G.W., yes I do mean it's my body that causes me the discomfort. I am quite happy with my current role as it is. I don't really know how to find the right balance between gender identity and gender role. Good advice about being yourself. The trick is knowing what being yourself means. After 43 years, I'm confused and have trouble distinguishing between who the real me is and who I think the real me is in order to fit in society.

AnonyMs, nice to see another Sydney didn't here. I might need to speak to my therapist a bit about some pros and cons of HRT. I'm sorry that your depression is affecting your health. Depression is awful. I haven't been diagnosed as having any form of clinical depression, but my gender issues are certainly causing me to have big mood swings, spending more time in the feeling down and depressed than happy and cheery mood. I know that when I spend any length of time feeling down, it then gets my wife feeling down. Your mood tends to rub off on people and my wife reminded me of that only recently when I managed to get her feeling really bad. Knowing I was the main reason of her mood really upset me. I hated doing that to her. I'm glad you are finding some kind of balance to keep yourself sane and ok.

Ros, I would so much like to control these transgender feelings with willpower. Doing so drains so much energy. It should not be so difficult to simply exist, and I want to do more than exist. I don't want to be in denial and pretend these feelings don't exist. It would be nice to be able to somehow integrate these feelings into "me" without transitioning. I don't know how to do that though.

Deborah, to answer your question. No, what I am currently doing is not really working. Sometimes I think that yes! I can control this. I got this. But that doesn't last for long, followed by a spectacular crash and burn, so to speak. The analogy I have always used for my self is that I am in a glass bubble sort just hovering around observing other people live, but never actually being part of it, always on the outside looking in (or inside looking out).

Rina, I don't think I'm at rock bottom, but I'm close enough to see the bottom, and it doesn't look like s place I want to hang around. So if I do hit the bottom, I want it only as something to push off on my way back up, like when you push off the bottom of a swimming pool back towards the surface.

Jayne

[Qrachel]

And I most certainly do not want to ruin my wife's life by being a selfish, cowardly moron and do something stupid, just to have her live her life with pain and sorrow. NO WAY. I will do that to her.

I wasn't attempting suicide. But for the life of me, I don't know what I was trying to do. Dumb!!!! I guess that was me using up all my dumb credits up at once. I just need to be rational and smart from now on.

Thank you all again for caring. That means so much to me.

Jayne

Hi Jayne:

Your comment highlighted above begs the obvious question: What about "for you?"

I ask because as much as your wife is truly important, you are equally so . . .

Rachel

[WorkingOnThomas]

Hi Jayne,

I'm a historian, and my research is on a form of early modern discourse about the Americas relating to race/ethnicity. I enjoy it, but I know it bores the ->-bleeped-<- out of everyone else.

Thomas

[Kylo]

I could be wrong but the gender identity is your true self, and the gender role is the minimum standards of behavior or appearance necessary out there to be accepted as a specific gender. I don't think any of us will know how to balance that out exactly until we have experiences in the new gender role and get used to it.

I think I know what you mean, I myself have always been an oddball (or really just "been myself" but odd to everyone else probably because of the gender discrepancy) and feel like I know myself very well, but even I feel at times like I have no idea how I've survived this long, or what mental process I employed to block out the dysphoria and attempt to live a cis life. I didn't try to be a female, but I did do something to shut out the "female" and dissociate myself from it so strongly and I have no idea or recollection what that was. It worked quite well, but if I had to tell someone now how I did this or that in my life while also being trans, I'm at a loss to explain to them how I did manage it.

It might be good to get some alone time and do some thinking about yourself, figure yourself out and try to separate the real you from the conditioned. I'm in the process myself of trying to unravel just how I managed to ignore my biggest problem for so long.

[Asche]

I wouldn't say I had to reach rock-bottom before I could admit that I was trans.

I did have to hit rock-bottom before I accepted that I had to stop trying to be what I thought other people expected me to be and start finding out who I was inside.

About 12 years ago, I realized that the only thing I was looking forward to was dying and was likely to be dead in a few years, and I couldn't do that to my kids.  I got a separation and then a divorce from my wife and vowed not to ever again try to turn myself into something I wasn't.  I will choose to be alone, for the rest of my life if necessary, rather than a relationship where I feel I can't be who I really am.

Of course, a corollary was that I have to actually find out who I really am, and I've spent the past 10 years trying to do that.  It was in the process of doing that that I ran across the blog post that made me consider that I might be trans.  And here I am

[orangejuice]

Hi Jayne,

Everything you've said pretty much applies to me too. Except for the fact I am in no way in a place where I could go out wearing anything. But its the same thing. I bought a few things just to see if it helped and today I just put on a t-shirt, some leggings and converses at home. I liked how it looked and felt and looking down at my legs seeing a sort of feminine shape makes me happy but then like you I look in the mirror and it feels awful. I see my huge feet, arms, hands, head and upper body and I just wanted to take it all off immediately. I think that I look awful.

I really hope you don't have to hit rock bottom first but its the same question I'm trying to answer myself. The last year where I've started trying to find a solution to this rather than burying it has been an attempt to prevent myself getting to that place, even though right now I still want to bury it.

It's a horrible thing to try and answer. My conclusion right now is that transition wouldn't make me happy because I'm not really going to look how I would want to look. The alternative approach of hormones purely for mental relief doesn't seem like an option because being outed by physical changes would be absolutely disastrous. That leaves trying to accept myself regardless. But all the time in the knowledge that if I do have to hit rock bottom first then I'm going to have put myself through so much that could have been avoidable. Firstly there's what rock bottom might entail. I already have similar moments to you. Sometimes if I'm on an empty road I put my foot to the floor and shut my eyes. I don't know why and I always open them. I wouldn't kill myself but I definitely have the feeling that I don't care if I die.

Then there's also the fact that if I have to wait to hit rock bottom all the reasons why I actually don't want to transition right now are only going to be worse. I'm 26 so maybe there's a tiny bit of still being young that might help with how I'd look but if I have to wait until I hit rock bottom then that will be gone.

It really is an incredibly tough question to answer and that scares me because maybe the only time it won't be tough is at rock bottom. I'd like to avoid getting to that place if I can. Good luck figuring it out.

[ChasingAlice]

I always felt left out of both the men's and women's worlds. Once I got a few months into transition that changed and I feel at home with the ladies as well as the non binary. I had always been a tomboy internally and now that is on the outside for everyone to see. I don't like frilly things either. Guess what? The world is full of tomboys and butch women of every stripe. I still only have one skirt that I wear very rarely and a couple of dresses that I felt obligated to buy that have never seen the light of day. I don't wear makeup for the most part and my shoes tend to be running shoes. One pair is black and pink, the other is a red and blue pair of men's sneakers. But because I am a woman most people are surprised by that. They read thaem as female shoes because a woman is wearing them. There are surprises in transition. Finding out what your womanhood will be like is the best part.

I was mostly friendless too and now I have almost no close friends. But I am building my life anew and growing as a person. I am getting new friends, folks who know and love the real me. Don't let fear be your leader. It is hard, I won't lie, but I am sure it is worth it!

Are we almost living the same life? Kina sounds like it.

[Kellam]

We are? Well then hey there sibling!

[Jayne01]

Hi all. Thank you all for your great replies. My head has been elsewhere the past several days. My wife and I had to rush away overseas to visit a dying relative on their last days. Dysphoria has been in the distant background. Still there but not enough to cause me any real distress.

I have read all your posts and truly appreciate you all taking the time to write. I apologise for not being able to respond to each of you, but currently my thoughts are with my wife and her family.

Jayne