How do you know for sure that you are trans?

[Eevee]

I know I'm trans because despite everything pushing back at me, I keep pushing through as a necessity. If it was just a want, then I would have given up by now. It causes too much pain to go through otherwise.

[Adena]

Its not what we know, its what YOU know.  You know you are feeling increasing levels of dysphoria and the accepted conventional wisdom suggests transition of some kind is the best treatment.  You can find your unique place on the gender spectrum and you still have a supportive spouse to boot.  Your life is never in total ruin until the final gong and you have lots of time to work it out now that you know.  Sure its confusing but so are really fun puzzles we pay to play.

Love the way you put this Tessa James! This is helpful to me too.

While I didn't have the word for it, I knew I was transgender very early (age 13) because what I felt wasn't normal. I had the word transsexual at the same time and I though that was what I was. When I was in therapy and facing the fact that someday I would have to face a decision on surgery, the doubt started creeping in my thoughts. The decision on surgery was made by weighing my life as a woman against my life as a man and it was clear that I could no longer be happy with the life of a man but the doubt remained up to the moment of surgery. Waking up from surgery was the first moment that I no longer had doubt.

I think it's an issue if you don't have doubt. You need to question everything and if the place you wish to be life requires cross living, try it  so you can weigh the different lives against each other. The person who has no doubt may not be looking at all the facts and risk making a mistake as the result.

Thanks for this Dena - for those of us who don't have the obvious life or death crisis about being trans, it's helpful to know that you too still had to question and think hard at each step.

Jayne, I also can relate to many of the things you say. While deciding to go to HRT may be scary, it's not dangerous although from what others have shared (I'm not there yet) it does at some point bring you to a fish or cut bait point. Your therapist can help you figure out if at least starting it can help you figure out the best transition spectrum destination for you.

[Jayne01]

The determining factors are different to each person's experience I guess, for some it's a strong wish or maybe a not so strong wish, for others like me it's so severe it limits my ability to live a normal life and has changed my life goals significantly from those of most people I know. They are off getting married, having children and building nests to grow old in and here I am just trying to pull the pieces of myself together to try to find what feels like a complete person.

Hi T.K.G.W.,

I hope you can work things out. I can certainly relate to not feeling like a complete person. I'm glad I don't have children to burden them with my messed up head. I am burdening my wife though, which weighs very heavily on my mind.

J

[Deborah]

About being 100% certain.

Is that even possible?  I'm not sure I am 100% certain of that.  However, I am 100% certain that doing nothing except suppress it made me hate life, drove me to the brink of suicide once, and was moving me in that direction again. 

Now I'm happy, maybe not perfectly happy but compared to before its night and day.  I am 100% certain of that.


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[Jayne01]

Jayne,

I am me tooing on it all sounding fairly familiar.

I am 51. Married for 25 years with 3 daughters. I never "knew I was a girl the whole time". I felt other and outside my whole life. I thought I was an occasional pervert for most of my life because I would buy (or borrow, when younger) panties and bras. I forgot that when I started doing this, it was before puberty and might have had some sexuality built in but not like later. I was in such denial and confusion that it wasn't till last January that I could approach the idea I was a cross dresser. The problem is that it didn't all fit(so to speak). I didn't want to go back to being a guy, I didn't ever feel like a guy, I just felt like an other or a puppet.

After therapy started, I came to the next conclusion, I am transgender. Not because I fit the mold. Because I could ask myself that(as has been previously stated), and because it felt right(note I did not say good). There are times now where I (I think most of us) rebound and question this thought. However, the symptoms(hate using that word) never go away and often come back stronger.

When I first looked at the idea of being transgender, I was pretty sure it wasn't me. There are a series of questions and mini essays I found that helped me answer for myself and my therapist. Not that it is absolute and measurable.

I think I have rambled enough. I guess I can't answer #1 for you but #2? You don't seem so different from my experience. I wish you love, and acceptance wherever your journey takes you.

With warmth,

Joanna

Hi Joanna,

I wish I could trust myself. I just don't know if what I'm feeling/thinking is real, or imagined. To me, simply asking whether I may be transgender is not enough proof that I am. I can't accept it simply based on a "feeling" I have. How can decide to become a girl based on a feeling and no evidence? My mind is having trouble processing that concept.

J

[Tamika Olivia]

Absolute certainty is not possible, so it can't be a deciding factor in what you do. You can only operate with the information you have, and if you sit around waiting for absolute certainty, you will drive yourself around the bend. If this thought won't go away, if the thought that you're trans won't leave you alone, then you might owe yourself to walk a bit further down that road. You can take any exit you want, so it's not like you have to commit to one answer and stick with it for life. Just make sure you understand what lies ahead, and that you are prepared for it.

[Jayne01]

1. A very long time ago I asked this question and I was told "You just know." At the time I did not understand but now I do. You just know if you are.

2. My story is pretty similar. I did not know from an early age that I am a woman but I always knew something was just not right. It took me FOREVER to figure out what that was even though the answer was just screaming at me. At that point in time, I just could not accept that I am trans.

Like you, I dont want this and for about a year after acknowledging I am trans, I would go through cycles where I was okay with it and desperately looking for any way not to be trans. I finally realized no matter how much I wanted to wish this away, it was not going away. Now I focus on where it is going to take me. Will I fully transition or will I find a spot somewhere along that path and just be happy there? Only time is going to answer that even though I am pretty sure the answer.

Hi Jenelle,

1. I don't "just know" that I am trans. Does that mean I'm not and there is something else going on? I don't understand what is going on, I don't know how to make sense of it all.

2. I can definitely relate to knowing that something is just not right.

I keep hearing that people work it out when the time is right for them. As I get older (based on family history, I'm probably already way past half way through my life) I keep wondering if I am really trans, then I have just wasted the best years of my life being something I'm not. What is the point of wasting what remains trying to change myself and go through all the hardship (medical and social) and risk losing family, friends, job, all for something I'm not even sure of. How do you "just know"?

J

[Jayne01]

One of the problems I see here is: what exactly does it mean to be trans?

For me, being trans means that living as a man is incompatible with my nature.  I can do it, but it doesn't work very well, and it hurts a lot.  (A TG story I like has the trans character describing it as being like walking around with shoes on the wrong feet.)  And it's been that way all my life, long before I'd ever heard of "transgender" (or "transsexual.")

As I adopt more and more "women" things -- clothing, attitudes, etc. -- I simply feel better.  The world looks brighter.  (Not that all my problems have gone away.)  And since I've started transition, people have remarked that I look happier.

In the long run, what matters isn't whether you fit some canonical definition of "trans."  What matters is whether seeing yourself as trans helps you make sense of and improve your life.

Hi Asche,

My nature is that I walk, talk, act like a guy, but somewhere deep in my mind there is this feeling that I should have been born with a female body. If nothing in my life changed except for my body under my male clothes, that would be good. That to me seems like an incompatible mix. If I was born a girl, I would probably still wear guy clothes and probably act like a guy. Socially, I am a guy and am happy about that. Privately in my own world, it's my body that's the problem. Is that transgender, or something else?

J

[KathyLauren]

I am a scientist at heart, and I approached "knowing" from that viewpoint.

Scientists know that no knowledge is ever 100% certain.  You can't prove a theory to a certainty.  You can only show that you have the best explanation anyone has come up with so far.

What convinced me that I was trans was how it elegantly explained several different episodes throughout my life.  When I was about 8, and often since then, I remember wishing I was a girl.  In my 30s, I cross-dressed in private.  Even though I gave that up when I got married, the urge has never gone away.  I have never felt that I fit in among men.  In high school, I was sexually assaulted by a student whose "gaydar" was on the blink - but he picked me for some reason.  None of those episodes on its own is conclusive.  But accepting that I was trans made them all suddenly make sense.

From a scientist's point of view, that makes it a good theory.  It explains several different phenomena better than individual explanations could.  I wasn't happy about it, but I was convinced.

[Jayne01]

While I didn't have the word for it, I knew I was transgender very early (age 13) because what I felt wasn't normal. I had the word transsexual at the same time and I though that was what I was. When I was in therapy and facing the fact that someday I would have to face a decision on surgery, the doubt started creeping in my thoughts. The decision on surgery was made by weighing my life as a woman against my life as a man and it was clear that I could no longer be happy with the life of a man but the doubt remained up to the moment of surgery. Waking up from surgery was the first moment that I no longer had doubt.

I think it's an issue if you don't have doubt. You need to question everything and if the place you wish to be life requires cross living, try it  so you can weigh the different lives against each other. The person who has no doubt may not be looking at all the facts and risk making a mistake as the result.

Hi Dena,

As I mentioned to Asche, I'm happy being a guy as far as the social part goes. My body gives me issues, because my brain tells me that I have the wrong "bits". But even that is not a constant. Sometimes I'm just happy the way I am.

What would have happened if when you woke up from surgery the doubt was still there? Wouldn't it be too late then? How can you be so certain? I'm not questioning your decision, rather I'm trying to find out how do you know or how are you certain enough that you can make such a massive life changing decision?

J

[Jayne01]

Well, I don't feel that way.  While in some ways it would be nice to fit in with the herd, it would also mean that I wouldn't be me.  If someone ever had a magic cure that would make me cis male (or maybe even cis female), it would feel like they were exterminating me and replacing me with some more socially acceptable construct that just happened to look like me, sort of like Stepford Wives.

I've suffered a lot for being the way I am, but I refuse to blame my suffering on my nature.  I blame it on the narrow-minded bigots that spent my formative years tormenting me for being different.  There's nothing wrong with being trans, nothing wrong with my being trans, and nothing wrong with my not being the way other people insist I have to be.  There's something wrong with a society that makes life hell for people simply because they don't fit some people's stupid prejudices.

I understand what you are saying. But wouldn't you still be suffering even if you lived on a deserted island by yourself? I mean, isn't the mind/body mismatch something internal and personal to the individual separate from what society may think?

I don't have any friends and not a lot of family. Even without any of them I would rather be dis (male or female). I don't look female and no amount of surgery or hormones would change that. I have an enormous head even for males, big hands and just generally big (male) bone structure. That cannot be changed. So I don't see this so called magic cure as exterminating any part of me. It would I fact be a welcome cure. To me anyway. My brain not matching my body is a curse. It's like trying to make a PC work on MAC operating system. There are ways to make it work, but it never works quite right.

J

[Tamika Olivia]

I'm not questioning your decision, rather I'm trying to find out how do you know or how are you certain enough that you can make such a massive life changing decision?

I think that this is the central misconception that is underlying your agony. Transition isn't a "massive life changing" decision. It's a series of small decisions, ones you have to make every day, and that you can stop at any time. By the time you get to the "big decisions" like the surgeries, you've been making the decisions for years on end. You have the mountains of evidence of taking hormones, living full time, therapy sessions, and soul searching to bolster your "big" decisions.

[Jayne01]

I would say that is a fair way to put it.  Gender dysphoria (i.e. "being trans") is a medical condition caused by pre-natal hormones with possibly genetic or epigenetic influences, and the way those physical influences interact with society's expectations.

The challenge is to find a personally suitable way to deal with it.  Just as there are a whole range of dysphoria experiences, there are a whole range of solutions, from doing nothing to a full transition and everything in between.

I wish this medical condition could be proven. I've read about studies on brain structures being different and trans women have the brain of a cis woman and trans men have the brains of a cis man. Only problem is, from my limited understanding, is that these differences can only be identified after death when the brain is cut open in an examination. The part of the brain that determines gender can not be clearly seen on any MRI scans to identify one way or the other. That is what I have read and the medical terms where way beyond my understanding, so I may be totally wrong.

J

[Jayne01]

I had no torture associated with the discovery that I am transgender, just a period of learning. It's an overly broad generalization that all transgender people hate being transgender.

Hugs, Devlyn

Hi Devlyn,

That's a fair statement. However, it is torture for me and I do hate it.

J

[Jayne01]

I'm not questioning your decision, rather I'm trying to find out how do you know or how are you certain enough that you can make such a massive life changing decision?

I think that this is the central misconception that is underlying your agony. Transition isn't a "massive life changing" decision. It's a series of small decisions, ones you have to make every day, and that you can stop at any time. By the time you get to the "big decisions" like the surgeries, you've been making the decisions for years on end. You have the mountains of evidence of taking hormones, living full time, therapy sessions, and soul searching to bolster your "big" decisions.

Thanks for spelling it out that way for me. I think a light bulb just turned on in my head. It's a little dim, but it's "on". It's probably the same thing everyone has been trying to tell me. Sometimes it just takes the words to be said a certain way to be understood.

I suppose taking those first steps can be really scary and seem impossible to act on. I'm guessing once you make the first steps, subsequent steps become easier?

J

[Jayne01]

Thank you all for your replies. I kind of made a mess of this thread trying to reply to each of you. I'm currently at work and replying when I get a chance, so my replies may seem to be a bit out of order.

I hope I got to reply to each of you.

J

[CassieH]

Hi Jayne,

I have read many of your posts both in this thread and others. I understand your pain and have a young family and wife too.

Reading your posts the message of Shame is ever constant. Is it possible your mind is clouded by this shame? I only ask because I too feel shame for what I am.

Moving forward it might help if you can find a way to reduce your self shame. Shame is a real blocker to allowing your mind to think objectively. Whether you are Trans or not - you are what you are. You think how you think. No one has the right to judge you for how you think or for who you are - not even you - look at this way - can you change it.

Speaking from experience - it is shame that often drives depression and those other unhealthy thoughts. I only started working my way through it by accepting that the label of 'transgender' was associated with my shame.

You said when you wore the dress and looked in the mirror you didn't like what you saw. The real question is while wearing the dress if you closed your eyes - how does that make you feel?

The decision of what to do next should only appear as something to consider when you work out the first step. I understand the analytical mind wants to think many steps ahead - but for me that is when it overwhelmed me. One step at a time - and this is not a diagnosis that will come from forcing it - you will need time.

Look at this as a mathematical equation - you have several unknowns already - adding time pressures and other variables will just make it harder to solve.

Personally I am at the step where if I put shame aside I can acknowledge I am Trans.  What to do next is not something I will rush.

All the best

Cass

[Jayne01]

Hi Cass,

Thank you for such a nice reply. I think you are right about the shame. There is no shortage of shame that I am feeling. I also to tend to think many steps ahead. I do that with everything. In my job fixing aircraft, that is a good thing because a minor mistake at step one might lead to a disaster at step 10. So my natural default is to always try and think multiple steps ahead to make sure that step one is in fact the correct step. Did that make sense? This way of thinking, however, does not appear to work in other areas outside of work.

J

[carissajaye]

Hi. I joined Susans some time ago but have just stayed away fearing the inevitable. That I also am trans. Well I take the term 'fearing' lightly for there is something inside me that desires it.

I just can't shake this. I've had it since age 8. To make matters more confusing to me growing up, I am 99.9% prefer the company of women. I was married for 8.5 years, and with another 6 years with the same woman. She initiated a divorce with me couple years ago because I was too unstable for too long. I didn't know I was trans at the time. I thought maybe I was gay. If I continued living as a man nothing could be farther from the truth. I dated a year after my divorce, many women. Christian women I should add as I am Christian as well. Oh how I love the Trinity. I've done the binges and purges for so long. At 42 years I've come to accept the inevitable, but barely.

Sometimes my faith gives me pause with my present condition. But sisters I can't help it!!! I've read many replies on the site here and so often these very personal stories present a common narrative. We don't want it, but can't help it.

The past couple years I will admit I very much don't want my testes. Oh how I want them gone. They are useless to me. I suffer from impatience like so many others...

I tried HRT couple years ago but due to a life crisis I had to stop. But while I was on it I was feeling so good. Lower libido, no morning wood, and a feeling of empathy for others I hadn't felt before. Plus I could actually cry! I swear for me anyway testosterone prevents me from crying. I HATE IT! It doesn't feel natural. Even as I type all this, the reflection of my my polished fingernails in the laptop's screen remind me of my inner girl. I've been taking herbal hormones suppliments all year and they've had their effects on my chest with good results. I see a doctor in a couple weeks to restart HRT. Can't wait

I'm far from being strong... but I"m not weak either. I can't escape this and with help from my therapist (who is also Christian) we're working on this together.

[Jacqueline]

Hi Joanna,

I wish I could trust myself. I just don't know if what I'm feeling/thinking is real, or imagined. To me, simply asking whether I may be transgender is not enough proof that I am. I can't accept it simply based on a "feeling" I have. How can decide to become a girl based on a feeling and no evidence? My mind is having trouble processing that concept.

J

I wouldn't say it is only based a feeling. As I mentioned my therapist and many of the personal essay questions I found were helpful in guiding me to my self discovery. Now it's the occasional question of whether it's real(I have always questioned everything being real). But more commonly, when fighting against my trans nature, it has more to do with the great family and supportive wife not being enough to make me suffer through at this point. Once the genie is out, it's pretty tough to stuff it back and it doesn't all fit anymore(if it ever did). To continue flogging this metaphor, the bottle keeps showing up, rolling off shelves and the stopper keeps exploding. Maybe that is only for me.

I am sorry this is so hard for you. I think it is for us all at different points and ways. I hope it gets easier for you or you find ways to distract and cope.

With warmth,

Joanna

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