I thought I'd talk a little bit about the "useful ground" that my therapist and I covered in today's session.
I have been having mixed feelings about my plan to go full-time in the next month or so. On the one hand, I have been feeling super-confident: I can do this. On the other hand, I have a lot of fear about possible negative reactions from my neighbours. I wanted to talk about that dichotomy and figure out what it's all about. Am I overconfident, or am I blowing the fears out of proportion?
She didn't think I was over-confident. My transition is going well and I should be feeling confident. My fears are real, but are probably rooted in events in my distant past, not in likely situations that may arise in the present or near future. She offered me the opportunity to do some work using EMDR on whatever those past events were, but that will take quite a few sessions over a period of time.
Since that would put me into a time frame past when I want to go full-time, she gave me a strategy to deal with any negative reactions I may get. Basically, since those negative reactions are really about the person reacting, not about me, to turn it around and make the discussion explicitly about them. "What is it about you that makes you want to say that when I am just minding my own business?" Don't engage, don't defend, just make it about them.
While the deeper investigation may be helpful, my feeling is that the short-term strategy will work for me. If it successfully gets me through coming out in public, I can put the fear behind me. Perhaps the deeper investigation will not be necessary. Or at least can be postponed for a while.
So I am going to pass on the head-shrinking for now and just do it. She said my confidence is not misplaced, so I am going to go for it.
I need to order a couple of extra wigs for daily wear. I am targeting the last week of April to go full-time.
Oh, and she also gave me a letter that will hopefully be suitable for changing the gender on my driver's license. I say "hopefully" because there doesn't seem to be any procedure for doing it in cases where one's foreign birth certificate cannot be changed. Supposedly it is legal and do-able, but it seems to be dependent on how sympathetic the person handling your paperwork is. I just have to try. I have two letters, which is what would be required if I was changing my birth certificate. We'll see soon enough.
