What have been your coping strategies pre-transition?

[PurpleWolf]

Today's topic  :
What have been your coping strategies in order to avoid transitioning or when you couldn't do it for a variety of reasons?

Examples:
Did you consciously try to repress the feeling(s) and just didn't think about it?

How did you express your gender during that time? Dressing in secret? Dressing openly...?

Were you out to friends & family and had their support?

Did you convince yourself you wouldn't need to transition?

Did you plan to transition eventually and were living for that moment or...?

---
Oh, I've had so many might forget some:
- At first I was living for the moment I could finally get T and surgeries at 18
- When I was denied access to treatment I felt utterly devastated, but then developed a coping strategy of 'maybe this wasn't meant to happen after all' and tried to see something 'good' about it!
- Then I developed a solid conviction that I would transition one day - and was living for the idea of top surgery for years
- I also declined to become a victim of my circumstances - and instead was convinced I would be able to someday when I had enough money
- I totally abandoned the 'official route' as an option and refused to go back bcos I hated the system so much (which is why I'm here and still untransitioned  )
- I tried to convince myself I was nb instead of ftm so that I wouldn't need/want T anyway - so my body & face would stay the same regardless; thus I wouldn't need to feel bad about the way I looked
- I totally socially isolated myself so that I wouldn't need to meet any new people ever who would know me as 'female-bodied'/girl/the guy who used to be x - I was only living for the moment in the future I could be & look like myself. My life would only begin then.
- I managed to avoid any use of ID & deadname to the point of never renewing my passport after it expired some 5 years ago...! (And thus not having a valid ID.) As a coping mechanism I just refused to use the deadname. I felt they can take my human value away from me & not let me exist as a person - but they can never make me use that unless I want to. Plus I wouldn't stand being called/known as that so just didn't wanna take care of any things basically. The person on the ID isn't me anyway, so why bother!
- I always continued to dress in guy clothes.
- I always continued to identify as a guy inside my head. Even if other people were unable to see that!
- I tried to make myself a little less masculine/more nb - recognizing that people see me as a freakin woman anyway - so what does it matter if I sometimes purchase something for 'women'. (This happened very rarely but it did happen.) I was trying to embrace my 'nbness' if I wasn't able to be a man really.
- I had panic-stricken fantasies of starting to present as a woman after all - maybe I could do that? Maybe I'd like looking like a hot female after all? I mean - I do like women. After all this was what I was doomed to look like forever obviously. Why not try to embrace it then?!!
- I had periods of obsessing if being trans was a mental illness after all. What if I was crazy after all? I mean - I obviously do have a female body - how can I imagine in my head I'm a guy without that being crazy?? Considering my family has never believed me. And being completely socially isolated I had no friends either who would support me with this. (Except for my spouse.)
- Basically hating the world, this cruel system that does not recognize trans rights I fell a victim to, the prevailing transphobia that produced that system, hating all the people in this world who are such transphobes and for not being able to see me as a guy despite me very much trying to pass, hating other trans people who were able to transition effortlessly, etc. etc...! (Hate gives you an outlet but doesn't lead anywhere unfortunately.)
- Believing in 'destiny': that I wasn't 'meant to transition' after all, coz was unable to back then. If that had been meant to be, I wouldn't be here without T and all. Maybe there was some 'deeper meaning' beneath all that...! Maybe I was meant to live as a 'woman' then or at least 'nb'.
- Video games/writing/fantasy: Living my life through characters to dull the pain I'm not living as myself!
- Convinced that my lot in life is to succeed and live in isolation - I wouldn't kill myself coz I more than anything wanted to live; plus I feel I have a purpose in life so thought I would create stuff - but my lot was just to stay inside my head, unable to really interact with people. I knew I wasn't a woman - and apparently would never become a man. Would never be 'one of the guys'. Would never be considered a man even. But was ready to take this! At least I have my lifelong spouse - and skills. So thought would make the best of my life regardless. Even if I wasn't able to interact with people ever. And would suffer forever being misgendered and seen as a woman etc.
- After that rather fatalistic thought I at least tried to cheer myself up with the idea that I most probably would have enough money to have top surgery at least in my lifetime.

Must be others too but those came to my mind instantly.

Now my coping strategies have changed a little:
- Transition no matter what
- Persevere until you succeed with your cause - just never give up. (But instead of numbly waiting I take action now.)
- Adapt to your situations/circumstances - and make the best of them!!! If the law says something, you may be unable to change it, but you can try to make the best of it still.
- Don't get stuck! If you can't do something you really want, look into other options then and choose from them.
- Something is always better than nothing.
- Don't fight the inevitable! Jump through some hoops if you really need to. But just NEVER. GIVE. UP. = means never stop TRYING to do something abut it until you succeed!!!!
- Don't let the fear stop you. Ever. Other people are not worth wasting your life over.
- Stay calm. No matter what happens you can always pull through somehow.
- Don't mask your pain as 'wasn't meant to happen after all' or 'I don't care'
- Get support & connect with as many people as possible. Don't stay alone when you face difficulties in life. There are people who do support you.
- Never lose hope. But again concentrate on bettering your present instead of always thinking about the future.
- Always, daily, do something that pushes you out of your comfort zone.
- Ask so many people you need to until you get help.
- Don't let past experiences dictate your future.
- Believe what you feel.

Etc. etc. etc.  ! I'm healed!

[JeannieLuv13]

For the longest time, I had it buried so deep in my subconsious, I wasn't consciously aware of it.

Video Games: I have played them all my life, which I have used as a coping mechanism.  I played Final Fantasy XI, an MMO RPG, for a year where I played a Mithra, an all female cat girl race.  I roleplayed with another player where we were lesbian lovers.  It was fun.  Since then, I have actively sought games where you had the option to customize a female character and imagine it was me.

Now, almost 1 year transitioning, I don't have to pretend.  Video Games aren't going anywhere though, I just have less of a need to play cuztomized female "avatar" and to avoid playing games with male protagonists.  I just got into the Yakuza series with Yakuza 0, a new game in the series set before the first.  I am in the middle of the remake of the first game.  I don't think I could have appreciated them before, glad I can now though.

[Lady Sarah]

I can recall constantly having to act aggressively in order to make people think I was a normal male. Any time I let my guard down, I was called a number of terms regarding homosexuality. Then, I'd wind up in fights.

The relief came when I started transitioning, and no longer had to act tough. However, it was difficult to unlearn those behaviors, having had to do that since I started school.

[Kylo]

Like you, I had no desire to kill myself. If I had I'd have done it a long time ago. Instead I seemed to be living life out of defiance. I was doing things out of defiance and with a sense of sarcasm. I hated life and people in general, but I learned how it all worked and played the game. It was incredibly boring and unfulfilling, to be honest, living as an actor in my skin that way. But it was a game I played to keep myself interested in breathing.

I was also "recovering" from a broken home and dealing with fending for myself so that also kept the dysphoria on the back seat for some time.

I think I might have got too bored with life if I hadn't met certain people along the way. If there was one thing that made me forget about the condition for a while, it was my second relationship. It was the first time I'd experienced returned affection and lust, instead of a relationship I wasn't all that interested in, or being interested in people who weren't interested in me, or vice versa. It was amazing for a few years and I was able to think about him instead of myself and keep the horrors away. They came back though eventually. I had to develop a sort of split in my mind in order to deal with a sexual relationship. Because ultimately, it was always difficult for me to get my mind involved after decades of dissociation. How can it not be hard to engage when you hate your own body.

I did just live for the moment. I still do. I don't enjoy precarious situations but always find myself in them, stability never came easy. It's been incredibly hard to accept that I am a real person, with a real life, on a fundamental level because since I was a child I was trying not to think about any of it. I hated my life and how uncomfortable every single situation felt. When eventually I learned how not to be self-destructive, all I did was divert attention onto goals and challenges instead of on figuring out who I was properly. I was always "looking away" from the mirror, literally and figuratively. As such I've never had a complete grip on life and on myself, only partially, on the goals and the travelling and the doing of things... with no thought to where it was all actually leading in the big picture. I had already decided as a kid I wasn't going to be like the others, I was not going to have a family, or kids, or a typical humdrum life. I don't think that was a choice, tbh. I couldn't have the average life. I'd fail at it so hard it wouldn't even be funny. But at the same time I wondered where these relationships were really going. If they weren't going to end in the usual sort of way, maybe I was just depriving other people of the sort of life they'd actually want, they just didn't know it. I'm starting to think that way now. Maybe I'd just be better off alone.

It's only now that I'm being forced to look in the mirror finally. And I have no idea what I'm going to see there tomorrow or the day after. I do know I'm capable of scaring myself with the sorts of things I am capable of, the depth of resentment and anger that lives in there somewhere that I used to know and that I don't want to disturb the sleep of. Can't even remember half the ways I managed to cope, the things I talked myself into. But I do know it was all done alone. Right from day one. I only told people any of it once I'd already made up my mind to go ahead and transition no matter what anyone said or did. All the leg work had been done. I don't know how any more. I just know it feels like it's been several lifetimes' worth.

[The Flying Lemur]

I tried a lot of things . . . wearing male or androgynous clothing, avoiding ever looking at my reflection, hanging out with guys and doing "guy things," as if I could absorb masculinity by osmosis, writing a lot of fiction with male viewpoint characters.  As a teenager I also went the eating disorder/self harm route.  I don't recommend it. 

[Deborah]

I did the typical things.  I joined the Army.  I earned all the macho badges I could until there were none left to earn in order to prove myself.  Then I turned to physical fitness and became a decent runner and worked my way up to running marathons, winning my age group in one of them.  In between episodes of exhausting myself running I drank too much nearly every day to escape reality and smoked a lot.  And I cross dressed, although not really that often and usually only after I dulled reality with alcohol.

Now I drink only very few times a year (last year only once at Christmas) and don't smoke at all.  The physical fitness aspect has stayed though.

Dysphoria sucks.


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[KathyLauren]

What have been your coping strategies in order to avoid transitioning or when you couldn't do it for a variety of reasons?
Denial.  Just that.

Did you consciously try to repress the feeling(s) and just didn't think about it?
I didn't consciously try to repress the feelings because I didn't recognize them.

How did you express your gender during that time? Dressing in secret? Dressing openly...?
Dressing in secret.

Were you out to friends & family and had their support?
No, no, no, nopity nope!

Did you convince yourself you wouldn't need to transition?
Yes.  Tried to, anyway.  It didn't work out quite like I thought it would.

Did you plan to transition eventually and were living for that moment or...?
Nope.  I planned to keep on denying it forever.  Dysphoria had other plans.

[BT04]

Pre-realization I was angry, thought of myself as ugly, and really didn't have any desire to be attractive. I did a lot of text-based roleplaying and have almost exclusively played male characters since I was... 14? I didn't go out of my way to hide anything, but I did exhibit a lot of odd behaviors, acted pretty inexplicably neurotic sometimes, and had was really interested in crossdressing "for the lulz".

Post-realization, I'm relying a lot on fitness to get me through the day. It's going to be a few months until I can move and finally come out from a safe distance from family - that way if things implode, I can just avoid coming back ever again. I've masculinized my wardrobe a little bit (it wasn't that fem to begin with), I've stopped carrying a purse, among a few other small things. The exercise makes me feel the best, though, and I'm seeing real gains, which is exciting.

Oh, and I still roleplay. In fact, I'm thinking about getting the names of the character I've been playing, the same one that made me realize I was FTM, tattooed on my arms.

[Bari Jo]

I tried to be as male and possible.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.  I kept my hair short.  I dressed in only dark colors.  I would work out, which usually ended hilariously for me since I would get attention as the small guy 'trying to be a man'.  I ate a lot.  I tried to stay hidden.  When I was alone my mind was free to fantasize I was a girl, and let's just say I became addicted to that.  This furthered my isolation, since it was the only time I was happy.  I also forced my brain into concentrating on learning new things and getting projects done rather than on the GD.  This earned me skills I use to this day on the job and life.

Bari Jo

[Julia1996]

I was as feminine as possible. I dressed in androgynous clothes and used make up and nail polish. It made me feel less hopeless and the fact I was often gendered as female also made me feel much better.

[Allison S]

I haven't changed much 5 months on hrt. Still trying to cope with apathy, melancholym.. well depression. Everything makes my skin crawl and I just want to jump out of it. Thinking about suicide is my only real escape. How can I ever reverse what testosterone did to me? All the pain and suffering I endured. I don't want to be the negative Nancy but I'm very defeated right now.

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