How do/did you cope?

[CharlieTrance]

When you realized you were in the wrong body, how did you cope? I'm just curious as I was cutting for a while when I was in denial. I stopped but I've been having urges again and I really don't want to get into the habbit.

[lightvi]

I cut for a while too but I stopped because I was addicted and it wasn't even helping anymore. I still get urges sometimes too especially when something bad happens I just want to go home and feel that release, I'm easily triggered too. It's not something I'm proud of and I try to hide the scars, I even tried scar cream stuff but it didn't help :/.

I try to fill in the unhealthy releases with healthy ones though, like exercise and music . It's like being a vampire and switching from blood to tomato juice, it's not the same but it keeps the urges down hehe. Doing something you really enjoy helps take your mind off it too.

[Darner]

I had the counter-effect. I was a compulsive eater during my youth when I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me. But when I realized, it finally let me free, I understood everything then.

[jamied]

I tried exercising like crazy - lost 40 pounds in a month.  That didn't help.  Started cutting myself.  That didn't help.  Twice tried (unsuccessfully, thank goodness) to commit suicide.  That didn't help.  What did?  Therapy, therapy, and more therapy was the answer for me; really it only took three months to help me acknowledge, accept and act on making myself happy and to stop living a lie.   

xoxo

Jamie

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

[pebbles]

Cutting Myself (#1 my body is a complete mess of scar tissue)
Making myself Sick (#2 I have a swallowing problem now, dysphagia and have to eat very slowly)
Obsessive excersize
Starving myself/malnurishing myself
Plucking out my facial hair for upto 6 hours at a time.
Growing my hair long.
Imagining I was female in my mind.
Wearing baggy clothes and forgetting about my body avoiding photographs and mirrors.
Eventually removing my facial hair not intending to transition.

didn't help I still tried to kill myself twice.

[Robert Scott]

I was not kind to myself....

I became a compulsive eater .... I would pick and choose whether or not I took my medication - I am diabetic so I have to take it ... I would eat anything and everything ... I wore baggy clothes ... I avoided social scene and now I have a bit of social anxiety

I am new to this all...I only have accepted myself recently ... but it has made a dramatic change.  My doctor noticed immediately ... reduced my antidepressents & instead of increasing my medicine because my numbers are way out of wack ... she said let's see how it goes .. I think things are going to change without medication.

[Rock_chick]

There were a lot of things I did that helped me cope...but the absolute worst thing i did was use my relationship with my ex as a crutch. I couldn't leave, not because i was scared of being on my own, but because i didn't want to face up to all the TS stuff. I hurt her, I hurt myself and I'm definitely not proud of myself.

[Nero]

Drugs, sex, alcohol, the usual. I also had long periods where I would scarcely ever see a human being and my phone would stay off the hook. As a kid, I also did the starving and excessive exercise bit. The sad part is that as a 'female', that was considered normal.
Most of this was before I faced the fact I was trans though. When I did face it, I had a few bad days, but also a beautiful hope for life I had never experienced before.

[Dominick_81]

When I was younger my mom and everyone thought it was just a phase that I wanted to be a boy. But I knew it wasn't and when I was getting older, like around, 12, 13 years old I put myself in denial.  I didn't want my family and friends to know that this was how I felt and I didn't want to get picked on in school.

I also cut myself. I'm already addicted. Been cutting for over 10 years. But I didn't start cutting myself over being trans, I was cutting myself over other stuff. But my situation is getting much more frustrating now that I'm out of denial and that my mom and grandmother know, and I don't have their support. So cutting can come into play and I'm trying to stop too.

[Nicky]

I didn't cope. I was depressed, I often felt more dead than alive. I grew my hair long, wore makeup, shaved my legs, avoided male formal wear as I just could not bring myself to wear it. One day at work my manager told me to buy some shirts. That was a horrible day. I didn't do it. My only coping mechanism that helped me survive was escapism. I escaped into computer games and books. But that was only existing, not living.

I never attempted suicide but I definitely thought about it.

I discovered that progress towards what you really want makes all the difference. If I hit a wall I crashed and burned.

[Dennis]

I had the most awful time before I transitioned. I woke up every day and actively tried not to kill myself. I also recall staying up all night posting and reposting on a thread where one of our members was threatening to kill himself. It's just plain horrible. But you know, those messages going out to gay teens these days "it does get better" also apply to us. It does get better.

I'm 5 years post transition. I have all kinds of body image issues  that don't make it ideal. But I'm a guy and everyone accepts me as a guy, so that makes it all good. It WILL get better. And I'm so glad I kept procrastinating on the killing myself. That's what I kept telling myself every day. Put it off till tomorrow, see if you can handle today. It was agonizing and I never want to go through that again, but you can get through it.

Hang in, and put your head down and bust through those walls. You can do it and it does get better.

Dennis

[lightvi]

I tried exercising like crazy - lost 40 pounds in a month.  That didn't help.  Started cutting myself.  That didn't help.  Twice tried (unsuccessfully, thank goodness) to commit suicide.  That didn't help.  What did?  Therapy, therapy, and more therapy was the answer for me; really it only took three months to help me acknowledge, accept and act on making myself happy and to stop living a lie.   

xoxo

Jamie

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

I love your name, my best friend is named Jamie Your quote is really awesome too did you write it?

[lovelove]

i cut for a while and then overdosed. when id recovered in hospital i realised i had too do something about it

[marissak]

I realized it when I was 3-4 years old. I was living in a country which is absolutely hatefully intolerant of all gender variant people. When I was 5, I saw trans people stripped and beaten, bleeding and bruised, and then taken away by the cops for obscenity and for being a "nuisance to society". I realized early on that I should never talk with anyone about not feeling right with being a boy.

[justmeinoz]

I stopped being severely depressed.

  I guess I said something to myself like like "Thank the Goddess ,that is what has been keeping me depressed for the last 40+ years, now I can actually do something about it," and started to live in a whole new world.

[receiptgong]

I'm actually coping with life a lot better now, I used to do a lot of drugs and not eat anything all day until my stomach hurt so much that I couldn't stand it. Used to have really bad depression because I just didn't know what I wanted, it felt like everything I had ever done was because of other people and outside influences. I still isolate myself from the world though which will probably continue for a long time but at least im doing better than I was.

it's just that now that i know why i do all the weird things i do i just feel extremely frustrated and angry when I realize what I'm doing. but its a step in the right direction

[mymaleshadow]

Honestly I think we had a strange outlet for pent up problems.  We were abused growing up in pretty much every way; mentally, physically, sexually, etc.  Discovering that we were bisexual made it worse cause our family was super religious and we honestly thought "omg God will hate us now".  The desire to be a man was overwhelming but I didn't have a name for it I just was one, I hated being female and it was one of the reasons that our mother would drag us around by our hair and slap us around, calling us filthy names because of the fact that we dressed like a guy, carried a wallet like a guy, refused to do our makeup or our hair.  What pisses me off is that she broke us down into using a purse for years, but we eventually did go back to carrying a wallet again.

I dealt with it as a teenager by getting into fights at school over every little thing.  Typically I took on older guys and kept hitting them until they stopped moving.  I was extremely violent... but that was all I'd ever known at that point.

Danni (my host personality) dealt with it by complete withdrawal from reality.  For the majority of the part he refused to be in front and handle what was happening.  When he was out, he was always off in his own head.  In books.  Refused to socialize.

We both also starved ourselves a lot.

As we got to be around 20, we began merging and exchanging horrifying memories.  It on top of everything else turned us toward suicide attempts and starving and physical and verbal confrontations.

Now... we deal with it by venting.  By verbally arguing with other people.  Our friends that we do this to who know what we are are generally aware of this problem and can usually conclude that either we haven't eaten (we get very moody and hostile if we don't eat and since we still tend to starve ourselves its a problem) or that we're upset right now over all this crap and lashing out.

[spacial]

To be quite honest, I didn't and haven't.

I'm an actor, playing a part. I have mood swings, generally associated with when I feel I may have been caught out. I regularly get paranoid. I am completely isolated, though thankfully, I've gotten past the stage of being lonely. But probably the most uncomfortble of all, I get periods when my guts tie up in a sort of major knot, my head feels like its going to explode and I want to damage something.

Apart from that, it's not too bad.

[Lacey Lynne]

By teetering on the brink of insanity for decades.  Coping?  No.  Hiding?  Yes.  Succeeding?  No. 

God, I was a veritable train wreck.  Buried myself in academics.  Yeah, alright, fine:  I succeeded with that.  Offered to skip 10th and 11th grade and do college in my early teens at a huge midwestern university on their dime.  Didn't do it.  All the military academies tried to recruit me.  Heck with 'em.  Top college gave me a scholarship and placed me in their top track to study theoretical astrophysics.  Went but bagged it after a year.  After that, offered honors engineering independent-study program by the state university in my native state.  Didn't do it.  Thereafter made The Dean's List.  Like, big deal ... didn't give a damn ... dropped out.  After that, having a profound death wish, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corp and got my ass royally kicked at Parris Island.  Right after bootcamp, they wanted to send my sorry ass to Officers' Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia because I hammered all of their tests and because of my academic record.  Told them I was a conscientious objector.  Bet I was the only private to ever get reamed out by the commanding general of Parris Island.  Thought he was gonna send my ass to the brig.  They discharged me.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  I pissed away any number of potentially dazzling and highly-paying careers ... all to spend my life in fifth-rate jobs working for dog-crap wages.  I was one sad sack if ever there was one ... a pathetic popped puppy ... for sure.

Relationships?  Girls?  Ha!  Yeah, right.  Check it out ... High school:  No dates.  Four-and-a-half years of college:  No dates.  Lonely?  Beyond all measure.  Also, horny as hell all the time back then with no outlet for it.  Like "True Selves" says, everything about the dating scene and doing "the deed" felt wrong.  I was in the wrong body and bloody well knew it. 

I knew I was transsexual from an early age but did anything and everything to deny it ... suppressed it ... repressed it, and got depressed by it.  Suicide?  Thought about it every single day.  Too chicken-->-bleeped-<- to actually do it. 

No direction.  No goals.  No ambition.  No accomplishment.  No nuthin' ... and all the potential in the world.  My whole life basically passed me by, or should I say, I let it pass by. 

FINALLY faced myself in late-middle age.  Came out to my wife.  Came out to my so-called family.  Came out to the few friends I had left.  Wife INSISTED I seek gender counseling.  Arrested at a major mall for nearly going postal there ... 1.5 months before I started HRT.  That fine day, my ass was an allegorical attometer from doing hard time.  Only the cops' last-minute eleemosynary largesse of spirit spared my butt from going to the can.

All true.  All horrific.  Pathetic enough for you?

If you're young and in denial, use me as an example of what NOT to do.  Get counseling.  Get treated.  Get happy.

[Cindy]

Made a plan to escape. Worked like hell to get to Uni, get a degree, get a job, emigrate to were I thought I would be accepted. DEPRESSION. Booze, work.

Finally break the depression with medication and will power. Give up the joke of pretending to be male. Start to transition. Keep going.

I've waited 57yrs to be happy. I knew when I was a teen that I'm  female, I put it off. OK in 'those days' it was more difficult. Now a days no excuses, get counselling. Live your life, and glory in it. There is nothing wrong with you, you are a normal young person who needs a bit of help. Don't wait 57yrs to be happy, do it now.
It might seem a big step but it's just a step.
And we are here for you

Cindy