Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Hey everyone! Have you ever had dreams like this....

Last night I dreamed that after a very long string of therapy sessions lasting several years, I finally got my HRT letter. As I was driving to fill it, it was like I could not get any forward progress on the road. Finally, I got to the pharmacy and went in after barely getting the door open (seems it was stuck or I was weak). I was looking at the scripts as I walked to the counter happy as all get out. As I got there I looked up to see my ex-wife standing there. She snatched the scripts out of my hand, threw them in a shredder, slammed a large security screen down and in a really evil voice said "Start over". I then saw black. When I could see again, I was back at the therapist's office on day one! That's where it stopped and I woke up feeling like I had just gotten out of the shower. Weird!

PS-I am on HRT already, so it is not my mind telling me not to start. Whew!

Tell me I am not alone in this?

I had some weird dreams when transitioning.  To me, the dream you describe sounds like a version of the anxiety dream - you know, where you forget your school locker combination or forget to take the final exam in one of your classes, or you can't find a toilet...  I really doubt it was telling you to stop, but that's just my reading of it.  Are you doubting you should transition?
- Kate

No waaaaay! I'm on a roll and not slowing down. I have wanted this for 40 years. ;D

The school locker one made me think though!

I've had a few transition related dreams, but they're usually very depressing and allegorical, and tend to revolve around others' negative reactions to my desire to transition because I am surrounded by bigotry. Sometimes they involve people I know will hate me after I come out, other times, like in this case, they involve the people who support me 100% in waking life betraying me in some awful way. Here's the most recent example:

It started in a museum, one of those evolution of man displays, I was passing through it trying to get to one of my lectures. After I left the building I started wandering through this field that in real life is near my house. I have a duffel bag with me, it isn't very heavy but I know my real body is inside of it somehow, and I have to find a place where no one will see me in order to wake him up and do the switch. Then it gets to the depressing part: I see a group of boys who used to go to my school, only adults now, all riding those tiny bicycles gangster kids seem to like to ride-what's up with things things, anyway? Among them is my SO, dressed in a way he would never dress in real life and riding the same tiny bike he would never ride in real life, and as I creep around the back of the wall out of sight I hear this exchange:

"Being with [Zambie] is really weird. She's (note the incorrect pronoun usage) one of those-what is it-transgenders?"

"What's that like?"

"It's like being with a superhero only her secret identity is more terrifying."

The tiny bicycle gangsters laugh at this.

"That's so weird!"

So there I am, hiding behind the wall listening to the one person in the world I thought I could trust talk smack about me to a bunch of schoolyard apes, trying like hell to bring my "secret identity" in the duffel bag to life so I can escape. Then I wake up.

With dreams like these who needs nightmares, huh? :(

It's always hard to interpret dreams, I find. Mainly because a large part of them depend on the individual's associations with the elements of their dreams. And one person seeing something in a dream may feel entirely differently about it than someone else seeing the same thing.

For example, my reading of it would indicate that the fact that it was your ex-wife, a person embodying something you had in the past, and the fact that you were struggling to open the pharmacy door, or make progress on the road... and the words "Start Over"... well, if it were me who had that dream, I would attribute it to my mind telling me that I needed to do literally that. Start over. Accept that my life is now on the road I want it to take, and to try and experience the world from that basis. Day one all over again in the position you now want to be, you know? A very real chance to "start over", and forge your path the way you want to. Not as someone wanting to be themselves, but as someone actively being that.

I think there are positives as well as negatives that can be taken from such things, and it's largely a matter of perspective. :) The mind is a funny place, and uses what it knows to try and construct scenarios of what it wants us to know.

Funny thing about the whole dream is it couldn't be further from what is really happening. I mean I have actually started my new life and am very happy about it. I do not lack esteem, could care less if I Pass, don't care at all what people think. I have notified those that needed to be, lost people, gained people and forged a great support network. My therapist saw on day one that I had prepared for several years and had taken all of the important, logical steps available, researched meds and procedures and prepared for life after. She said I did not leave her very much to do at all. I still had to wait forever on the HRT letter because of WPATH care standards, but things are smooth now. The subconscious mind is a doozy isn't it?

I always slept dreamless sleep or at least recall dreamless sleep. Now I dream every night and recall (some?) of them. Changes in REM patterns are known under hormonal change during menopause.

My neuroscience colleagues are getting interested, finally, in doing some preliminary studies on gender related  neurological changes in trans*people.  Then again I'm the first they have met (so they think). I'm sort of pleased it has piqued interest.

But that has been a journey in its self ::)

Cindy, I love the "so they think" part. (giggles)