Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I'm tired. I've made an evaluation of this year, and let's be honest. The therapy did not help at all and only destroyed my life.

How was my therapy:There was not. After the first two or three sessions of stablishing questions, they made clear that their goals were:

- Reduce my anxiety levels and make me "stable" by filling me with antidepressants.

- Make me do RLE before giving me HRT



1. My diagnosis was never based on the therapy itself. I was never asked again about how I felt, when did it started, all kind of questions, debate... In fact that route showed me as stagnant. They did not believe me.

2. My Diagnosis was purely based in my Real Life Experience. I was only diagnosed as a positive case when I started altering my image, until I finally dressed female outside.


For me, RLE or their gatekeeping consisted of the following stages.

1. Coming out to family, friends and workplace
2. Progressive adaptation of my daily presentation
3. Adopt female presentation at every aspect of my life.


Maybe I was a complete idiot. Maybe I should have lied to them. Because this is what I was expecting and happened:

- My thoughts on the worst days of fear were that I would lose my family, my work and my home. And I would be alone forever. Everything happened in that exact order. In the moment I disclosed. My original plan was to keep it completely hidden until the change was done, including FFS and name changes. At least hidden from work and family. My plan was to live a double life that would have kept my income and family unharmed.

Following the therapist requests to convince them to give me HRT had the following consequences.

1. Coming out to my family broke my family relationship and forced me to abandon them.
2. Coming out at work earned me enemies that made my life miserable and depressing.
3. RLE and in the end full female presentation at work put so much stress and strain on my day to day work, including mobbing and trans phobic attacks, that caused me to lose my work.

In the end, I started with depression, I ended with even worse depression. I have no family, no love relationship, and now I don't even have a job. I fully believe that if I just had dressed for the appointments and when doing my life, and I had never disclosed my transition at work, I still would keep my job. By March I had finally made my choice and attained a clear and happy head that was ok accepting the female me. But mixing this with my work and family life completely destroyed it.

Maybe it was my fault. I was so obsessed with attaining the goals and transitioning that damaged my life by letting it fully collide with my life. Being visibly trans at work, and transitioning at the workplace completely killed my work life and made it harder.



Now I ask myself, What has transition given me? A half baked in the middle androgynous look, And depression. I lost the dysphoric depression, but I gained crippling work related depression and workplace enemies to the point where I could not keep my job and enemies, and loneliness. Also a family that will blame me.

What has transition taken away from me? My family, my work, my hopes of having a normal life, any chance of ever having a partner, and very soon my home and indepence.

What should have done: Keep transition and my changes completely separated from work and family until it was done, including my new identity and name. Disclose only when the hardest part would be done and then start RLE with the biggest changes already done, when it would have been impossible to look male.


Weighting the up and downs, I'm not sure I want to continue. Today the shrink did not seem to understand that the fact of coming out at work had costed me my work., while she handed me the referral for the endo.

Hi there, I am truly sorry for all the losses of your life. I too went through a similar experience. When I was close to going full time I told my employer and the next day I was fired. I talked to my family and many of them I still have not talked to in the last 20 or so years now including my own parents. They would be like strangers now and we probably wouldn't have much to talk about.

Despite that I persevered. I'm just not a quitter. I was scared ill freely admit it. I had no money I had spent it all on FFS so I bought work suits from the goodwill store. I had the doors slammed on me many times. A few people grilled me ridiculously at an interview and then got up and alkyd out of the room without even the courtesy of saying thanks for coming in.

I am still here though. It was rough I know. So I had a name change and a new drivers license, big whoop. Well it was a big deal to me at the time, but looking back, I had no money, I was unemployed for about 5 months.

When I finally got my first job as a woman it was about half the pay of what I had before RLE. Despite all of that though, I managed to compete my transition, make new friends, get on with my life, and finally out earn what I had before RLE.

The whole point of the RLE in my point of view is the test of resolve. If you are willing to go through all the trials and tribulations, and come out whole I'm willing to bet that I am one of the rare ones to be honest. This process is hard, mainly due to society's rejection of us, but it's not impossible.

im sorry you have been going through to much. i also do not really agree with pushing/making someone go into the RLE before they are ready and without hormones. it seems a little cruel. but if you still want to transition do it on your terms and move at a speed your comfortable with. and as far as therapist goes. it can take a while to find one thats the right fit for you. remember although your trans they are helping you with life and aspects of your life. they relly dont have to be a trans specialist to help you learn to deal with life in good ways. they can always read up on trans stuff or go to CEUs that teach them, one of my most awesome therapist had never really had interactions with one of us before but she helped me in life so much

I'm sorry to hear that things have gone that way for you, but if you want to get through this, you need to stop focusing on where you've been and focus on where you're going, either way.  Having my father reject me was painful enough, i cannot imagine what its like to lose almost everything over this.   I can tell you from personal experience, if GD was hurting you badly before, if you let it go, its gonna get worse, alot worse if you dont do ~something~.
     You might be able to mask it with pills, but you better ask yourself, will you ever truly be happy on just pills from a doctor? Will that be enough to get on with your life and be happy?   My personal approach is purely cavalier.   Screw anyone that doesn't want to understand or is an ->-bleeped-<-, they can all piss off.  In my personal experience, the people who truly love and care about you, with love and care about no matter almost anything.
          I've only had two psychiatrists in my life.  The first Dr. Ying Chang in northern new jersey was a complete pharma pill shill.  My second and most recent was one i saw via tele-psychiatry since thats all we have within 2-3 hours of driving from here. Dr. Alexander Zouev, it was his last day doing tele-psychiatry for the clinic i go to, and he had a serious attitude.  I saw him for only 10 minutes, in that time he outright dismissed my GD and practically dismissed the idea of it alltogether and insinuated i was a drug seeking pill junky.   At the end of the session he sent me packing with valium and celexa, both which turned out real bad for me.(they are both physically addictive too, and valium is highly psychologically addictive lol.) Both of those Psychiatrists should be avoided like the plague.

My point is though, mental health services can be pretty hit or miss. And i think alot of people can attest to having switched both therapists and psychiatrists multiple times to find a right fit. 

I do have to partly agree with some of the gate keeping.  You would have had to deal with coming out and transitioning at work sooner or later. (hormones and laser and surgery would not have allowed you to hide it for long)  For some who are just too terrified to come out, the gate keeping could even be beneficial, where they might otherwise never come out and hurt themselves.  The other thing too is this.  You are going to be stuck part way for a long time, so in some ways its a test of how far are you willing to go.
             Thats a question you are seriously going to have to ask yourself because its going to be hard.  How far are you willing to go?   I can tell you sitting here today, at this very moment, that if i had to murder someone to transition or launch nuclear weapons, start WW3, whatever, horrific thing you could come up with, id do it or die trying.   And if I found out that i could never complete my transition(different for everyone, But for me this means HRT, Hair Removal, Minor FFS, clothes and Bottom Surgery, aswell as being passable after that. i plan for more but everything beyond what i listed is a bonus really)   But again if I knew i couldnt complete it, i would most certainly either outright kill myself or more likely a slow death from drug use while holding out and hoping for a miracle.
             To me this is purely a matter of survival and the kid gloves have to come off.   I'll plain and simple do anything i have to, to get to where i need to be or die trying to get there. Coming out and transitioning has changed my life in positive and negative ways(although,  i think things have gone far better for me than most, i live in a town with 50 people and come tourist season next year there will be some 500k new people every week, and i drive a cab). Simply transitioning though, no matter the stage im at has given me hope for the future and if you truly want it, i truly want you to feel that same hope with your own transition)

I truly hope some of this puts things in perspective for you, or helps you in some way.   We all navigate a hard road.  Here at susans we navigate it together :)

I've gone out in guy / andro mode today. Fely quite sad, but I can't pinpoint the cause. Seeing me in my old clothes was painful, but my face being slighlty  different was a bit reasuring.

In the end, I was invisible again. Not a single look on me, except from maybe a few women. Worst part was paying to the cashiers who have gotten accustomed to seein me in girl presentation.

Anyways, I need new sport bras. I've outgrown the ones I bought in Month one. And I need a hat or something. It's too cold. I though my male clothing would be slightly hotter than the few female clothing I have, but not a lot more.

Thank you for sharing your story. You have my great sympathy.

In my opinion, "coming out" to family and work are un-necessary and frequently cause more harm than good.  I have never had any counseling for gender dysphoria.  No one claims to be able to "cure" it so all they can do is manage some sort of transition.  As your experience has shown they sometimes manage it poorly.

I know of at least two transwomen who have done "the works" including SRS and within a decade have reverted to male presentation to keep a relationship with wife and kids.

I once heard a young MTF read the letter she had written to give to her employer at the behest of her counselor.  Any one with a lick of sense could tell it was severely career limiting, and could lead to immediate job loss.  She dressed well, if a a few decades behind the times, and looked female.  She is now unemployed.  I think what her counselor demanded is unconscionable.

Hormones are available many places through informed consent.  If you are really transsexual learning to look and act female should not require much coaching. If you really want SRS after a few years of HRT and living as a woman it shouldn't take many visits to get a letter.  Many SRS surgeons have a psychiatrist standing by to help with a second letter if needed.

If you feel your counselor has done you wrong, I agree with that.  In my opinion there are entirely too many people advising coming out and counseling, when it can be very counter productive.

Randi