Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Hi guys!

So I've finally decided to come back to this forum for some help since I can't seem to figure this out on my own. So I've been on hormones for 4 months now and have been living full time for about 6 months. The funny thing is I've had the most support I could dream of having. My parents are supportive, my friends are supportive, my high school is helping me out with any issues I'm having, I'm allowed to use the female bathroom, everything is amazing really. I also seem to pass since I've never had any issues while being female and have received some male attention too, I've had classroom discussions talking about how I look 100% female and shouldn't be treated any differently to a cisgender woman. With all this, I'm sure all of you must be thinking, What's wrong Mrs. I've got everything but I'm still not happy? And frankly I don't know. I find myself a lot of the time doubting whether I'm supposed to be female even though I know I'm a girl on the inside, and I don't know why part of my brain is still trying to convince me out of it. I've seriously been feeling so depressed with everything, every time I get a complement I think I'm fake and they're complementing fake beauty, everyone around me treats me like a girl and for some reason that seems to be bothering me and I don't know why. I've told myself maybe it's  because I'm still not used to be treated like a girl and this is why I'm experiencing this discomfort. Also last year, I was sort of out as a gay male and was enjoying being out of the norm, not doing what everybody else was doing. It felt sort of nice to be challenging gender stereotypes by being a feminine man (ugh that word still brings me discomfort) yet now as a transgender girl who looks cisgender, I'm super girly and feel sooo guilty about being feminine. My brain doesn't seem to like the fact that I'm no longer challenging any gender stereotypes by looking like a girl and acting like one. I no longer feel like I'm standing up against anything. Everything just feels strange and not how I expected it to be. I thought I would feel free as a girl yet I still feel trapped by constant femininity and I don't know why. I lived as a feminine man and I hated it, I think back to it and I feel gross about it, especially if I were made to live that life again. Yet part of my brain keeps telling me I should feel bad about being a girl and should go back to that, this doubt is just killing me and I don't know what to do so any help would be appreciated GREATLY  :)

I have to start getting ready for work soon so this may be a bit short. HRT can greatly reduce the dysphoria/transgender feeling that you have had in the past. Without those feelings, you now feel as a CIS person would feel and you have lost the drive that was once forcing you to become feminine. Without those feelings, the doubt that was buried has now come to the surface and you are questioning if you are really a woman. Others at this point have felt they were cured, went off HRT only to have the old feeling return with even more force.

You need to always keep in the back of your mind what you used to feel like and compare it with how you feel free of the discomfort of the past. You should also be discussing this with your therapist or you may find yourself going through several cycles of transitioning and detransitioning before you learn your lesson.

Most don't have this issue but if you are on the site long enough, you will find others facing the same issue.

Yo girl! i can relate a lot to what you are saying. Doubts can drive anyone mad, and to me they have. We may differ on a lot, i am more or less bisexual and when i was your age, 17, i was presenting as a masculine straight manly man. In high school in grade 11 and 12 my trade mark look was my chinstrap beard WITH a goatee (i havent had any real facial hair on my face since 2013, about 7 or 8 months before i went full time the first time). Whereas i tried to be the nexts mans man, you are at a young age being true to yourself. That is commendable!, and tho i did cross dress here and there before my 20ths birthday and had lots of wishing of being a girl for many many many years before my 2014 coming out, i still played the card of man. So you can imagine how life on May 12 2014 changed DRAMAICALLY when i went from a mans man the day before to being publically girly, or as girly as i could be. Massive cultrue shock. I breifelly stopped from end of august to mid october in 2014 but quickly relized why i had to redo it and lived as a woman, or more andro-ish when at a new job from then on until april of this year. What stopped me? doubts, they killed me. So i have been jumping from he-man, where i dont wana be but feel i am somewhat obligated to be to being more in the middle and playing it safe and still being content with myself, adro/fem-boy/girl spirit in a boyish body, where i still take hrt as i despise testosterone and be a girl basiaclly and present feminine and womanly while not going all out on a transtion (name changes, genatil correctment surgery,ect) to being and admitting i am a girl and need the change and start taking it more seriously. Lately these days i have been drifting back to being a girl again, the man brings me great pain, the middle is fun but my heart knows where it wants to be and that is girl! if i am not dealing with doubts i feel so amazing as a girl that i never wana leave. Hence which is why i myself am probably going to re-start. Sorry that was a long rant about me, but as to you are you, and i have seen photos you have posted here a while back and you are a beautiful young lady :), and you may just have to test the waters, do you feel better now then you did a year ago? do you wana be more in the middle instead? do you wish to continue on as a girl ? no matter your choice we are all here for you :)

I guess I can relate, went from butch lesbian to kind of unremarkable guy. It took me a while to mentally adjust. Just give it time. And there are other ways you can push back against the dominant paradigm without being a personal exemplar. I got my work to cover hormones in the health insurance plan, so I feel good about that. You've done a lot of activism at your school. So you actually are defying stereotypes every day.

You have to get used to the idea of yourself as a girl. It will come.

You may be suffering from impostor syndrome, also known as I don't deserve this syndrome.  There is a certain amount of guilt that goes with having it easy compared to all the hard luck stories you see around here and on the news.

Having to dismantle the life of a 50 year old alpha male in order to live as my real self has been anything but easy, but I can relate to you in one way, and this may help:

When I first graduated law school, passed the bar exam, and started practicing law, everyone in the courtrooms was super nice, and everything seemed super easy --especially after slogging my way through three years of law school in which two thirds of my entering class flunked out, and passing on the first try a bar examination in which 56 percent of the takers failed.

For that first year or so of practicing law, I suffered from a bad case of impostor syndrome.  I kept waiting for someone to come up, say there had been a mistake, and ask me to hand over my bar card.

Now that I am living part time as a female, I start to get those same feelings again whenever folks treat me as female -- and of course there is the fear that I will get thrown out of a women's restroom.

So that may be what is going on.  You may want to talk to your gender therapist about it.