Firstly I do not know if these are common transgendered dreams and secondly I do not know how to combat them.
They are making me ill and, after awakening from some of them, I am confused as to my own identity.
Up until recently, I dreamed as Gregori, the man. In my dreams I have the appearance that I believe is "mine" and I am most certainly male.
I assume I still have dreams where I am male but they are not what I awaken to now. I awaken physically ill and confused from them.
The worst are where I am, as me, the man, attending whatever business it is, from making love to walking in the streets, to doing anything any normal man would do. I look down to realize I am a woman and I have been deluding myself all along with the belief I am male.
This always results in me spending the rest of the dream hiding myself so nobody can see the "truth" or me quietly taking my leave, trying to maintain what shreds of dignity I have left. I always feel shame, humiliation, and like my illusion of myself has just been shattered. In these dreams I know everyone is going to leave me and ridicule me.
This one literally makes me sick to my stomach.
Here is the bad dream du jour for the past week: I am me, Gregori, but I am female. Completely. Gregori is female. There is no negative connotations to this. I awake confused, disoriented, sometimes fully believing I am female. I look down and, of course, this is reinforced by my sense of sight. There is another aspect to some of this lot of dreams: I am not Gregori. I am my female name.
Another dreamscape is that I am as I am... Gregori, the transgendered man. This one is not as common as the ones I mentioned above. I go about whatever tasks face me, whatever I have to do with no joy, just getting what I need to do done. I feel resigned, exhausted, and spend most of those dreams suicidal. I awake from those ones with a sigh, look down, and, of course, I realize that my nightmare was truth.
What I ask is:
1) are these dreams common transgendered dreams?
2) if they are, how does one cope with them? They are doing me much damage.
I have always believed that dreams are supposed to help the mind cope, to help the mind process information. These, especially the one about looking down and seeing I am female, just seem like torture to me. The one where I am, myself, female does not seem to have a point to it either that I can ascertain. I do understand why dreaming that I am exactly what I am could be my mind trying to process.
Hello Gregori.
This meant as a comment more than advice as to be honest I don't think that I'm in a position to offer it :) Personally I have never experience any dreams that dealt with my TS'ism or anything remotely like this, but I'm sure that others have. It would be interesting to see if there are others out there in our community who have had such dreams and how they dealt with them.
Steph
Hello Gregori.
I had TS related nightmares as a child and then through puberty. But have yet to experience dreams of the sort you describe. Currently, my dreams are not TS related.
There is one thing about my dreams that I'm bothered about.
I'm male in my dreams, but it would seem that whenever the dream involves chaos of some kind, I appear as a man, but not as "me". I'll be fighting for my life, or in the middle of a war or something, and I look down and notice that I'm a tall thin guy. I finish saving the world, and then I wake up disenchanted to say the least.
Me: What is the meaning of this? Who was that waif? And why was he posing as me?
Subconscious: I'm sorry sir, we had to send you to avert a disaster. We had to revert to a "default" male
body. There wasn't time to...er, "flesh" you out, or to see to some of the...uh, finer points
of your appearance.
Me: See to it that doesn't happen again. If I'm going to save the world, I want it to be me doing it.
Other than that, I don't know, Gregori. I don't know how to stop these types of dreams.
I wish I had some advice to offer. Hopefully others here can help.
In the meantime, know that you are fortunate to see yourself in your dreams.
In all of my best dreams, I'm wearing a default male body.
Nero
I don't know what kinds of dreams are common but mine have ranged from hiding my true self and being seen as male, all the way to full and total passing. In almost all of them though I have the same mind/body mismatch as in real life.
I always dream as a male.
Whether it's simply a more masculinized version of this body, or a completely different male body, I'm always male.
Sometimes however, I appear male, but I am in fact hermaphroditic in the dreams. That tends to happen when I have sexual based dreams, which are decidedly rare. I have male genitalia but also have a vagina. No clitoris or anything else, just a "hole" with the male parts above it.
Sometimes I also have nightmares where I am entirely female in body. Always I am stressed, upset, depressed, and even violent. It's like a harsher, magnified version of how I feel in my female body, only in those dreams I express it externally. All it is is self expression.
In my opinion, some of those dreams are simply your subconscious confusion with your own identity - be it physical or mental, even both. I think you don't quite know where you stand with yourself - And that is why you dream as being completely consumed by that which you abhor -- Being female.
By the way - These are my OBSERVATIONS and I'm not accusing or assuming anything about you. I don't know you, but I do know a tiny fraction about you and I know what you've told me here. So... Yeah.
I think all of us who are trans-gendered have had dreams at some point or another encompassing the issue. It's hurtful, wonderful, frightening, odd, confusing, and new for all of us. That's bound to create some kind of reverberations in the psyche.
Quote from: Tinkerbell on August 12, 2006, 02:57:44 AM
I've had a few of those dreams. In most of them, I am female and have no shoes (I don't know what this means but it is always the same); everytime I am female in my dreams I have no shoes or socks; Sometimes I'd dream that I have only one shoe, and I'm desperately looking for the other one...I know it is weird!
That's because you're Cinderella! ;)
Nero
I'm always me in my dreams. Thus, I am always a man. There is no optimal man presented; it's always just me, how I look now, how I present myself. I have female sex organs in most of my dreams, but that's probably because that's what I'm used to, and the vast majority of my dreams are not of a sexual nature, probably due to my lack of experience in that area.
I have not, however, dreamt that I was entirely female, like in another body. In all my dreams (at least those I can remember), I'm in the same body I inhabit while waking. It's not a male body, but it's as close as I can get without surgery. The only dreams I have that bother me involve my having any sort of sexual contact with another man... it disgusts me, but in the dreams, I'm usually disgusted as well.
Sorry I can't be of more help, but just because I don't have those dreams, Gregori, doesn't mean others don't. Decidedly, I'm a bit strange and unusual. But I've accepted that, and I'm moving on 8)
Rafe
I used to have these kinds of dreams, too, but when I started to transition, told my parents and family, etc., they gradually disappeared. Your dreams are probably related to the stress and anxiety you're going through. Mine were most prevalent when I hadn't told my family yet and hadn't started to transition.
Mostly I dream myself as asexual -- I'm just there, doing whatever.
Sometimes, though, in the past, I dreamt I was female, with all the bits. Those dreams would make me so happy. But as I was still in denial, I'd just keep them to myself (heaven forbid if anybody found out!)
Lately, though, as I progress through HRT I find myself more and more dreaming of myself as female. As I chip away the artificial male persona, the sense that I'm female in my dreams tends to grow and grow. I wonder if, as I come to the end of transition, I'll return to dreaming as asexual, or will the sense still be there that, whatever I'm dreaming, I'm now a woman?
But, Gregori, these dreams make me happy, so there is not a lot of coping for me. I don't want to get up and, if time allows, will snooze a bit longer to savor the feeling.
Can you come to see yourself as a male who just happens to have female bits? There are ways to learn lucid dreaming. Perhaps you could do that, and take control of the dream at some point and change it however you wish. That might relieve some of the anxiety.
I wish I could be of more help, Gregori;
Karen
BTW, thanks for posing the question. It made me do a little introspection on my recent dreams. Now I have something to tell my therapist when next we meet!
For my life up until my change, I only dreamed of being female twice that I can recall.
In most of my dreams, I was male. And the dream would emasculate me in some way, usually by being forced to disrobe in front of onlookers.
For years after my change, I'd dream of me being me, but for some reason the surgery didn't work out and Mr. Johnson returned. Wierd. Again, I'd end up naked with onlookers.
For the past several years, I've had no such dreams. I usually don't have dreams that I can remember. For those of you who are medically inclined, you'll know that means I'm sleaping soundly, for you only remember a dream when you wake up in the middle of one.
For the very very few dreams that I have, I am me. The Now Me. There is not comfort or distress in this realization. It just is. The dreams are about other things.. usually to strange to relate... but for me they are pretty tame.
I don't really think that dreams are terribly significant. In the good ole days of digital circuitry we had this stuff calld RAM. Memory is still called RAM. But RAM chips back then had to be accessed every so often to hold the memory charge. We called it refresh. That's what dreams are (in my opinion). It's just your brain firing the stored memories and your unconcious self as it wakes puts it together in some logical fashion. And we do that with our current state of mental anxiety or mental high.... whatever it is at the time.
So, if you want to believe that the dream means anything, just pick a number from the 1 to 10 scale. 1 is feeling lousy and 10 is feeling great. You are already thinking the things from your dreams during the day.
Cindi
i to am me in my dreams but im me as i see myself not as other people see me i am fully male.
i dont think i ever had a dream in which i am female .
i also get extremely disappointed when i wake up and see that i look as i do because my dreams seem so real and i feel so comfotable in my male body.
but suicide is obviously notw the answer then all i be is dead gender dysphoric person .
and there are ways to change my body