Quote from: MaidofOrleans on November 13, 2012, 10:48:41 AM
oZma it seems a lot of your problems stem from how you view yourself rather than how others view you. I've had this issue all my life even before transition and its a problem for all people even cis ones. I've talked with my therapist about it and she says she has trans patients that have had every surgery, completely pass, but when they look in the mirror they always see the guy despite everyone else seeing the girl.

My mother is a LCSW who has worked with young girls (and boys who are becoming more prominent lately) with eating disorders for most of her career. No matter how skinny they are, they always see a fat person and no matter what others tell them they see the opposite. I feel that this issue with trans women is the same but from an internal to external prospective. You are a woman inside yet you see the male body you use to have no matter how others see you. You cannot let an internalized feeling based off of this view of your external self override your true nature. It is why so many people who detransition based on this feeling end up regretting the detransition and transitioning again later which will only hurt them more in the long run.

i like this, it does seem to be a source of depression for me... my own perception of myself that is.  I think about it a lot.  I wonder how people who don't know I'm trans think about me, like what kind of girl do they think I am? what girls would they think I am similar to? it's difficult

some people on here say that I just need to accept I'm a girl, but I think the harder part is accepting my past.  thinking about how 'straight ' I was.  how normal I pretended to be. the happiness I was able to obtain by repressing my girl feelings. shucks,  having these two different personalities in my head drives me nuts.  not that I hated being a guy, if anything I hated wanting to be a girl

gosh just reading over this I realize that my big problem is that I hate being trans, I hate myself for it.  I don't want to hate myself so I say OK, lets transition so we can stop hating ourselves, but I still hate... I start thinking srs wil maybe calm the hate? thats not a good reason for surgery.

so now I've come full circle and described two things.

1. in my second video, my 'I want to be a girl' feeling

2. my hated towards being trans

so I guess you could say I hate that I WANT to be a girl.  does that make me the self hating ->-bleeped-<-? it's not a constant hate, but it comes in waves.

anybody care to translate my incoherent words into English for me? LOL

or maybe it's the feeling that I know a large population out there will hate me for being trans so I prepare myself for the worst and say 'OK, you hate me... well I hate myself like 10 x more so your hate doesn't mean nothing to me!'

translating feelings and thoughts to words is hard!

Quote from: oZma on November 13, 2012, 11:53:08 AM
i like this, it does seem to be a source of depression for me... my own perception of myself that is.  I think about it a lot.  I wonder how people who don't know I'm trans think about me, like what kind of girl do they think I am? what girls would they think I am similar to? it's difficult

some people on here say that I just need to accept I'm a girl, but I think the harder part is accepting my past.  thinking about how 'straight ' I was.  how normal I pretended to be. the happiness I was able to obtain by repressing my girl feelings. shucks,  having these two different personalities in my head drives me nuts.  not that I hated being a guy, if anything I hated wanting to be a girl

gosh just reading over this I realize that my big problem is that I hate being trans, I hate myself for it.  I don't want to hate myself so I say OK, lets transition so we can stop hating ourselves, but I still hate... I start thinking srs wil maybe calm the hate? thats not a good reason for surgery.

so now I've come full circle and described two things.

1. in my second video, my 'I want to be a girl' feeling

2. my hated towards being trans

so I guess you could say I hate that I WANT to be a girl.  does that make me the self hating ->-bleeped-<-? it's not a constant hate, but it comes in waves.

anybody care to translate my incoherent words into English for me? LOL

I hated my feelings for the longest time. I did everything I could to try to make them go away and no matter what I did they never did. I wanted to be a normal guy but my mind kept telling me the opposite. Eventually this led to me starting my transition when I realized I could never be a normal guy and would never be happy pretending to be one. I found that the man I wanted to be was simply a costume, a part in a play that I was acting out on a daily basis. The man was the fake and the woman I constantly felt I needed to be was my true self being repressed by my hatred of the feelings I had towards bringing her out.

I don't think SRS will calm your hatred towards those feelings I think it is an internal struggle you need to work out inside. Nothing you can do to your body will stop the fight inside your head. A lot of it is acceptance, acceptance of yourself for what you are, not what you want or should have been.

Ozma, do you have a job and work around other people?

For a lot of my career I have worked alone which helped me alot, as when ever I am alone I get to walk, think and act as the true me! its only when around others that I have to put on the boy mode act. That has helped greatly with my state of mind and well being...its not all about dressing or looking like a girl, its inside "I know" that I was born a girl but what others see on the outside may differ , slowly I am finally able to align my outside appearance more to coincide with how I feel on the inside...and I'm liking that a lot!!!

Many years ago I interviewed the singer/songwriter Paul Simon (waaaaayyy before your time, but I guess you probably heard of Simon and Garfunkel). Anyway, Simon's the kind of guy who thinks a lot, all the time, in fact. He spends so much time thinking about things that it gets in the way of doing stuff. So he wrote a song called Think Too Much, all about that problem. Then, as he told me, 'I thought about the song I'd written and it wasn't quite right. So I wrote another song, also called Think Too Much, just to prove that I really do thing too much.'

My point being, those of us who have dysphoria, or GID, or whatever the hell it's called this week can be the same. The problem we have, that confusion of body, mind, soul and gender is so weird for us to get a handle on that it's easy to get lost in thinking about it, so that it starts to mess with your head and we kind of defeat ourselves before anyone or anything else has even had a chance.

So my advice to you is ... stop thinking. Instead just be ... You have a huge advantage in that you look and sound like a regular girl (really, you do). So go out into the world and let the world see the girl you are, and treat you like a girl, and talk to you like a girl, and look at you like a girl ... And my guess is that the more that all your experience is of being a girl, the easier and more natural it will become for you just to be a girl in your own head, and see a girl when you look in the mirror.

I totally appreciate the comparison that was made with anorexia, and I know from direct, personal experience that it is impossible to persuade an anorexic that they're thin enough, let alone too thin. So maybe you can't be persuaded ...

... but maybe you can

My advice is, be as active and as busy as possible so that you're distracted from introspection and don't have time to think about yourself ... and be active and busy as a girl ... It won't happen instantly, but bit-by-bit, day-by-day, so gradually that you hardly even notice it, maybe things will change ... And maybe there can come a time when you suddenly realise that you aren't having these issues in your head any more and that you've moved on to a better, more settled place.

And once you get to the point of accepting yourself as a girl, well, that's when you'll truly accept and want a girl's body, and a girl's vagina.

Odd, not two minutes before I read Carlita's post I saw this,

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Quote from: muuu on November 13, 2012, 09:27:33 AM
I don't think that it gets useless for everyone during HRT, so there may be reasons to hang on to it.
I'm not sure either, I think the question she's asking is if she'll feel more female without them. Though, because there are always things to improve, one won't get satisfied trough surgeries. The aim of surgeries imo should be to fix something that you see is in the way of your life, not because you want stop thinking "I want to be a girl" (I think you should go to a psychologist/psychiatrist about those psychological issues instead).
I might have understood her incorrectly though...

So the question is, why do you want SRS? Do you have a reason other than trying to please that 'voice'?
Personally I'm not sure myself, because of the surgery it self and possible difficulties afterwards.

Well, I might be generalizing here as mine are already pretty useless now without HRT.
I also heard it from other trans-girls, but yeah, it's true that there are always exceptions.

I think SRS is a must, whether you like it or not: a vagina is how a woman is defined first and foremost.
If you see yourself as one there is no dodging it. Male genitalia will keep on forever reminding you that you had
a male body once. I for one want certainty in my life at least to the degrees I can control. Keeping the penis
is holding onto a memento of somebody you no longer are. That person is dead, new one is born.

Yeah, I'll probably get flooded with all the "we are all on different paths" BS now (that cop-out phrase makes me sick, I've heard it too often already).
I'm sorry to bring it you, ladies, but we are all on the same path. It just branches off sometimes.
The journey for all of us is largely the same.

Also, ladies, there is no perfection. You can't keep trying to improve your body forever.
There is a lot you can make better, no doubt and that's exactly what you should settle for.
Your body is a means to an end, to be yourself, thus to be happy. If you keep pursuing the
unattainable perfection you won't have the energy, nor the time to enjoy what truly matters - your life.

I too pursued physical perfection in my youth. You just can't keep up with it. In the end it made me
even more miserable.

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Quote from: Alyx Vox on November 13, 2012, 01:35:45 PM
Well, I might be generalizing here as mine are already pretty useless now without HRT.
I also heard it from other trans-girls, but yeah, it's true that there are always exceptions.

I think SRS is a must, whether you like it or not: a vagina is how a woman is defined first and foremost.
If you see yourself as one there is no dodging it. Male genitalia will keep on forever reminding you that you had
a male body once. I for one want certainty in my life at least to the degrees I can control. Keeping the penis
is holding onto a memento of somebody you no longer are. That person is dead, new one is born.

Yeah, I'll probably get flooded with all the "we are all on different paths" BS now (that cop-out phrase makes me sick, I've heard it too often already).
I'm sorry to bring it you, ladies, but we are all on the same path. It just branches off sometimes.
The journey for all of us is largely the same.

Also, ladies, there is no perfection. You can't keep trying to improve your body forever.
There is a lot you can make better, no doubt and that's exactly what you should settle for.
Your body is a means to an end, to be yourself, thus to be happy. If you keep pursuing the
unattainable perfection you won't have the energy, nor the time to enjoy what truly matters - your life.

I too pursued physical perfection in my youth. You just can't keep up with it. In the end it made me
even more miserable.

Alyx, how do you speak with such conviction?  have you not been conditioned to be cynical about these sorts of things?  I mean cynical in the form of "i know im a boy" but "i want to be a girl" and how easily we cast doubt upon the fact of "being a boy" and put faith into "i want to be a girl" to the point we surgery our self?  can you please shed light on how you came to feel the way you do?  have you ever had doubts?  how can i make myself believe in SRS?  lol, its starting to sound like a religion haha

you what happens when i think about men... an image of my old boy self appears and says "whooaaa dude, i'm not gay" and then i can only picture my old boy self being with a guy and the idea of 2 guys together just totally turns me off.  it makes me confused. 

ok, to be clear, sex to me, is between a man and a woman... i'm saying gay is wrong or anything, just in my head... man and a woman, thats what my orientation is.  maybe woman/woman? i don't know but i find it hard to think about a guy because i get the feeling "where is the girl"? i don't see myself as the girl.  maybe i'm puting too much emphasis on the image of being a girl and not enough on the feeling of being a girl?  i worry that a penis in my vagina doesn't make me orgasm.  so then i should say... its ok to like women.  but then i just start getting confused about the whole penis thing again.

can someone maybe private message me their mentality when it comes to this?  maybe someone who was a straight boy before transition and now is a straight woman?  someone who can relate to the words i am writing? 

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Quote from: muuu on November 13, 2012, 03:09:39 PM
To me this is starting to sound like psychological trauma... Have you ever tried CBT for your issues?

if it were only that easy! I wish... I feel crazy but you know what they say, the crazy people don't think they're crazy LOL

I'm not sure if I had been cbt'd but I've been in talking doctor therapy for the last 3 years?

Quote from: muuu on November 13, 2012, 02:21:12 PM
...

I'm talking in the terms of the most basic definition of a word "woman".
You may feel like a woman, that's fine, but you are not a woman as long as you have a penis.
Feeling is subjective, being is objective. Please, notice the difference.
Objectively, being a pre-op trans-girl is an extreme form of androgyny.
You can feel as a 100% female whilst being a phenotypical male and you would be right to do so.
We have to draw an objective line somewhere. I draw it at the genitalia and secondary gender characteristics and so
do most of us (not trying to establish argumentum ad populum here, don't misunderstand me, please).

Quote from: oZma on November 13, 2012, 02:51:20 PM
Alyx, how do you speak with such conviction?  have you not been conditioned to be cynical about these sorts of things?

Yes, I was conditioned about homosexuality, but only recently have I hit the wall of me being a transsexual.
The problem with transsexualism is that there is so much misinformation about it that it simply hurts. For instance,
how often have you read an obviously biased article about trans-girls turning out ugly, when in fact I see that it's mostly
the other way around, even for those born into a body of a plain man? So, it isn't really brought up that often. In my
youth I talked about it maybe twice, all whilst being extremely ignorant about it of course.

I think you should check the definition of the word "cynical", because me being cynical played a lot in my struggle for
accepting myself. The next logical step after cynicism is not giving a damn about what most people say. I'll tell you right now,
people are dumber the more they herd together, so the opinions of groups should be discarded outright.

I know I am this way because I have never been happy, I was always either miserable or detached. Once I accepted my
transsexualism I found peace and even some happiness. I am more social, more easy-going, more alive now than I ever
was. Honestly, I have nothing to lose if I transition. The worst case scenario is that I'll just be as miserable as before,
only in a new body. That's worth the risk. At least now I no longer think about suicide (yep, I even tried to kill myself once).
I'll never be happy as a man, that much is certain. I'll get rid of everything that makes me one.

Also, having a vagina seems magical. The whole penetration thing, clitoral stimulation, multiple and stronger consecutive orgasms.
Sign me up for that! It seems like penis is losing the battle. Oh, yeah, I'm bi, if you haven't figured it out yet.

oZma, I think your SRS issues have something to do with your early life indoctrination. Were you raised in a conservative family
by any chance?

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Quote from: Alyx Vox on November 13, 2012, 03:46:24 PM

oZma, I think your SRS issues have something to do with your early life indoctrination. Were you raised in a conservative family
by any chance?

conservative... well yes.  my dad always kind of made fun of gays but nothing that stands out in my mind.  maybe something bad did happen and I blank it out? I've thought about that.  maybe it would explain why I can't remember much of my childhood? I have never been religious. 

I just don't believe it.  I don't believe srs works.  just like I don't believe I'm pretty.  I mean everyone can tell me I look good and it feels nice for the second I read it, but I don't believe it. 

I don't know how any guy would want to be with a girl like me, I don't think its fair for me to like a boy because of the way I am. I don't think I will ever be able to think positive long enough to schedule and wait for surgery.  I think vag is gross and wonder why I want one.  just the fact of 'wanting' it confuses me in contrast to just having something and accepting it?

yeah, I'm totally starting to think I'm just a crazy person and not trans? maybe my sexuality its just about wanting to be a girl.  the want.  maybe its just sexual and getting srs ruins it? 

I have no sense of who I am. when I think about myself, I think about a boy

OK, I think this thread is going nowhere... it looks like its just going to turn into some weird therapy session.  lets end it

Quote from: oZma on November 13, 2012, 04:39:48 PM
conservative... well yes.  my dad always kind of made fun of gays but nothing that stands out in my mind.  maybe something bad did happen and I blank it out? I've thought about that.  maybe it would explain why I can't remember much of my childhood? I have never been religious. 

I just don't believe it.  I don't believe srs works.  just like I don't believe I'm pretty.  I mean everyone can tell me I look good and it feels nice for the second I read it, but I don't believe it. 

I don't know how any guy would want to be with a girl like me, I don't think its fair for me to like a boy because of the way I am. I don't think I will ever be able to think positive long enough to schedule and wait for surgery.  I think vag is gross and wonder why I want one.  just the fact of 'wanting' it confuses me in contrast to just having something and accepting it?

yeah, I'm totally starting to think I'm just a crazy person and not trans? maybe my sexuality its just about wanting to be a girl.  the want.  maybe its just sexual and getting srs ruins it? 

I have no sense of who I am. when I think about myself, I think about a boy

Here's a good thing to test if it's sexual. Does your transsexualism go away just after an orgasm?
Mine doesn't. I even wake up with a wish to transition, every morning recently. So it's not just sexual,
it's much more than that.

You being disgusted by the big bad vagina is a serious issue, which might indicate that you are not
a transsexual. Honestly, I'm not qualified to give you any more than that. Speak with your therapist about it.
I might have a possible solution, though. I once was disgusted, very briefly I mind you, by everything feminine -
now I realize that I was just fighting my own inner woman. Perhaps you are the same in this regard?

Also, please, let a person that wants to be with you decide whether he or she likes you or not.
Embrace relationships, they're healthy.

.

OK to be clear all genitalia is gross... a small percentage are aesthetically pleasing

if anyone is having doubts , they just probably shouldnt

Quote from: oZma on November 13, 2012, 05:05:21 PM
OK to be clear all genitalia is gross... a small percentage are aesthetically pleasing

And here I thought I had intimacy issues... Genitalia are no more gross than
any other part of human body. It's just all a result of our evolution.
Seriously though, speak to your therapist about this a.s.a.p. if you hadn't done so already.