Well, hello everyone. It's been a bit since I posted and despite my best efforts to find a similar topic discussed in another thread....

I have been struggling a bit with doubts about myself. Ultimately, I lean back and calmly think that I am doing the right thing for me. But the doubts come from the financial toll, the loss of my wife/family, relocating. I also realize that many people view me as selfish for doing this and that really hurts, too. I'm not sure that these are doubts by definition, more so factors into what causes me to doubt my transition.

So, first question--what percentage of transwomen have doubts during/after transition? (I've talked to some but I guess I always like to get a larger sample size)

Second....how often does it come up? (Monthly--haha; weekly, daily, hourly.....)

I don't have doubts so much as moments (days) of despair in which I contemplate chucking the whole thing to maintain my security. Ultimately I remember that you can't buy people's love that way. Sweety will either continue to love me as I change or not, but she certainly won't love me as a surly, bitter old man or a rotting pile under six feet of earth, some grass and a tombstone.

I've had not one doubt that I'm trans since I came to my revelation, only on how fast I need to go with it. YMMV.

I am having doubts right now. That's why I see a therapist and I always step back and take stock of myself.

Doubts are natural and normal. They mean you are stepping back and taking stock. There are real consequences to transition, pros and cons that need to be weighed up. I tried to transition when I was in my early twenties, then after two years my doubt became so great I fully reversed and went into trans denial for over twenty years. Maybe I could have tried to transition again sooner than I did but was I ready? Even now, when I have found transition has been right for me I still have doubts from time to time...usually when I am facing some new challenge or event. I'm glad I have those doubts they allow me to reevaluate. Like Kate I am seeing a therapist to help me make sense of that.

What kind of doubts?
Should I do this?/Am I trans enough?/WTF!!! I am doing?/Do I need therapist or not?/ Spiro or Androcur?/Will I pass-look good-get attention from guys/girls/fluffy kittenz-whateva?/FFS-SRS or not?/Suporn or Chett?/

Those kind of questions or something more specific? I get a bit of everything (except for kittens), but most of them are not really doubts but my idle mind playing games with itself.

Quote from: Aus76 on January 05, 2015, 02:48:31 PM
So, first question--what percentage of transwomen have doubts during/after transition? (I've talked to some but I guess I always like to get a larger sample size)

I'd say way larger than 50%. For those of us who didn't "always know", probably approaching 100%. For those who knew from a young age, maybe a bit less.

Quote from: Aus76 on January 05, 2015, 02:48:31 PMSecond....how often does it come up? (Monthly--haha; weekly, daily, hourly.....)

For me it was daily before my transition. Post transition, never.

Doubts..   No none so far.  Fear heck yes i am scared to death.  But deep down i feel this is something i need to do and to follow though to where ever it takes me.  That is what i have told my wife.   Even while i know there is a good chance i will lose her, my son, my house, my marriage, many friends, family members.   I am sure the list can go on.  But then I also like to think i dont have to lose any of that no one really knows until you start down the path what lies ahead.   I know if i dont change i will lose myself and my happiness.  And if i do change that i may not gain my happiness but there is also a good chance i will find it.   Just recently i have started a blog/journal to help me put down in words my feelings and my thoughts and to help me take a step back and look at myself from far away.   I look at my life and most of it i have always made the right decisions even when they were not easy ones.  So i figured this is just one of those times.   i dont like to play the with if game.   If you sit there always wondering about what if you did this or that then you end up not getting anything done.   So doubts none so far but i do smile and giggle as i think of what the future may hold for me and i am excited to take t head on. 


Vicky
MtF

Before deciding to get help, yeah I was constantly weighing the pros and cons of transitioning. Now that I am actually transitioning, I have no doubts about the direction I am going.

I waited till I wished I wasn't living before I gave up on making my assigned gender work.  The advatage to waiting that long is I have no doubts, cause I know right where the other road terminates, the disadvatage is doing so almost killed me.   I would rather have lived with some doubts, cause I will always bear more scars for waiting.

Pre-transition I had plently of doubts.  And by pre-transition, I mean until I was 43 years old.

I felt like I should have been a girl since I was 4, but seeing what was between my legs made me doubt that.
As a teenager, I wanted to be intimate with girls, not boys, further fueling my doubts of my transgender status. 
When my dysphoric episodes waned, I doubted that I was actually transgender.
When I grew to be quite large, I doubted that I could ever pass as a woman no matter what and tried to put it out of my mind any way I could.
When I started noticeably losing my hair, I declared my dream to be dead because it was now too late, and I was undoubdtedly depressed.
When I became indifferent to living because I never would get to even try to present myself as female, I doubted that coming out to my wife would end well. (It did.)
When I began to present myself as female in private, I doubted that I could ever pull it off in public.
When I went to therapy for the first time, I still doubted that I was transgender enough to transition fully and wanted all other options on the table.
When I finally got the nerve to see the endo, I doubted that taking estrogen would actually help my mental state, and even secretly wished it wouldn't help so I could put this whole "woman" thing to bed once and for all.

Then something amazing happened.  The estrogen helped so much that I knew I could never stop taking it. My hair started growing back, I felt happy and relaxed.  I felt like ME.  I mean the real me, with growing breasts.  I no longer had any doubts about being transgender. 

Then I got a new set of doubts.  Would people accept me, would I be disowned, could I ever go out in public presenting female without people wanting to harass me, hurt me or worse?  Could I ever be seen as anything other than a shaven ape in a dress? Could I even transition fully, or would I have to keep this private forever.

I tested the waters.  I left the house en femme.  Then I did it again.  Nothing bad happened.  I started going to therapy in full Jill mode.  Still, nothing bad.  I went out of town in girl mode and spent the weekend in San Diego just being me.   I was nervous and it showed. I was clocked left and right, stared at, pointed at, laughed at and ridiculed publically.   Instead of quitting right there and then, I resolved to work on my demeanor.  It worked.  I went full time three weeks later and never looked back.  I came out to the world and let the chips fall where they did.

I am transsexual, I intend to transition fully, and I never want to go back to the way things were.  Ever.  To this there is no doubt.

Nowadays, my doubts consist of things like:
"I doubt that I can pull off that shade of green."
"I doubt that lipstick shade would look good on me."
"I doubt that I could wear that dress and look good in it."
"I doubt that the Yankees will be any good this year."

The only time that I ever had any doubts was when it came to GRS. I would never be able to afford the surgery and all of the associated costs. Up until that point, it was full steam ahead, (as much as I could afford to anyway). But once I began delving into all of the in's & out's of GRS, I knew it was never going to happen. I decided to have an orchi a few days later and set that ball in motion. I've had no regrets from that point on.

I doubted myself practically hourly at first, and questioned constantly whether I was even really trans. (I didn't realize I'd need to transition until I was 32, and there was a time when I was content being a guy. So I already didn't have the "standard narrative.")

For what it's worth, I have ended up post-op and really happy, so doubting and second-guessing didn't mean I wasn't a good candidate for transition.

Doubts? I haven't doubted that I was trans since I actually learned what trans actually was.

However, I have suffered from massive and traumatic doubts about when I should take action on my new knowledge. For me, I am working in an extremely conservative job where it isn't uncommon (due to recent press) to hear violent and terrifying things said about any and all things concerning transgender issues. Transitioning necessarily means that I have to abandon this environment and get a job that is far more welcoming. Otherwise, transitioning would be a tragedy.

Have I doubted? Yes, I've doubted that I have the courage and the strength necessary to leave my familiar settings and go somewhere new and strange. However, it's the right thing to do. My entire life, I've given so much for others and to others. Now, every day, I feel like I'm sinking further and further into a quicksand of dysphoria. It has negatively impacted all of my mental abilities. I *know* where this weight and burden are. Not resolving it would likely lead to tragedy.

I'm rambling, but... I guess what I want to say is... Yeah, it's natural to have doubts, and everyone probably has doubts that apply to their own specific situation. However, despite the doubts, it doesn't hurt to seek help and, if it is needed, to take some kind of action. You'll be happier in the long run...

Well I'm only just starting on this journey so I have ALL the doubts, lol.  At the moment they seem almost constant.  One look in the mirror is enough to set them off, one look around the house and family I will be leaving soon (not from choice). 

But one thing I don't doubt is that if I don't do this I will never ever forgive myself in the future. To know who I really am and what I need to do about it yet do nothing? Noooooo!  So I push through all the doubts and fear, hold on desperately to that vision of myself and hope that one day I will go to bed and actually care if I wake up the next day.

Screw doubts

I had doubts pre-transition and some doubts 6 months into hrt but the doubts prehrt were very different from the doubts after I had started hrt.

Jill's description was perfect.

I do have momentary doubts that are more like wondering if I should just retreat to the safety of not making waves and not challenging society.  Then I remember what that means.  I'd have to be a guy and continue not liking myself and never getting to be the real me...and I really like her. 

I had doubts ALL through transition.

Pre-transition, I was actually only starting hormones as a "test," to see if they were really what I needed. I was afraid of admitting to myself that I DEEPLY wanted them. For the next 5-7 months, I was constantly fighting the voices in my head which were so damned scared that I couldn't do it, or that I was going to have regrets, that it would never work, that I'm not REALLY female, that it's just going to be a phase, that I might get sick of it and change my mind, that I really did seriously question myself. The first times I ventured out in "girl mode" I was seriously like "OMG, is this seriously what I want for the rest of my f***ing life? I don't feel like a girl, I just feel like a freaking drag queen."

When I was fired from my job the first time, I seriously took time to step back and ask myself if I really knew what the hell I was doing. Were these mood swings ever going to settle down? How the hell was I ever really going to be able to get over my insecurities and EVER go full-time and be comfortable with it if doing something as simple as wearing clear nail polish on my fingers to work turned me into a nervous wreck? Around the 1-year-mark I started worrying that it was hopeless that I'd ever pass, that I was just going to be some he-she-it freak if I continued transition, because I'd NEVER been gendered female, even despite 11 months of hormones and growing my hair out and switching to an androgynous wardrobe.

Even after I finally did start getting gendered female, I still had doubts that I could transition... I was terrified by whether I'd be accepted, whether women would really be okay with calling me one of their own, with being able to use their bathroom, etc, etc. After getting fired from yet ANOTHER job, I seriously started being afraid that transition was just going to destroy my life, and that I might have no choice but to abandon it and go back to being male to keep my working life afloat at all. I had a REALLY hard time making the mental jump from "I wish I was a girl, I want to become one," to "I AM a girl." That step was really hard, and made me have some doubts right after going full-time.

And even post-transition and with a stable job again, I'm still sometimes doubting that I have the mental strength to keep doing it, because I'm still fighting dysphoria about how I still don't look like the cis girls look to my own eyes. And I have some really bad self-critical bouts where my mind is like "I'll never be a REAL girl, so why even bother?"

The thing that kept me going was knowing that I really did want to be female... what I was doubting wasn't my own gender identity, they were just fears and feelings of inadequacy and the complications of being a trans woman in real life getting to me. And so I pressed on, and fought through all of the fears and doubts, and now I am indeed finally relaxing and getting a bit more comfortable with myself. I still have occasional doubts, but they usually only show up during dysphoric bouts. The rest of the time, I'm just living my life, being myself, and not really thinking about it anymore.

I haven't had any doubts related to transition at all since I decided to do it, its actually been one of the few things in my life that I've been happy about in the past year. I've had a lot of other struggles and challenges that honestly put most of my transition on auto pilot, but I was aware of it. The things I've doubted are was it necessary to cut ties with my family because they contently try to ruin the relationship between my soon to be ex wife, our son and myself, examples being they kicked me out of their house that I was living in after being retired from the Army for taking her side, then called child services on us when I was at her house. After that they filed for visitation. I also doubt if moving to Oklahoma and living in the same house as my wife again was a healthy decision, since living here I've had several times where I thought of cutting myself and one time where I did hurt myself because of our fighting, which is why we were separated. Sadly she can't afford to rent her own place yet and doesn't even own a car if she did get a place. Out of all these doubts though I haven't had any doubts that I'm doing the right thing by transitioning, I actually find it sad that my family was supportive of me and I can't even think of talking to them right now because I'm made at them for some completely unrelated thing, when so many people would want to talk with a supportive family.

Quote from: Carrie Liz on January 06, 2015, 02:13:35 AM
I had doubts ALL through transition.

Pre-transition, I was actually only starting hormones as a "test," to see if they were really what I needed. I was afraid of admitting to myself that I DEEPLY wanted them. For the next 5-7 months, I was constantly fighting the voices in my head which were so damned scared that I couldn't do it, or that I was going to have regrets, that it would never work, that I'm not REALLY female, that it's just going to be a phase, that I might get sick of it and change my mind, that I really did seriously question myself. The first times I ventured out in "girl mode" I was seriously like "OMG, is this seriously what I want for the rest of my f***ing life? I don't feel like a girl, I just feel like a freaking drag queen."

...

I'm one month in on my own "trial period" of hormones right now and it's bringing on a boatload of doubts similar to yours. Your story is super inspiring and I hope that one day I'll be out of this dark place.

Quote"I'll never be a REAL girl, so why even bother?"

That's exactly what I told myself for years!