Hi everyone, I'm PBP. In the last few years I've been very confused about my gender identity and very disliking of my body. I've tried becoming more masculine, having worked out a lot and built a lot of muscle however this didn't alleviate the feelings I've been having. I would say these feelings are somewhat constant, meaning that sometimes they disappear for a few days or so, however I rarely find myself wanting to be masculine and have at various times been quite depressed at not being physically feminine.

Overall confused as to whether what I'm feeling is normal or not normal. Also, before anyone says get therapy I have visited my GP and been out forward for it however NHS speed means that it's been several months and I haven't received an appointment.

Thanks everyone.

Normal? I'm not sure what that means.

A lot of transgender people feel exactly what you're feeling. And transgender people are normal. So that makes your feelings normal. "Feeling depressed at not being feminine" is so normal that we've come up with a term for it. "Gender dysphoria" means unhappiness about some part of your gender.

What should you do about it? Therapy is not a bad idea, but as you mention, that may be a bit tough to get. There's a lot of wonderful information on the forums here. A lot of people decide to transition, but only you will know whether that's right for you.

I hope some of this helps.

I can totally relate to everything you describe. My feelings were about the same throughout my teens and early 20's but they stared becoming stronger and by 30 I had no break from these feelings. Finally at 32 I came to terms with all of it and decided to pursue transition. Yes a GOOD therapist can do wonders. Tho mine never told me what I should do, she definitely helped me realize that this is the right decision for me

Quote from: Marissa_K on August 12, 2015, 12:58:56 PM
I can totally relate to everything you describe. My feelings were about the same throughout my teens and early 20's but they stared becoming stronger and by 30 I had no break from these feelings. Finally at 32 I came to terms with all of it and decided to pursue transition. Yes a GOOD therapist can do wonders. Tho mine never told me what I should do, she definitely helped me realize that this is the right decision for me

I swear I'm not trying to derail this thread, but OMG your hair! <3 /swoon.

Concerning waiting times you could have a look here:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php?topic=181192.0


hugs

Quote from: Sigyn on August 12, 2015, 01:37:31 PM
I swear I'm not trying to derail this thread, but OMG your hair! <3 /swoon.

*hug*

Keep in mind, transition isn't an "all or nothing" type deal. Your aim should only ever be to find your own happiness. That's all. Just take baby steps toward what you feel will make you happy, eventually you'll find where you fit. Some people take the approach of immediately casting off their old identity overnight, others go very slow. I don't know which approach is right for you. Personally, I transitioned very slowly. I had been on oestrogen for 2 years before I slowly started to dress more androgynous. I wasn't sure where I was headed, I wasn't even sure what "feeling normal" would mean to me. Eventually, people started perceiving me as female more and more, and I preferred that. A lot of trans people have a date that they went "full time" I don't. I have no idea when that actually occurred. I just took little baby steps. This, for a while was hard because I felt totally genderless in a gendered society but, ultimately it was an incredibly smooth transition (not that there's anything wrong with having no gender! I just say for me personally, I found that hard). It left me of the opinion that "slow and steady wins the race"

If I could go back in time and talk to myself 6 years ago, when I was in your position, my advice would be
Don't stress, be patient, its a long process, its not a race.
Get healthy, don't smoke, don't drink too much. Its easy to to drink yourself to numbness, all it does is delay your feelings by a few hours.
Don't be afraid to talk to people, what you're feeling is normal.
If you have any queer friends, talk to them. they wont know what you're going through exactly but, they'll understand the feeling of isolation caused by being different to the majority.

One of my stock answers. If you are confused, go to youtube and request "the transition channel". This is a series of videos that will help you explore your feelings and rule some things in and other out. The series is very well done and will explore may of the topics discussed in therapy without the wait.

Quote from: Sigyn on August 12, 2015, 01:37:31 PM
I swear I'm not trying to derail this thread, but OMG your hair! <3 /swoon.

LOL. thanks. It's not mine  I'm slowly getting there but that was a wig....

Thank you for the replies everyone. I have been to the transition channel before, it's one of the reasons that I joined here for further advice as from what I gathered about myself based on what was said on the channel, I am transgender and have dysphoria.

What I would really love to do is to take baby steps to see how I feel about my body when on oestrogen and to become the person I want to be at my own pace, but it seems from what I've been reading about the NHS and the GICs is that I may be forced into RLE before I can be put on hormones, which for a person like me, with the way I feel about transitioning and particularly in the way I look, could be catastrophic.

Anyway, thanks for the advice overall, hopefully I can start moving towards feeling better about myself.

The NHS again!!! The only idea I have is we can help you work with your image. I thought I didn't have much in the way of looks but I have been digging though old photos and found a 8x10 print of a photo taken of my when I was about 35 and I didn't look half bad. To bad I didn't take advantage of it while I still had it 

The NHS pathway can be incredibly frustrating in terms of timescale - I ended up going private. The biggest part of that for me was talking through things with the therapist/counselor, and in fact it wasn't particularly expensive (less than three figures for each session after the initial consultation) and although it took three months to get the first appointment, subsequent visits seemed a lot easier to arrange.

I didn't have to go RLE before getting hormones, and in fact I'm not sure you have to on the NHS either now - that's more a requirement for GRS.

I'd had a pretty good idea for a long, long time where I sat on the scale, but the therapy really helped explore my issues and cement what I wanted to do about it.

Also reading through other people's experiences on here helped a lot too - the number of stories that mirrored exactly my own was quite an eye-opener!