Not suicidal, mind you.  Just depressed.  I'm in college and I recently started to meet with the Trans* group on campus and it's distressing that I even feel like an outsider there.  I don't feel like I fit in anywhere.  I lost my closest friends and I've reached out to new ones but my issues just seem to be too intense for them.

Three days ago I met with a gender therapist for the first time.  She suggested that we focus on the anxiety and depression before my gender issues.  I know that's the right course but it's disappointing too.  I know that transition won't solve everything, yet still I feel like I can't feel comfortable with myself until I can really feel like a woman.  For most of my life I've tried to be a man.  That was no life for me, but at least it gave me a sort of (false) identity.  Now I'm coming face to face with myself as a woman and I want to see it but a lifetime of experience holds me back.  Currently I'm in this non-binary state that I can find no comfort in.  That's not meant to be anything against our non-binary kin, but I feel that I'm not non-binary personally and so finding myself in this state is nearly as distressing as pretending I'm a man.

There's no specific point to this post.  I just wanted to share how I'm feeling with people who might understand.

 

Honey,
I understand completely.

My first session so many years ago was similar.

Let's deal with your depression.

Why?

So you can be a happy woman instead of a depressed one.

"So you know I'm a transgender woman?"

Of course, that is why you are here, my task is to help you to be a happy woman.


You hang in their, keep posting and talking and hey guess what? It will get better, you will be you.

Love

Cindy

Quote from: Delaney on October 03, 2015, 03:17:58 AM
Three days ago I met with a gender therapist for the first time.  She suggested that we focus on the anxiety and depression before my gender issues.  I know that's the right course but it's disappointing too.

Hugs Delaney. Depression makes everything harder.

If I were a depressed pre-everything trans woman and my therapist told me she wanted to work on my depression issues before I could think of transitioning, I'd be more than disappointed. I'd be furious. Two of the various awful gender therapists I saw did tell me they wanted me to slow down my transition (I'm now seeing a wonderful therapist who didn't). They were WRONG and I'm very glad I didn't listen to them.

Is there a reason you can't work on your depression AND make progress on your gender issues? Especially since it sounds like some of your depression stems from gender issues.

There is no reason you should accept anyone else's pace for YOUR transition.

When I finally realized a few years back that I needed to take on the trans-beast for real, I had also concluded even before seeing a therapist, I had a TON of baggage I needed to shed. A lot of unhealthy thinking and behaviours develop over the years along the road of beating down who we feel we are inside.

Because of my job status I asked my therapist how my visits were coded. He answered "For depression. I haven't had a trans client yet that wasn't". After changing jobs and having access to a for real gender therapist I asked her how they were being coded. She answered "For anxiety. I haven't had a client yet that wasn't"

The depression is a real problem to deal with. I had two years RLE and it wasn't until the last few months of it that the depression and discomfort was gone. When I first started group therapy, I also felt I didn't fit so what you are feeling is pretty much what I went through. You need to to hang in there for now because it gets much better as you work through the baggage and become comfortable in your new life. It will be slow and uncomfortable but at some point you will look back on your life and see no reason to return to your old life. That will be the moment that you will know you have arrived.

I'll try posting more.  By my nature I'm quiet and I'm more of an observer than a participant, but I need to get engaged.

I don't know... Ever since finally facing this whole mess it's become all-encompassing and I feel just so emotionally exhausted.  There's been some little tick in the back of my mind for years telling me this, but I refused to confront it. If I wasn't so tall.  If I wasn't naturally built like a tank.  If my hairline weren't so damn high.  If I didn't have women's size 15 feet.  If my hands weren't so broad.  If.. if... if... So many damn 'ifs.'

In a strange way I both wish I were born female, but at the same time I recognize that I am myself and I wasn't born female.  Any other combination of DNA wouldn't be "me."  If I were born as a girl I wouldn't be the person writing now.  That person would be some other person and I wouldn't exist. Existential crisis to be sure.

What I obsess over more is that I didn't grow to be more feminine in structure and in sound.  Then all of this would be much easier and I'd have transitioned years ago.  I'd be much more certain to pass, to be able to go stealth.  This feeling isn't going to go away any time soon, though, and I'm aware that the sooner I do it the better my results.  My biggest concern is that I don't only see myself as being internally female; I also want society at large to see me as a woman.

To put my feelings into the most succinct words possible, sometimes when I start to question my transness I wonder why I couldn't just have been born as a cisgendered male?  Then my dysphoria kicks in and I realize that I find no comfort in the male side of myself.  I have no actual desire to be a man.  I, as a being, can find no comfort there.  The only way I can feel comfortable with myself is to see myself as a woman.  Then it becomes obvious.

Men don't feel that way.  I'm no man.  Still, 30 years of trying to be a man doesn't go away overnight and society tries to convince us that being a man is an ideal state.  As if having a penis grants real power in and of itself.  That's truly just absurd.  The only sense of power that my penis has ever given me lies in my lack of desire to use it and in my desire to not want to have it.

Explaining my specific feelings on that is an entire subject unto itself, though.  This is enough to share tonight.

I feel the same way recently. Although not as bad as I did, I used to be suicidal. I have not seen any gender therapists and have no real help due to the terrible state of the NHS in England.

I Have heard that HRT can improve a persons mood I am hoping this is the case with me although nothing is certain and I may live an unhappy life. But that's just the way it is. I hope not though.