The Uninvited Dilemma is a 1991 book based on in-depth interviews with 75 transsexuals, conversations with another 25, and also conversations with loved ones, colleagues, etc.  At one point the author has this to say:

QuoteChapter 9
fabric of mind
THE WARP AND WOOF
Herrica was thirty years old when I interviewed her.  In her mid-twenties she discovered a shocking reality. "I read an article in a pornographic magazine about transsexualism when I was about twenty-six. I had never heard of transsexualism, or Christine Jorgensen before. I went into a state of disattachment with my surroundings, and said to myself, 'Hey! This is what I am!' It literally devastated me for two years. I thought I knew myself so well, this discovery completely destroyed my self-image. I didn't want the problems I could envision, and to be considered weird and perverse. I became very depressed, and ended up quitting my job."
It seems hard to believe, in this day and age, someone could reach the age of twenty-six, yet have no inkling he or she might be a transsexual, particularly someone as bright and as well-educated as Herrica is. When I asked her about this and pointed out that she must have had some feelings in the past which might have made her suspicious, she told me that she did have some feelings and desires at an early age that she might want to be a female; but she just dismissed them, put them in her "Herrica is different " bin and really did not give them further thought.
Although over eighty—five percent of the transsexuals I interviewed had some form of gender discomfort before they ever started school, many of them did not recognize that discomfort as transsexualism until much later in life. Bob told me, "Even though I read about Christine Jorgenson, I didn't really relate it to myself. When I finally did, it felt like my head was taken out of a vise." Edward: "When I did finally find out about transsexualism, it was like finding a missing link, or the musical chord I had been searching for. I was ecstatic to find out I could define myself and do something about my condition. I was walking on air." Kitty: "I knew about transsexualism since I was thirteen or fourteen. I always thought it was shameful. I tried for many years to find a way around it and to fight my feelings. No matter what I did, though (including trying to get in the service), my feelings just didn't change." Karen: "I knew about transsexualism as I was growing up, but wasn't sure it related to me. It took me a couple of years of psychotherapy to discover I was, in fact, a transsexual. I really didn't discover it until I was in my early thirties."

If we could be like the proverbial fly on the wall in the office of a therapist who specializes in treating persons with gender problems, the remarks of Bob, Edward, Kitty, and Karen would become very familiar indeed. Having feelings and recognizing the significance of those feelings do not necessarily go hand in hand. Helping persons sort out their feelings, recognize what those feelings may mean, learning to feel okay about having those feelings without a tremendous burden of guilt, and figuring out ways to cope with their lives within the limitations of their feelings is probably an ideal formula for beneficial therapy. Many transsexuals seek out therapy without having the slightest idea they are transsexuals. They just recognize that all is not well in their lives and are searching for answers.

This matches my experience completely.  I crossdressed a bit as a young teen, until I couldn't fit into my Mom's clothes anymore, and the next 30 years were just life, albeit not exactly conventional - I took up the hobby of playing music in a big way, and never went into any long term relationships.  I remembered dressing up as a youngster but didn't do anything about it - I only had real privacy for about 5 years, and was mortally afraid of ever shopping for women's clothes anyway, a roadblock I only overcame last fall.  Not once did I think there was something askew about my body or gender - I just didn't look into mirrors any more than necessary, had no interest in my personal appearance, actively disliked having my picture taken, preferred the company of women for some reason, crossed my legs and used my hands when I spoke, smiled a lot, dislike macho in any form...but I was just another guy.  I've always been happy, mind; but I always felt something about me just wasn't right.

Now I find myself wanting more than anything to have a feminine body, and to be a woman and recognized as such by society.  Each day I look forward to taking more HRT and hoping breast buds will pop up, spending an inordinate amount of time shaving everywhere, and paying for electrolysis on my face.  I wear women's clothes as much as possible, and fantasize about what life full time would be like.  Absolutely none of this was on my mind a year ago.

Did you spend a lot of your life just being a bit off for some reason, like this?

Sounds awfully familiar.  I told a nun, when asked what I had prayed for, that i asked God to make me a girl.  *THWACK*  I learned quickly as a small child not to express what I was.  I experimented with cross-dressing in my early teens, was caught and run through a form of conversion therapy, testosterone injections and counseling by a local religious leader to avoid my sinful ways.

I had heard of Christine Jorgensen.  I read Vidal's "Myra Breckinridge" which scared the heck out of me with how Myra/Myron ended up.  Nope.  Do Not Want. 

I suppressed until my early 30s, when while interviewing a trans woman for a job on my team, I caught myself thinking "She's so brave.  I wish I could do that."  Outed to myself by my own subconscious, I resolved to keep her locked up to protect my wife and young children.

30 years later, age 62, the dysphoria, anxiety, and depression were so bad I nearly committed suicide.  With the pills counted out and the car engine hacked to send exhaust into the passenger compartment, I called a hotline as a last ditch effort, was talked down, went into therapy, and came here.

Hi Lucy,

  Umm do I raise my hand or what?  I grew up wishing I had been born a girl like my 5 sisters. I umm borrowed their clothes and dressed in them. Throughout  growing up I found ways to obtain girl's clothes to wear. As an adult I was able to work up the courage to buy my own using various excuses to do so. My wife was made aware of proclivity. She tolerated it at best. As you can imagine this behavior caused me much shame and guilt over the years I came to accept my crossdressing as something I could not stop and had to do. But never did I think I was more than a crossdresser. It wasn'y until this last November after coming across the term Gender Dysphoria and researching it that I finally understood why I crossdressed and what I am. With this knowledge I gave into my long held secret desire to become a woman and started HRT in December. That was the easy part. I also of necessity had to begin the process of accepting that I was much more than a crossdresser, I have to accept that I am a transwoman. I have been able to accept it some but it's still a work in progress to shed my male thought processes and attitudes and learn how to be and accept that I am a woman.

Hugs,
   Laurie

Same here ladies.

My situation was a little different. When I was a teenager, I was living in Minnesota in the 1960's. The University of Minnesota was doing transgender research and surgeries. The news media sensationalized the University's work. When I attended U of M, I did a term paper on transgender issues. What I learned from University sources was that the surgery techniques were primitive and the psychological understanding of gender dysphoria was terribly wrong. They said it was caused by learned behavior.

OK, if gender dysphoria is learned, then I can tough it out and unlearn my feelings that I had for years.

WRONG

My feelings never went away. Now, 50 years later with a lifetime of conflicted feelings and other physical health problems, I decided to take control of my life and address my health issues one at a time.

So, here I am at age 67, fully transitioned and I have never been more happy and completely satisfied with my life. My only regret is not transitioning sooner, but that is another story.

I've read a story much like Michelle's, about a person's chance encounter with a TS that stopped them in their tracks.  Others have commented on how many CD's accounts of what they do and how they feel sound completely TS; Deidre McCloskey is one example of someone who thought of themselves purely as a crossdresser for decades, until they met some CDs in the flesh and realized she didn't have much in common with them beyond clothing and makeup.  She describes all this in her book Crossing.

Herrica from my excerpt is just me.  I wonder how many people like us are out there who just carry on having absolutely no idea what's up.  I keep wondering what this transsexual impulse has replaced, too.  Nothing?  A bunch of inhibitions?

Yup.

Except there were some noticeable cracks of light into the darkness of my closet.

When I was in my 20s I was always thinking how much better and easier dating would be if I were the girl instead of the guy.
When I watched The Crying Game in the early 90s, seeing a positive portrayal of a beautiful transgender woman on the screen for the first time ever, and thinking all the next day that this is what I want and need to do.
When the internet was invented and I started cross dressing again, hanging out at Tgirl sites, and dreaming of taking female hormones.
When when I smoked pot for a couple of months, 2 years before I came out and started my first attempts at learning femme voice.

Denial is a very powerful thing.

My story is strange. Everything about my life has been strange and dysfunctional non-stop. I don't understand too many things and it got so bad that I have almost no contact now with family. So much untreated bi-polar, mental illness, alcohol, drugs, illicit sex and all around bad behavior. Yet, I am the white sheep of the family. I never drank, did drugs, misbehaved, etc. but I know if I ever did "come out" I would instantly be that bad one. Simply because my "condition" will be the least understood. Crazy...

I grew up a soft little blond boy in a prison of crazy dark, bulked-up he-men. I NEVER fit in. Ever. I seriously tried. Never succeeded. Hell growing up. How I survived, I don't know. And I never did much crossdressing till I left home. Got married to a crazy girl (I knew no other kind) and made several futile attempts to grow long hair, shave my legs, etc. In a hard, crazy Baptist atmosphere it was impossible. Divorced after 10 yrs and then...my female mind took over. All makes sense now. Always a struggle to get here. And now I am closeted after 15 mo HRT and always will be. New big breasts must now be hidden all day. A new kind of stress. I live with it. Facts of my life....

I am still in my early 20s. However, for a very long long time i supressed any female feelings or anything feminine. Denial is  a strong thing, and can even come up at the worst of times. I didnt know i had dysphoria even when i did many years ago. I knew i wasnt happy with being male, but didnt realize that made me trans. I was in such denial for, well, all my life

Hi Lucy

I never really thought about how I should be my whole life as I never fit in... I wasn't really one of the guys but I wasn't a girl either.  As long as I can remember I always preferred to be friends with girls over boys and became distressed later in grade school when the girls would generally not associate with boys because boys were gross and such and I remember thinking I wished I was a girl and hated being a boy.  As I got older and became attracted to girls I followed the gender role that matched my sex but always looked at girls and thought it would be incredible to be a girl and wished I had their body and their life but always just chocked it up to my sexual attraction. I never really tried to cross-dress as I just haven't really had the opportunity but I do look at the clothes a lot.

It never dawned on me that something could be wrong I just kept moving forward in life in that same old gender/sexual role, I joined the Navy and got married and over the years I even had children.  But deep down I wasn't happy and after I retired I just let myself go... my weight shot up over 100 pounds (and I was heavy to begin with) I quit caring how I dressed or what people thought about me and then about 4 years ago I found out I was Diabetic and just decided I really didn't care if I lived or died.  I never really felt I needed to make a suicide plan but I was actively trying to kill myself with my lack of effort to take care of myself.

Like you I hate seeing myself either in mirrors or pictures and have gone so far as to destroy just about every picture of me that was ever been taken because I hate seeing me that much.  Everyone thinks I'm just this happy guy and in some ways they are right I usually take a positive approach to everything and I smile and joke around all the time but when I see women I feel like I'm missing out on something that could be so much greater something I should have had in the first place. 

A couple years ago I heard about how transgender people could take hormones and have sex changes and it was like a door opened I wanted to know more and soon I wanted to do it... now I think about it every day and every time I see a woman I think that could be me.  There is so much to overcome... my wife hates transwomen, what would coming to do to my kid, I would probably lose my marriage, I would probably lose my job, I will have to start over in life, I have to get my health under control... ok that last one sound easy compared to the rest.

I'm pre-everything and have a lot to overcome before I can get there but it has given me something to work towards and compelled me to make a plan and start working on getting my life in order and to prepare myself for all the worst outcomes in hopes of getting the best outcome.

Yeah, like Emily I never really had a clue to connect the dots between how I felt overall every day, and my mostly repressed ideas of my real gender identity.  I didn't even have these terms available to me.

I honestly thought everyone had that persistent flat effect, living a life of, well, watching paint dry, punctuated by sadness, anxiety, and the occasional inexplicable panic or outburst.  I just thought I was worse at living than most, weaker than most. 

Now that I've gotten treatment, and have discovered that the amazing euphoria I felt after I had been on HRT a while wasn't really euphoria, just feeling like everyone else feels, I have realized that I spent almost a half century living with every deepening depression and anxiety linked to my suppressed gender identity and dysphoria.

Sometimes I feel like I was such a fool, putting my trying to avoid making others uncomfortable ahead of my own well-being.  I still led a pretty good life, raised a nice family, and accomplished much. We can't change that past, though.

All we can really do is pick the best path forward from the present, trying to improve ourselves and the world as we are to what we will be.

Took me 40 years or so to figure it out.  I did the dreaming, fantasizing, and wishing to be a woman bit on and off for years.  Finally gave in, and I'm glad I did, I'm now a much better person than who I was.

I was about 4 or 5. I'm 59 now. I've gone through phases of suppressing it since at the time there wasn't anything I could do about it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So now for a different view...

None of this made any sense to me or had any sort of a label or even words to describe. I just grew up this way and turned out to be a girl. I was very atypical in all aspects but never gave much thought about what it could all mean. I had been taken to many doctors because I was so outwardly different and was having social problems because of it but that usually just ended up with my folks being told I was "probably gay". This doctor part started in 1965 when I was ten years old.

I never thought I was gay and as I got older, wasn't really interested in boys or girls but I knew something was "wrong with me" because I wasn't the least bit anything like other boys and had always seen myself through the perspective of being a girl. Even at 15 when I came out to my mother for the first time since I was very young and had all the things I was trying then say suppressed, neither I nor my folks still knew what was going on. During one of her supportive "it's okay if you are gay" talks, I flatly said "I am not gay, I'm a girl and always have been and always will be".

Her reply was something like "we've always known who you were and were just waiting for you to say it". WTF? We, or at least I still didn't understand or know what I was or what I had to do or what any of this meant. Sure, I and everybody knew who Christine Jorgensen was but I didn't grasp the similarity to my situation. To me, she was just some famous guy that was in the Army and had a sex change and I just grew up being a girl. I couldn't see how she applied to my life  as I unconsciously and progressively moved beyond the middle of androgyny all the while becoming more horrified at the thought of being any more physically masculine.

By the time I was 16, strangers were gendering me as a female which made going to school as some kind of alien boy freak morbidly distressing as well as dangerous. Much due to my parents hard work, they found a specialist they wanted to take me to and it wasn't until then when I was 17 that transsexual entered the conversation for the first time. Okay, I guess if that's what I had to be to get things sorted out,then that's what I was? I started hormones in the summer of 1972 before my senior year of high school. Although there was little perceptual difference or much change involved, I completed officially transitioning immediately after I graduated.

To be honest, I've still never figured this out nor do I really care to or give it an explanation or label. If the point of this thread is to talk about suppressed feelings and denial and then some sort of awakening, I never had that opportunity or that burden.

I am another one for whom the story is eerily familiar.  All my life, I felt I didn't fit in.  I wanted to be a girl when I was as young as  seven years old.  I cross-dressed in my mother's clothes in my early teens.  I always felt an attraction to the feminine and asked my mother to teach me to bake and to knit.  I dreamed about being a woman.

And yet, I never connected the dots for a long time.  I even wondered if I was a transsexual (the word transgender wasn't in circulation back then) and talked myself out of it.  I didn't really want to be a woman, I just thought I did!     It is hard, in hindsight, to believe the power of my denial.

Finally, at age 60, I encountered a transgender person in real life, not making a big splash or drawing attention to herself or being hassled, just getting on with her life with a bit of dignity and class.  That led me to google up Susan's Place, and here I am, two years later.

Lisa, I think your story really supports the idea of the gender spectrum.  I went to an all boys Catholic High School starting in 1972 and there were 2 boys in particular out of a freshman class of about 500 who were obviously very different in terms of being very, very feminine and unable to hide it.  One boy had a pretty hard time. The other was kind of protected by his friends.  I remember once seeing him at the college swimming pool on the campus we shared with the college.  He was wearing a woman's 2 piece swimming suit, without the bra top.  I remember thinking at the time, "How the heck is he getting away with this?" I was quite shocked.  My experience of Catholic school was more like a Lord of the Flies kind of scenario.  I think his parents probably made all the difference for him.

My mom never created a safe space to come out to her.  She was always threatening me with sending me to military school and telling me to be a man-boy.  She hated sissies.  She totally abandoned me when I came out to her as gay when I was 36.

Any kind of story is welcome, Lisa.  I'm specifically fascinated by ones about how people can just have no inkling of exactly what's bothering them until they stumble across the concept of transexuality, you match up with that for sure, albeit from the opposite perspective of the rest of us, I think.  That you couldn't relate to Jorgeson is quite something, that you were so certain of your gender identity that the simple fact of how you were assigned at birth had no bearing on it is remarkable.

I had a bit of a shock in the last few days with a pinched nerve in my shoulder freaking me out with pseudo stroke symptoms - turns out it's nothing of the sort.  Had happened before, too.  Took me mind off dysphoria for a bit, but now I once again am repelled by all this body hair.  That was quick...

Despite cross dressing (in private) since I was 15, it took until I was around 30 to realize it. It still took me another 12 years of fear & depression to actually do something about it. I think one of the biggest reasons it didn't click, despite the cross dressing, was a subconscious distrust of women due to the childhood trauma of my mother trying to kill me (and my sister) at age 11.
One of the things that made me realize the truth was in fact working with a transgender woman. She didn't pass very well, so everyone in the office knew. They were polite to her in person, but made jokes behind her back. Seeing that treatment is one of the reasons why I was scared to transition.

When I was about 5 me and my friend Greg and my sister Kelly were playing in the back yard. It was summer, a hot day. Greg said it's hot lets take off our shirts! His came right off, kellys came right off and Greg hollered, girls cant take their shirts off! Mine was slow coming off, and when he said that mine came off but went right back on. that when I knew I was a girl to. Having a sister help me so much, I could play with her toys and hang around her friends. But I hit that stage where that didn't work anymore. What really did me in was an argument my parents had one night when I was 7. It was the worst one they ever had[and they had bad ones, cops and all].It was so traumatic I had PTSD. 'If that's adults are like don't want to grow up'. In a lot of ways I didn't. I didn't know what PTSD was until the 80's and the Viet-Nam vets were allover T.V. I had heard about Transsexuals and sex changes, but was in survival mode. So no transition for me.                                                                                                                                           There's something that nobody says that I think a lot of do that we don't realize or recognize. Most CIS gender women have an empathy for others, willing to put others first. And I think we do that to, we are women at heart! We know what we need to do, but we don't. Because we know how much it will hurt others we delay, and then it turns into years and denial and then decades. You try to be all the man you can. Then you hit the wall. I had put my dream in a box and buried it in my  soul.                                                                                                                                                                      Now 40 yrs. later a near death medical event dug up my dream, I hit the wall. My medical event killed my testicles, and without them I cant sustain my false manliness any longer. So now I'm transitioning whether I like it or not. I'm built female except for the obvious parts so being a 'man' has always been hard. Now I have to be me, and I've never been happier! Scared but HAPPY! What I'm getting at is a lot of us know when we're young that we're different, sometimes we even know we are girls. But we don't know what to do or which to go, or we just need someone to tell us that our S.O.'s will be OK, 'they'll live', do what you need to do. Sometimes look back and dream about that nurse or [Shhh... housewife!] that I wanted to be. So when you run across that "girly-boy" or somebody that's questioning, give them that nudge in the right direction, you just might save their life.

Quote from: Janes Groove on July 31, 2017, 11:28:39 AM
Lisa, I think your story really supports the idea of the gender spectrum.

I'm not sure I know what you mean and am probably misunderstanding? When I think of the spectrum of gender beyond the binary, it brings to mind those that fall in between the two extremes. I never learned how to boy or be masculine. Oh, no doubt I knew what the rules were as unquestionably I was reminded of them sometimes violently but they just never applied to me or fit who I was.

Quote from: Lucy Ross on July 31, 2017, 05:44:51 PM
Any kind of story is welcome, Lisa.  I'm specifically fascinated by ones about how people can just have no inkling of exactly what's bothering them until they stumble across the concept of transexuality, you match up with that for sure, albeit from the opposite perspective of the rest of us, I think.  That you couldn't relate to Jorgeson is quite something, that you were so certain of your gender identity that the simple fact of how you were assigned at birth had no bearing on it is remarkable.

There were a lot of things I didn't understand as a kid. I knew I was supposed to be a boy and act like one but none of that ever clicked with me and it was confusing because that's not what I felt myself to be. I had no real concept of a gender identity but just knew I was more like girls than I was any boy and this was something that just came through in my personality, manner, friends and play as something apparent to everyone. There was no hiding or pretending and this came with repercussions throughout my childhood and early adolescence . The feelings I had didn't bother me. I was just me and have been just me my entire life. It was the feedback I got from the rest of the world for being me that was problematic.

Who I am became less of an issue for me socially after I got out of high school and was able to drop the imposed constraints of and false pretense of even being a boy but I was so bad at it anyway that living completely as a girl was the only thing that made sense. Even my parents thought so and this was in 1973 when such things were practically unheard of so there must have been some pretty strong evidence for them to be convinced I was on the right path. There wasn't really any sort of decision about this or great OMG moment of revelation about what I was or what it was called, it's just who I grew up to be. It sounds pretty ludicrous when I think about it but since I've lived my entire adult life as a woman from the time I was a teenager, I don't think about it that much unless I'm browsing through and posting on these forums.

In recent years with all the media attention and awareness, it's kind of hard to ignore that all this trans business is a part of my history too even though I've never been a part of the trans community and as strange as it sounds, this is all kind of new to me

Reading back through this thread is painful and unsettling as it is insightful in several different ways. First the obvious: The years of denial and suppression of that voice clawing at the back of your mind and the resulting turmoil and chaos when the beast finally finds its way out is heartbreaking but yet those with stories of survival and resolution are inspiring. Then next comes my own feelings about how the commonalities and shared experiences that creates a bond between you all is one of the things that makes me feel othered or like somewhat of an outsider.

Emotionally, I can empathize as I've had my own share of trials and tribulations from being this way but I simply have a hard time imagining what a complete and total flustercluck dealing with this later in life must be. I don't think I would have ever had the strength to do what some of you go through or been up to the challenges of potentially losing so much and making such drastic changes.

What is it about people with lives like mine that makes us different? It has to be more than just a compassionate and understanding family environment , doesn't it? I don't think my life would have been any different than it was if I was from the wrong family and had I not had the opportunities that I did, I know I would have died rather than grow up to be a man.  Is this just weakness or is it something else? Is there no difference other than a matter of timing?

These are the kinds of things I wonder about now.

As I understand it. The spectrum includes the 2 extremes.