Quote from: karenk1959 on August 25, 2017, 11:27:34 AM
The problem I have with CD, and others may have this experience as well, is that as an early child my desires to be a girl were squashed by my parents. I have blocked out a lot of my childhood, but I do have a memory of my mother telling my neighbor that I was no longer going to be playing with my girlfriend across the street. I can remember playing Barbies, but probably played dress up or saw her dressed in leotards and tights because I fantasized often about being a pretty girl in ballet class.
When I reached puberty, I often wore my mother's lingerie when no one was home, but likely my parents figured out I was doing it as it was unlikely I put everything back the way it was and I certainly would have stretched out my mother's stockings. I also experience a bad visceral response to confrontation, especially with verbally abusive and offensive people so I am pretty sure I was abused as a child, definitely mentally and possibly physically.
Anyway, I learned at a very young age that wanting to be a girl and CD were forbidden and shameful. When we are young, we don't know yet that our parents might be wrong. So now, when I CD, excitement about expressing my femininity is tainted by feelings of guilt and shame. It is difficult to unlearn what was deeply ingrained in my brain at such a young age. I am 58 now, so those thoughts have been plaguing me for a lot of years.
And yes, I have a good therapist if anyone is asking.
Shame & Guilt are my oldest friends and still come around to visit a lot more often then I would like them to. Like you I was told in no uncertain terms at the age of 4 "Boys do wear dresses". I didn't quite get the message back then but a year or so later for sure. It only got worse in my teens when mom found my stash like 2 or 3 times and I was shanghaied off to the therapist.... Can you say the product of 1st generation immigrants in a blue collar city? Plus Irish Catholic and the even scarier Russian Orthodox Catholic?
I doubt for some, or even most, it truly goes away. I do admire the type of person who can proclaim "F the world, do what you want and don't give a rat's behind what other's think" It's so not me. Today I am in a far far better place then I was 8 years ago. It took a good 3 years and a lot of effort in healing myself from the inside, a couple of special angels in my TG Support group who always seemed to be there when I needed them, a bit of help from a therapist. I also had a good 30 years of my wife trying to get me to put into practice the lessons and examples of what a person can be.... If You Allowed Yourself To.
Ahhh Shame & Guilt again. Being what I was I wasn't allowed joy or happiness.
During these past 8 years I did try to allow myself just a weee tiny bit to, and liked what I began to see. Shame & Guilt never liked the idea of me having new friends like that. The screaming often got louder from them. I persisted in listening to the whispers. The voice telling me "It's OK" "You ARE worthwhile".
Even after that lightning bolt hit me in my therapist's office when for the upteenth time I said "I know I am a transexual woman" and taking full emotional ownership of who I am, There is still more then me in the world I live in. Que Fear, and Transphobia, both internalized and externalized. Having lived as a chameleon for all these decades I know all too well what many people really think and feel about "Those sort of people" when away from the PC police. Heck, just look at the various media firestorms of anything trans these days. Nothing like being a walking pinata I say. I grew up being a big fat stuttering mouth breathing 4 eyed target. I know what that live is like.
Shame, Guilt, Fear are all VERY powerful demotivating forces. But, for me, they in time were no match to the sheer joy of being out in the real world as the real me. No match for the utter confusion of having and dealing with all sorts of emotions, vs having none, other then anger. No contest at all when it comes to the Pride of Ownership living and breathing in a body and the strange pleasurable new sensations I have, vs the one I always wished I didn't have
I am still plagued by Shame & Guilt. I just won't allow them to run and ruin my life anymore. I got wise to their ways and their trick of manipulating me. I may take a few days, or weeks, to catch on to them.
