Quote from: Devlyn Marie on January 09, 2018, 11:32:01 AM
The hardest part of it for me has been using this site for support while constantly reading how my stripe of transgender doesn't belong in the T.  Being rejected on a support site is pretty demoralizing.

Who said such a thing? I'll totally beat them up for you. (By which I mean I'll flail some slaps in their general vicinity as per my life long definition of a fight.)

Having an non accepting wife who states "stop being trans or get out"

Needless to say I'm looking for a new job and a place to live.

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I think self acceptance and dealing with people who don't want you to transition.

So far the hardest part is facing things I've buried for so long. Actually just gender itself. It's like if I could live an existence where gender, my gender especially, doesn't matter than I would be at peace. But no there is no peace in hiding.

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The hardest part has been surgery.

I felt happy about coming out. It made sense.
I felt happy about going on T too - made even more sense.

But surgery somehow has been the most intense thing of all and this is just the first one.
I pretty much underestimated its emotional/physical toll.

Am I happy I had the surgery? Yes

Having to wait for such a long time (took me three years of fighting to get where I am now) was demoralizing too. But I can hardly remember what that felt like. There's hope

Hardest part for me has been keeping up with my deception, with telling my gender therapists that I was okay and had no severe mental health issues when I actually did, out of fear of being denied to transition medically. Not because I felt bad over lying, but because it was hard to keep track of what I had been honest about and what was lies and making it sound believable. I don't regret having taken that route, but it's definitely been very hard on me. But oh boy, do I look forward to after my SRS hopefully daring to open up about those issues I've kept hidden for more than the past decade now. Only a year or two left, shouldn't be too difficult to power through now. I've been very worried about the therapists possibly denying me further transitioning if they'd know those things about me, and I just never dared to take that risk after I've done some research online about it that further proved my concerns, although it's been very difficult to find the answers I've been looking for and I'm still not sure. It's too rare. But I hope that when the only thing transition-wise I'll have to worry about is keep getting my testosterone shots, I might dare to take that risk.

The thing is that I knew I could not continue living without transitioning at the point I came out as trans, so trying to treat the other issues first just wasn't a possibility. I also knew myself well enough to know those issues are separate from me being trans but that no therapist would just take my word for it. Basically, I knew I needed transition first, then deal with the trauma-aftermaths, not the other way around. But the system doesn't work that way. Had I been open about it they would have (very likely) refused to let me transition before having dealt with the other stuff first which would (also likely) have postponed my transition by at least several years which I wouldn't have been able to do cause of my dysphoria. It was a "catch 22" that went on for years and constantly kept messing with me, that I had to be mentally stable to transition but I couldn't be mentally stable without transitioning. This was by far the greatest hurdle ever in my life, transition related or otherwise, because it felt so hopeless and never-ending with no exits or solutions available. I've no idea how but eventually I guess the gender therapists started believing my lies and deemed me "stable enough" and from there on it has been going in the right direction for me. This was my decision but I DON'T recommend anyone else doing something similar. It's soul-wrecking with a high risk of backfiring on you. But I'm a stubborn idiot, I guess. It changed me, for better but mostly for worse.

Otherwise, the waiting itself and the uncertainty of not knowing if I could ever get to start hrt or not, weighing whether or not it was worth it to self-medicate with hrt or not, totally wore me out in the beginning of my transition as well. And also that I had way too high expectations of testosterone once I did get to start taking it definitely was a struggle for me too, when it didn't meet those expectations. Facing the reality that the physical aspect I've always been the most dysphoric about I might not be able to change at all, most certainly hasn't (and still isn't) easy for me to deal with.

With that said, my struggles with passing, accepting myself after or during my denial and even learning to stop sweaping my important issues under the rug cause they "don't feel that bad and I'm probably just overreacting" have been easy in comparison for me.

The initial coming out. Actually telling people the secret I've hidden away for so long was literally the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Once that was done with, everything else has just kind of flowed along (although sometimes over some rough waves).

Quote from: Sarah_P on February 02, 2018, 04:53:48 PM
The initial coming out. Actually telling people the secret I've hidden away for so long was literally the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Once that was done with, everything else has just kind of flowed along (although sometimes over some rough waves).

I can kind of relate to this a little.  When I first told the doctor that I was Trans it was probably one of the most difficult things I have done.  And now about 8 people know about me - most being medical.

Losing my wife.

Waiting....waiting.....and moooooreeeeeee waiiiiitiiiing!



I've been joking that they shouldn't really examine any psychological things on transpeople, but how well you can wait and handle that stress.

I would fail those tests

Everything is hard. But I think what's most important for me right now is that I'm healthy and active. I've pulled through my deepest and darkest depressive episodes when I focused on my health and well being again. This is the same thing. It actually feels like I practiced and practiced.. and practiced some more for this. Transitioning that is.

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I'm going to add to what I said earlier.

It's also very hard if you're putting trust in medical professionals and they themselves don't know enough about the subject to give you the correct care. Or don't for other reasons.

Unfortunately I've had two incidents so far in which medical professionals "failed" in this. The first was when my specialist psychiatrist (one of them, luckily I had two and the other wasn't like this one) was fired from the clinic. They wouldn't say exactly why except that his goals were clashing with the clinic's goals, which doesn't sound good, and I'd noticed he seemed to be stalling me on the topic of surgery. I wasn't keen to see him again, but he'd been assigned to me so I said I'd wait another 6 months before the next appointment in which I could ask to be referred to a surgeon. I'd already asked him before and he'd evaded agreeing to refer me. I could have been strung along for a very long time if he hadn't been fired and my prescribing doctor taken his place. I don't know. It seemed like a lot was being placed in the hands of this person, and my only way out would have been to complain about him - but I wasn't even sure if he was stalling me. When he was fired I knew, but before that, it was difficult to know what was going on exactly. I only had suspicions.

The other was my GP. She's a nice person and quite sympathetic to my problems, but she doesn't know much about T dosages. She lowered my dose too much after 6 months thinking it was too high, so much it was bringing back female symptoms. After that psychiatrist of mine got fired, I saw my original prescribing doctor again and he noticed how low my T was in the last blood tests. He immediately put me back on the original dose he'd given me, but I'm still dealing with the effects of it having been low.

It brings home just how much you rely on people to know what they are doing. If they don't, or if they have some malintent, you're not in a good place. That's been quite tough in transition so far - things going wrong that aren't really in my control. At least I've learned something about a threshold for T dosing, I guess... and also how to spot someone who seems to be stalling.

I hope nothing goes wrong with the surgery coming up soon.   

Kylo, unfortunately this is a lesson that many of us including me learn the hard way. We have to know as much or more than our doctors in order to ensure we are receiving the proper treatment. Any doctor unwilling to openly share knowledge and the decision making process needs to be looked on with suspicion. Not only are we the only ones who can determine if we are transgender we are the only ones who can determine the correct course of our treatment. The doctors are there to help us avoid mistakes but the doctors don't always know it all.

Quote from: Dena on February 03, 2018, 10:25:06 AM
Kylo, unfortunately this is a lesson that many of us including me learn the hard way. We have to know as much or more than our doctors in order to ensure we are receiving the proper treatment. Any doctor unwilling to openly share knowledge and the decision making process needs to be looked on with suspicion. Not only are we the only ones who can determine if we are transgender we are the only ones who can determine the correct course of our treatment. The doctors are there to help us avoid mistakes but the doctors don't always know it all.

I agree, it's a hard lesson learned. I didn't trust my own instincts enough with some things and should probably have asked for another psychiatrist.

When it comes to the effects of hormones... I just didn't know enough yet about the levels and their effects to even be suspicious. One doctor gave me one dosage, another suggested I drop it by a quarter... I didn't know who was right. One was a "starting dose", the other was a "correction" based on the build up over time of T levels in the blood... the GP gave me her reasoning and even showed me the comparison of the level I had with average cis male levels, and it was on the top of the threshold at the time. So I figured she was probably right. When I saw the prescribing specialist again a year later, though, he said she'd made a mistake and that it shouldn't be considered "high" for someone like me. I really was stumped. But I'll go with his assessment since it was true - dropping a quarter of the dose had started to have negative effects.

Never been in a situation before in which two doctors disagree on a dosage of something, but I have to go with the one who seems to be the higher authority and whose predictions were right about symptoms. It seems it took that experience to know as well that dropping down to a certain level did have tangible negative effects on me. I know now that he's right but... until seeing it for myself I really had no idea who was correct. 

I've always been suspicious of medical professionals since having some bad experiences...

You can't trust no one but yourself, unfortunately!

I went through 3 "therapists" in transition before I found the right one.

The first ones had me wait for six months, only to make me feel dysphoric and belittled right in the first conversation: I left. With the second one I had a series of quarrels about the content of their questions. They were invasive and triggering. I went into a severe depression. After another six months, I gave it another shot: didn´t work out.

The year after that I found a therapists who has respect for ME rather than the objective, to find out whether I´m really trans. The whole process took some 2,5 years.

If I had waited around all that time and not start, things would not have ended well.
So instead I took the other route to HRT. But I´m still glad that I started T when I did.

For me, by far it was dealing with my parents. It's hard to believe I started transitioning 7.5 years ago (and I'm 3.5 years post op) and they still call me by the name they gave me at birth. I've more or less given up on it. The last I saw them until recently was at my brother's wedding in May of 2014 and they made a huge scene as they somehow knew I was about to go for GCS in July of that year. 6 months ago we finally started talking again... and when I go visit my brother in AZ (where they also live) I see them as well now too. It still isn't entirely comfortable - and thankfully I get to stay with my brother who is more than accepting of my transition.

I can actually say that my friends have made transition easy for me. Some have even "forgotten" I am trans and have been with me all the way through it.

The hardest part of transition for me was dealing with an escalating sense of dysphoria.  Because once I'd begun transition, I'd committed myself emotionally to being gendered female, by myself and others, and so I became even more acutely aware of when I was being misgendered and why.  Which, in turn, ramped up my dysphoria.  Others have said it's the waiting that's hard, and I agree -- specifically when it comes to how long it actually takes to get everything in order to the point where one isn't being misgendered anymore. 

Quote from: HappyMoni on January 09, 2018, 06:16:31 AM
The hardest is waiting for progress and fear that it won't come.

This is certainly up there, for me. I don't believe I'll ever pass without surgery, and don't know if surgery will ever be available. Passing, for me, isn't about dysphoria, or even social anxiety; it's about authenticity of self-expression. I want my appearance to reflect who I am inside. I know at my age there are probably limits to how far I can go in accomplishing this, and it doesn't shatter me; but it does get me down.

It's hard knowing I'm a girl and that I'll never look like one -- not completely. I try not to dwell on it, though. I think if I did, I might come to really regret it.