My counselor doesn't feel I'm "ready" for RLE. She's made it clear that she believes 18 is not the right time to make this sort of a decision. She won't even let me consider "trying on the role," seeing if it really fits. She doesn't think I'm ready for it at all, so I asked her what I was ready for. She doesn't seem to be competent as a counselor because she acts like I am not capable of anything. That seems to be a bit heavy-handed. I'd like to feel like I am making progress in my own self discovery.

She told me to think about it more. But God damn it, I've thought about it for over a year. I think now is the time to start trying things, then sponging from the experiences and thinking more. I want to take action. Heck, that's supposedly what my gender is about, right? I have something in me that drives me to get the job done. And yet I have to sit back and take it.

Today is what exposed me to what is most irritating. My name. I worked at a place where people volunteer to build houses. I had to introduce myself as my legal female name. Ever since then, they were being overly sweet to me, the construction men. Not only that, but the director of the team invited me to "woman's day." And later, my grandma told me, "a girl really should learn about things like construction and mechanics." I've been driving nails into walls, fixing cars, today fixed a washing machine, and instead of people saying, "Wow, that's a nice hobby," instead they congratulate the "young independent woman." It's irritating.

They don't notice my cringes. My, "well..."s. My "yeah... thanks, I think"s. No, they think I'm just shy. They can't tell I'm offended. They don't see my fists ball up, or my legs tense. They don't notice that it irritates me that I'm just some "sweet young girl trying boyish things-- HOW CUTE!"

So my only tank top that flattens my chest out satisfactorily broke. My damn chest broke the tank top. I walked around hunched all day because the shirt I was wearing pronounced my chest (I was borrowing a polo from my step mom... it seemed androgynous enough until I put it on).

I'm biting the hell out of my nails again, because my anxiety is up through the roof. I forgot to call my counselor to tell her when the next appointment would be okay. I almost don't want to see her again, because she's determined, like everyone else, to say, "It's a really long process," and then do nothing. She's MAKING it long.

I'm spiraling into another depression. I'm hating my situation. I'm growing to be very angry. I don't want to go to school and have people keep calling me "princess." I'm sick of all of it. I want to be acknowledged for who I am, but in order to do that, I need to start full time. And I want my full time effort to count. I want it to count so that I can transition before I'm 30. I don't want to shoot all my young years down the goddamn toilet.

For once my trans complaints have nothing to do with my lack of penis! I have more important things to care about.

Your counsellor sounds worse than my (ex-)shrink, and thats saying something!  If you can't make a decision about your life, and a reversible decision at that, when does she think you can?

If you think that its the right thing to do for you, then just go for it.  You don't need a therapists permission to live as you, or to explore who you are.  And its not like you can't go back if you found that you're not ready for it yet.

Your counselor sounds like she's confusing the roles of parent and therapist. I really don't think she should be making decisions for you, but rather helping you decide what to do.

~Kate~

I agree with Kate. You should do what you feel is right.

I agree with Jenny. You don't need a counselor's permission to start living the way you wanna live. Do what you can when you're ready.

Quote from: Elwood on July 18, 2008, 09:00:51 PM
She won't even let me consider "trying on the role," seeing if it really fits.

I know that you're smart enough to know this, but PLEASE don't let your psy hold you back.  It is not her life.  She is there to play devil's advocate, sure, but that's it.

As transpeople, we're taught that we must abide by the rules set down by the mental health professionals who guide our decisions.  Just don't lose your autonomy, okay?

Wishing you luck,
Lia

sounds like a bitch to me... who is she to say that you cant dress, act, and introdue yourself as a guy.

Tons of peeps transition at 18 and even younger. In most cases, that's preferable to waiting and accumulating more years of suffering under your belt. It's not like you're going to be more sure of your gender any better at 30 than you do now.
I don't see her point, unless she's doubting your transness or something.
Find a new therapist.

I'm going to be unequivocal about this:


Fire her!


There are other therapists out there.  You're paying her to help you and it sounds like she's doing just the opposite.  She sounds worse than a gatekeeper!


Be proactive and take control, it's YOUR transition.

It sounds to me like your therapist isn't trained in GID.  I totally agree with all the others.

Beyond is totally correct.

FIRE HER! Immediately if not sooner.  There are more caring therapist out there.

You are your own man, Sweetheart.  So stand up and be counted for the man you are.  No one can stand in your way.  You will never really know until you start.

All my love,
Janet

I don't understand how she can stop you? Why can't you just present as male and pursue a name change then see another counselor?

Either way, she sounds crap 

You know what feels right for you Elwood, take the next step. The therapist might be playing devil's advocate, or they might not be the right counselor for you... But you can proceed w/ out their approval.

Z

I think Devil's Advocate is a very likely approach. I'm going to have to assert my readiness. It isn't up to her to know when I feel ready...

I told my dad about this and he's kind of upset too. She isn't really addressing my GID or anxiety issues. So I'm still back where I started. He thinks I should have a therapist in addition to this counselor... Heck, or maybe stop seeing her entirely... I like her, she's sweet and she listens. But she isn't helping. I don't think she knows that she isn't helping. Last time I was sobbing in her office because she made me feel trapped. She made me feel like I have to be female for "so long" before I know that I'm male. She didn't say this; in fact, she's very polite to me, doesn't address me as female, doesn't disrespect my gender identity at all. Instead, she just stomps on my transition parade. Says I'm not ready. You know what? Maybe if I started transition, my life would be a whole lot easier. I could come out and have no one question me.

I'm ready to tell people I'm trans, gay, queer, whatever. I'm not ashamed anymore.

Quote from: Elwood on July 19, 2008, 11:56:21 AM
I think Devil's Advocate is a very likely approach. I'm going to have to assert my readiness. It isn't up to her to know when I feel ready...

... She isn't really addressing my GID or anxiety issues. So I'm still back where I started. ... I like her, she's sweet and she listens. But she isn't helping. I don't think she knows that she isn't helping. Last time I was sobbing in her office because she made me feel trapped. She made me feel like I have to be female for "so long" before I know that I'm male. She didn't say this; in fact, she's very polite to me, doesn't address me as female, doesn't disrespect my gender identity at all. Instead, she just stomps on my transition parade. Says I'm not ready. You know what? Maybe if I started transition, my life would be a whole lot easier. I could come out and have no one question me.

I'm ready to tell people I'm trans, gay, queer, whatever. I'm not ashamed anymore.

Elwood, no matter who you have as a therapist or counselor you also need to tell them how you feel about them and their approaches to things. Therapy is always a two-way street. Therapists don't somehow become immune to our own passions, experiences, thoughts, feelings and beliefs just because we are in one chair and a client is in another.

A session is never about just one person's feelings and issues. Most clients, and a lot of therapists, tend to either be unaware of this or, in the case of the therapists, actively ignore this, preferring to set a scene of one who is knowledgeable and competent, not quite human ourselves. In my experience, neither clients nor therapists get to a core-relationship with one another when this approach is used.

Part of your therapy is to learn to directly approach your feelings and express them. A large part of the reason she's there is to "mirror" that sort of relationship with you in a "safe setting." When things like the above arise, you've truly got to inform her of your own feelings and perceptions of her. That may throw her the first time you do it; but it's a way of "taking charge of your own transition," your own life and should actually show her, if she is adept, that the approach she's using isn't working.

You want responsibility, hon, take it in this as well.



Nichole

P.S. "Firing" is all well and good, but we often do so, I think, as a way of running once more because we feel we are "not understood." The best way I think to be "understood" is to lay it out there. It shows you are responsibile and that you are no longer willing to "run" from things. Actions of patients always speak louder than their words. Trust it.

Nichole is right. At least tell your therapist how you feel about her before you move on. I used to wonder how my therapy sessions were helping me at all a while back, seeing as I didn't understand what my therapist was trying to get at with me so I came straight out and asked her one day and she very politely, very respectfully answered my questions and told me where she was trying to go with me. Communication has to be a two way street because who knows -- maybe you'll bring the issue up next time you see your therapist and she'll tell you the method behind her madness and it'll click for you.

I came out to my therapist this week and told her I'm a boy and I want to start my RLE and she agrees with me that I have to take things slow and really know if this is who I am and what I want and she took it all rather surprised but still rather well and open minded. Honestly she DID play devil's advocate and asked me how I knew I wasn't a butch lesbian rather than a guy, but she still heard me out.

I had some trust issues with her before this session and now that I see she took things the way she did and didn't try to force her beliefs on me I think she's earned more of my trust and I'm glad she's so open minded. We're probably going to keep talking about it for a while before we move any further, but the point is that I CAN talk to her about it and that she's NOT going to stop me from trying RLE but thinks it's far too soon to think about surgeries or T. I agree with her wholeheartedly and I'm glad she's going to work with me. So if in the end your therapist is adamant about working against you rather than with you, even after you've told her how you felt and told her you've been thinking about this for a year (which is WAY longer than I've been thinking about it) and she still refuses to let you do RLE then yes, it's time to find a new therapist. Besides, it IS your choice and she can't stop you from changing your clothes or your looks any more than a teacher could. She's not your mom and though she has been helpful, it's your call in the end, not hers.

I hate conflict. I'm afraid that if I tell her I think she isn't helping that I'm telling her she isn't doing her job. And I don't feel like she isn't doing her job. She's the wrong person for me, I believe. I want action. I need information. She won't give it to me, or can't. Rather than getting in her face about it, I'm probably just going to quietly switch to a therapist who specializes in gender issues.

The thing is that this is not therapy. It's counseling. If she was my therapist I'd confront her. But she's not. She isn't the person who helps me. She isn't the person who approves HRT or monitors RLE. She doesn't do any of that. In the big picture, she's useless to my situation.

I don't think I am necessarily "running away" from her. I know her attempts are futile, I know she does not have the certification to help me, so I see no reason in wasting more sessions with her... Doing that would only make things take even longer.

You connect with this therapist on some level, so maybe giving her a chance to get out of your way and be more help to you is a good play.  It goes along with telling her how you feel, including that you feel you will need to get a new therapist if she doesn't take a new tact.

As far as getting an additional therapist, shopping around might not be a bad idea.  I wonder how you would do with a male therapist?  But therapists don't like to "split therapy," so you will probably have to do it in secret.

Doing what's best for you, perhaps you might give her the ultimatum and then meanwhile shop around in secret.

Added:  We cross posted, so I will add that yeah, if this lady is not a GID counselor then you should ditch her and get real help.

Quote from: Elwood on July 19, 2008, 12:58:27 PM
I hate conflict. I'm afraid that if I tell her I think she isn't helping that I'm telling her she isn't doing her job. And I don't feel like she isn't doing her job. She's the wrong person for me, I believe. I want action. I need information. She won't give it to me, or can't. Rather than getting in her face about it, I'm probably just going to quietly switch to a therapist who specializes in gender issues.

The thing is that this is not therapy. It's counseling. If she was my therapist I'd confront her. But she's not. She isn't the person who helps me. She isn't the person who approves HRT or monitors RLE. She doesn't do any of that. In the big picture, she's useless to my situation.

I don't think I am necessarily "running away" from her. I know her attempts are futile, I know she does not have the certification to help me, so I see no reason in wasting more sessions with her... Doing that would only make things take even longer.

I'm gonna be brutally honest with you here, love, that just is not true, what's bolded. Lately on this Forum you've been all about conflict and the conflict is in you.

There, brutal honesty.

You don't want to face the conflict within yourself and I know exactly where you are because I've been there done that in exactly the same situation only embracing another sex than what you are embracing.

How much longer, Elwood? A week, two weeks. It's gonna take longer than that find and to get approval for another therapist. And the conflict I am proposing is simply talking about how you feel. Not yelling, not stamping around, just plainly, quietly and reasonably saying "When I heard what you just said it made me start crying inside. I feel like you are simply not hearing me. I feel like ..." blah, blah.

I'm sorry, imo that's not conflict, that is facing up to what's within you and exposing it to another. And from my own experience with myself, THAT is the absolute toughest thing to do in transition. To avoid it and go to someone who is gonna co-sign my or your or her BS is to avoid what the real problem is. Facing myself.

Of course you have to handle it your way. Your decision, entirely.

But as a group, I think we run as far and fast as possible from actually expressing ourselves. Sri Ramakrishna said 150 years ago: "In order to find water a person doesn't dig thirty wells two feet deep; they dig one well sixty feet deep." In doing so he encapsulated "Therapy."

Respectfully,

Nichole

 

Quote from: trapthavok on July 19, 2008, 12:41:21 PMNichole is right. At least tell your therapist how you feel about her before you move on. I used to wonder how my therapy sessions were helping me at all a while back, seeing as I didn't understand what my therapist was trying to get at with me so I came straight out and asked her one day and she very politely, very respectfully answered my questions and told me where she was trying to go with me. Communication has to be a two way street because who knows -- maybe you'll bring the issue up next time you see your therapist and she'll tell you the method behind her madness and it'll click for you.

I came out to my therapist this week and told her I'm a boy and I want to start my RLE and she agrees with me that I have to take things slow and really know if this is who I am and what I want and she took it all rather surprised but still rather well and open minded. Honestly she DID play devil's advocate and asked me how I knew I wasn't a butch lesbian rather than a guy, but she still heard me out.

I had some trust issues with her before this session and now that I see she took things the way she did and didn't try to force her beliefs on me I think she's earned more of my trust and I'm glad she's so open minded. We're probably going to keep talking about it for a while before we move any further, but the point is that I CAN talk to her about it and that she's NOT going to stop me from trying RLE but thinks it's far too soon to think about surgeries or T. I agree with her wholeheartedly and I'm glad she's going to work with me. So if in the end your therapist is adamant about working against you rather than with you, even after you've told her how you felt and told her you've been thinking about this for a year (which is WAY longer than I've been thinking about it) and she still refuses to let you do RLE then yes, it's time to find a new therapist. Besides, it IS your choice and she can't stop you from changing your clothes or your looks any more than a teacher could. She's not your mom and though she has been helpful, it's your call in the end, not hers.

You make a very good point. I'd agree if she was a therapist. But she's a counselor. It's a little different... She doesn't take the active role of a therapist. She does not provide therapy. I talk, she listens. But that's it. A therapist actually gives input. All this counselor does is tells me to "think about it." I've thought about this for a long time. I've had these feelings most of my life. It took me until I was 17 to really make the connections and to understand. It wasn't easy to think a boy could be a girl physically. It's something that seems like an oxymoron and took forever for me to come up with on my own. But it explained everything...

I wish my counselor was like your therapist. She says I'm not even ready to explore my gender role. That's nonsense. I'm not ready to find out who I really am? It's bologna, and it's pissing me off. I need to work with someone who is going to work with me... all she's done so far the past 2 months (and 2 visits, I only am able to see her once a month, what the HELL) is tell me that I am not ready for anything. To "slow down." But I'm not moving quickly. Not any more quickly than any other transsexual. I've been very patient but my patience wears thin when I feel like nothing is happening.

My dad wants me to work with someone I see once a week. But for some reason, I just can't have that. I'm outraged. I want to punch clear through a wall (but I won't, my dad painted these walls himself!). I'm sick of all of this. I am so mad about this that I don't know what to do with myself.

I am so glad things are going well for you, havok. I hope that sometime I can reach that point of understanding with my therapist. I want to work with someone who can talk about it. Who doesn't make me feel alienated or stupid for feeling this way. I want to talk to someone who really understands what's going on. This counselor gets it. She knows about body dysphoria, she knows about the transgendered condition. She knows what it's like and what it includes. But she doesn't empathize with me. She doesn't really let me express it. She tells me to slow down, that, "it's not the right time to talk about that." I hate that ->-bleeped-<-. And all the while, she's so gentle and sweet that I can't get mad until after I leave her office.

But yeah. My counselor said "you need to think about it more." I said, "Think about it more? I've had over a year to think about it more. Yeah, I didn't come out until half a year ago but I was transgendered before I told anybody." She didn't shake her head, nod, or anything. She just paused, typed on her computer and said that I need to worry more about my anxiety. Well, my anxiety is up through the roof because I'm a queer that is being oppressed by everybody except other queers!

UGH.

Thanks for your response. It really helped me organize my thoughts.

Posted on: July 19, 2008, 11:30:45 AM

---

I'd like a male therapist... I don't want a female therapist to feel like I'm leaving her club or betraying the sisterhood or something. Maybe a guy would better understand. This guy, who I know his name and everything, works with transgendered people and understands transgender anxiety. He's perfect for me, and I hope he has an opening.

That's good. I hope you get in to see this new guy too. Thing is, if she can't even write you letters, you're really wasting your time anyway even if she were more helpful.
You're of age. There's really no reason for you to be held back in anyway.