Then again, she also agreed that I'm a boy in a girl's body and understood what I meant when I said agreed that I felt I should've been born a boy.

She almost called me handsome, by the way. That made me happy. It had something to do with me needing to love myself though.

I asked her if what I was feeling is normal and she started questioning what normal is.

I'll edit this when I get to a computer. I've been typing this all on my phone.

Edit:// Okay, continuing.

She tried to relate, I think, by saying she was a tomboy growing up. She said that women can do a lot more now and that I could get a more man-ish job if I wanted when I'm older. I kind of wanted to be all, "It's not really the same..." but you know...I don't know.

My ignorant therapist is trying to cure me. She thinks my PCOS is making me want to be a boy. Her solution? Lower my T levels -.-

Quote from: Alex201 on December 29, 2010, 12:24:40 PM
My ignorant therapist is trying to cure me. She thinks my PCOS is making me want to be a boy. Her solution? Lower my T levels -.-

>> Like that's going to help?

I agree with your therapist (if I'm understanding right)  You can still transition and all that, but you do need to love yourself too.  You need to know the good qualities of yourself and not be so down because of your situation all the time.  I mean, for example, if we were all just born guys, imagine how different we'd all be as people.  We would mature slower, be sucked into stereotypes more easily (because men tend to be more afraid of being labeled as gay), and in general have a different view of life.  So pretty much you gotta go, "Yeah, this sucks, but I'm still awesome and I'll be as happy as I can be in my  current situation." At least that's what I got from that.  Either way, you should keep it in mind.  (Same for Alex too)

Quote from: Rain on December 29, 2010, 01:03:56 PM
I agree with your therapist (if I'm understanding right)  You can still transition and all that, but you do need to love yourself too.

Exactly. If you're not happy with the person you are now transition isn't going to fix all that. You gotta accept yourself for your good points and your faults and realize that transition is only here to try and help bring those out.

Remember transition doesn't make you a different person or turn you into someone else you wish you could be. It's a physical change to help better present who you are to the world.

Quote from: Devyn on December 29, 2010, 12:16:36 PMMy therapist told me I need to love myself.

Please pardon my bluntness. This is my opinion and only that.

I don't know the exact context of your therapist's remark, but I am deeply suspicious of it.

If it was made in the context of "You have to love yourself before you can love other people," then it is, in my opinion, purest crap.

If it means that you have to love yourself as you are and not transition, even if you are definitely transsexual (or transgender) and decide that transition (or even partial transition) is what you need, then it is also purest crap, IMNSHO.

My reasoning on the second is in line with what a lot of other people here and elsewhere have said before, so I won't repeat that rhetoric.

But as for the first...we are members of a persecuted minority. Many of us have felt wrong from birth or earliest childhood. Many of us have kept our secret for years, even decades, because we think that we are not okay people and we know that other folks, particularly family and friends, will give us crap. Many of us experience both internal and external persecution well before coming out and transition.

This kind of experience does not lend itself well to a positive self-image. It tends to foster self-loathing and unhealthily low levels of self-doubt. We seek out others like ourselves so that we can get external validation, affection, and love. Other people's acceptance of us teaches us how to like ourselves.

Anecdotal evidence. For much of my life, I effing hated myself. For much of my life, I didn't like myself. When I met my ex, he knew about me early in the relationship, and his validation helped me to escape some of that negativity. But his acceptance only went so far, and I knew it. So I started regressing, hating myself again. I started to think I was okay only after I started coming to Susan's, going to support groups, and getting therapy from a therapist who regarded me as male from the very beginning. Do I like myself now? Yeah, a lot of the time I really do think I'm okay. But I never used to.

I don't know if it's good or healthy to "love yourself"--that sounds a lot like New-Age hogwash to me--but I think you need to at least like and accept yourself if you are to live a decent life. But humans are not built to just do that automatically, all by their lonesome. External validation, the love and acceptance of others--if you don't feel good about yourself, these forces will help you to get there. If you can do it yourself before you get those things, then you're rare indeed.

End of rant.

I loved myself enough to want to live, and to live I had to transition.  The only thing stopping me from offing myself in college was my cat; the only thing stopping me from offing myself in adulthood were my kids.

So yeah while it is kinda psycho-babblish, it's kinda true, too.

Jay

I'm also going to stick my neck out once again and talk about my personal experience only. I was deeply unhappy with who I was pre-transition, and no amount of time, introspection, or counseling was going to change that into self-liking. With other people's help, I accepted that I was transsexual (didn't like it, just realized that it was true), I accepted that transition was necessary, and I got to the point where I felt that only transition could help me. I guess genuine self-liking (and I'm still working on that) only came after transition. I needed both that and external validation.

Transition, and what it did for me, made it possible for me to live and start liking myself. So, in the words of the Beatles, I get by with a little help from my friends--including surgery and T.

I do not particularly like the person I was before transition. I was timid, dependent, scared, reclusive, uptight, self-deceptive, and dangerously depressed. Now I am still scared, but I'm facing my fears and conquering some of them. I'm becoming independent. I'm social, and I socialize with cool people I never would have looked at twice before transition. I'm much more relaxed and much more giving to other people. I know myself much better. It's true that I'm still me, but I'm a very different me, a much better me, and I now have characteristics that I never believed possible.

You might say this miracle wasn't worked by transition but by what I did with it. Well, sobeit. It would not have happened without transition.

Quote from: Kvall on December 29, 2010, 01:57:20 PM
I don't think your therapist "gets it" given the tomboy comment, and so it sounds (just from the vast history of conversations like this) like she is trying to dissuade you from physically transitioning. You may need to help bridge the gap there before she understands.

I think there needs to be a clear boundary between "loving yourself" and "loving your body." The two get conflated a lot because in practice most people with body image issues are responding to an external source and its ramifications on their self-perceived attractiveness, e.g., "I'm too fat/too skinny/my nose is too big/etc." I think these more reliably indicate one's relationship to self and not just body--they lead to "I'm unattractive, unworthy."

Agreed.  I saw a TV program once about a woman who had low self esteem and hated her body because she thought her breasts were too small.  Her therapist talked her into doing a nude photo shoot to make her feel more comfortable (although I have no idea how being naked in front of a stranger would make anyone feel comfortable) with her body, and when she looked at the pictures later I guess it somehow did. 

If your therapist's definition of "self love" is "making you A-Ok with your body," like this lady's therapist did, then I don't think she gets it either.  I know it's not the same for everyone, but if I had someone take pictures of me, targeting my female aspects that I hate, and then went over them with me telling me how beautiful and graceful I was and how I should accept and love my body, I would feel positively sick.  Trying to make me accept those parts would definitely hurt my self-esteem and "self love."

What is it with people?
Every time I've confided in someone about being trans, people tel me about being a tomboy and confused as a child comes up.
That and girlfriends they had (though now they'd never bla bla bla).. Sorry guys just boggles me..

Anyway, loving yourself could  mean loving who you're becoming.
I don't think your therapist meant just love yourself and get over the trans thing, I think s/he meant learn to get along with yourself in the mean while.. You're about to go through enormous changes, what you look like is about to change and emotionally things do change but you'll still be you.
What is it that you hate?
If she does think you can "get over" by loving yourself though then it is BS and you need a new therapist..
Good luck

/end rant

I see it as accepting yourself, warts and all, because you are more than your outward presentation. Even if there  are aspects of yourself that you wish changed, you are still a worth while person.  Okay, so if your chest is too small/too big for example, well it can be changed. It doesn't mean you are a failure in life and worthless, just that you would like to look different.
It's all about a sense of proportion and being realistic in our assessment of ourselves, and not treating every setback as a catastrophe.

Devyn, just be careful. Maybe she's trying to relate to you and make you more comfortable, and maybe she's setting you up for one of those "love yourself as you are" arguments. See where it leads, but stay alert. Sometimes well-meaning but uninformed therapists can influence you in harmful ways before you realize it.

A therapist I went to once when I was going to try and obtain my T letter told something similar. She told me that I should tell my body that I love it so I could be more comfortable with myself. That I shouldn't "hate" those parts of me that are female. She also told me that I should wait until I was 21 before deciding to begin HRT. Yeah, I dropped her after that session. It was only my 3rd one too.

I felt like she was pushing me to find acceptance as I was, which was also something she said to me. I had 18 years to do that. It's not working for me.