Just make sure they are licensed in Australia or that it will be recognized. I would ask for emails of clients they worked with in Australia.

That above is sound advice.

Mate, I know another transguy in the ACT/Queanbo area - gimme a couple of days and I will see if he can tell me who he saw/is seeing and might be able to help you find something...

Might be a little tricky as he is in the ADF and medically connected to them but still... Maybe if he's up for it I can give him your email address or something and you guys can chat and help each other out in whatever support way you might like?? I don't know!! Let me know if you're interested...

Can't make any promises dude - but I've already hit him up for details.

J

Thanks Aussie Jay, that would be really great

And okay, so you're saying I have to specifically talk to someone online who is licensed in Australia? Not another country?

I would suggest making sure any letter you get would be recognised in Australia - no point paying for it and going thru all that, getting your hopes up - to have it not recognised by a GP or Endo here hey...

Maybe you can take the medical standards to your GP or another psych and see if they will allow you to be assessed again?? I'm assuming you tried the gender clinic in Sydney??

Hang in there mate.

You can't take another year of this so you're tempted to give up.

But you can take an entire lifetime of being stuck in a girl body.

Yes, I can see how that works.

Many of us have had to wait a lot longer than we initially thought we were going to. Some chose to wait and do it all by the book, others chose to take an alternative approach.

From other responses, it doesn't look as though a year is standard in Australia so you may need to look back over your sessions to see if there was anything which caused all those different people to give you the same response and then revise how you present yourself to them.

It's a huge disappointment to have been told to wait another year but you can either use this time constructively or you can just sit there and say how unfair it all is and that you're just going to give up. You do realize that if you maintain that attitude, then the people you saw will have been proven right don't you? Are you really that committed to transitioning? Yes, a year without T sucks but surely a whole lifetime without T sucks even more.

You say that you can't afford to travel further afield. Actually, yes you can. You can cut out the things you don't really need and use the money saved from that. You can also work for it. People who really are that desperate make sure it happens. You may have been really unlucky and just need to see someone further away from you in order to get things started.

Max,

My psychiatrist in Sydney is actually based in Woollongong (he works there and travels to Sydney also), might be a bit closer to you? I don't think he will take on new patients as he is semi retired (if he will take you on I'd definitely recommend him) but he is a lovely guy and even if you called him to ask if he could take you on (if you're able to get to Wollongong)  and he said no he'd probably have ideas on psychiatrists in your area that aren't idiots that you could try. He has given me a name of one in Sydney before too that a lot of experience with trans patients when I was asking on behalf of a friend starting out. PM me if you'd like the name and number

P.S. I checked out the fares by bus and train from canberra to wollongong and sydney, $33 and $48  return respectively, that can't be too hard to raise? If 16.5 people from the forum sent you $2 you'd be there... (not factoring in getting to canberra if that's not your actual location).

I know you're disappointed, but if this is really what you want I'm sure you won't give up.
Try your best, and don't quit trying. You'll get there, maybe not the way and on the time you expected, but you will!

Thanks for the replies guys.

@JohnR, I was upset when I wrote the first post in this, and yeah I felt like giving up, I'm sure most of us have at one point or other, but the next day I was ready to go back to fighting. And as to not being able to afford it, how would you know? I earn close to nothing, and everything I do earn goes into my rent and medical bills. I happen to be a very sick person and it costs me a lot, and I can't afford to shell out $5-800 and miss two days of work every time I need to go to an appointment. I haven't bought myself anything I didn't NEED in a long time, so don't tell me to cut out things that aren't there.

@Imadique, thanks heaps for the info I'm actually going to be seeing an online psych as soon as she gets a letter from my mother, but if that doesn't work out I'll definitely hit you up for that information

Quote from: JohnR on January 11, 2011, 04:38:53 AM
You can't take another year of this so you're tempted to give up.

But you can take an entire lifetime of being stuck in a girl body.

Yes, I can see how that works.

Sometimes, when people say that they can't take it anymore, they are not talking about living the rest of their lives in their birth-assigned gender; they are talking about suicide.

I'm glad that Max isn't.