Quote from: Rach_A on April 01, 2012, 08:32:38 PM
I doubt they would, too.

Let me see if I can reword my question, adding a little background.

I've presented as straight male my whole life. I've never really dressed, never wore make up, never told anyone about my feelings.

Now I am at the point where I am ready to start being my true self and presenting her to the world. After suppressing my feelings for so long, it's kind of scary to be letting them out now, even by myself in my car.

Has anyone else found it difficult to go from suppressing these feelings for years to letting them out?

I guess I'm a little afraid that it will be like Pandora's Box and once I let them out, I won't be able to hold them in and I'm not prepared to show the world just yet.

You may also find that you have not done as good a job of suppressing them as you think you have.. I thought I'd put up a great facade, both as a straight guy and then later as a gay guy..  When I finally dropped the facade, no one was terribly surprised - and many commented that they'd known all along..

Quote from: kelly_aus on April 01, 2012, 08:43:27 PM
You may also find that you have not done as good a job of suppressing them as you think you have.. I thought I'd put up a great facade, both as a straight guy and then later as a gay guy..  When I finally dropped the facade, no one was terribly surprised - and many commented that they'd known all along..

That would certainly be a relief.

Quote from: Rach_A on April 01, 2012, 08:32:38 PM
I doubt they would, too.

Let me see if I can reword my question, adding a little background.

I've presented as straight male my whole life. I've never really dressed, never wore make up, never told anyone about my feelings.

Now I am at the point where I am ready to start being my true self and presenting her to the world. After suppressing my feelings for so long, it's kind of scary to be letting them out now, even by myself in my car.

Has anyone else found it difficult to go from suppressing these feelings for years to letting them out?

I guess I'm a little afraid that it will be like Pandora's Box and once I let them out, I won't be able to hold them in and I'm not prepared to show the world just yet.

Pretty much the same here.  I have always felt like I had to supress it (my dad was abusive over it-lets just say I feared for my safety). 

And besides that, having to be raised in a home where religion is big and being trans is wrong...it just wasn't something I could do back then no matter how much I wanted to.  I was terrified for a bunch of reasons. 

No more though, I'm going for it and I hope you do too.  I have full self acceptance for being the woman I am inside and its time the outside matched.

You have every right to be your female self and to be happy.  I hope you will find the strength to go forward and may we at Susan's, fill you with encouragement along your journey. 

Best wishes to you 

Quote from: kelly_aus on April 01, 2012, 08:43:27 PM
You may also find that you have not done as good a job of suppressing them as you think you have.. I thought I'd put up a great facade, both as a straight guy and then later as a gay guy..  When I finally dropped the facade, no one was terribly surprised - and many commented that they'd known all along..

I can relate to that.  Most people that knew me before I came out knew there was something really different about me.  Now that I'm no longer supressing my femininity, random strangers seem to see me as quite feminine.

I can hardly wait for...transition to go full time!   

Quote from: Stephe on April 01, 2012, 08:09:44 PM

I agree and feel it is VERY dangerous and mentally unhealthy to split yourself into different "people" as a way of dealing with this or anything else for that matter. I highly doubt any therapist would suggest someone do this.

Humans cannot deliberately split into multiple personalities...it is a survival tactic the mind/soul uses (at either the sub-conscious or supra-concious level) to prevent further harm.

At any rate, the suggestion that "I was always female, never tried to hide behind a male facade" sounds to me like a bit of snobbery..."I'm a better trans than you, because I never learned male mannerisms; I was always a woman."

Forgive me if I'm wrong on that...but there is no one way to arrive at transdom. I understand current TS "dogma" says you can only be trans if you're trans from birth, but I say poppycock to that because many of us only learned about our trans issues after spending several decades trying to be "men"...and if we have to now say "Oh, well, I always knew I was a woman..." that would cross the line into lying.

Rach_A started a thread that suggested she saw herself as two distinct people:

QuoteI do understand that she is me and it is not two different people. It just feels like it.

All that we know, we know through our feelings--physical, emotional, and spiritual.

It is *my* humble opinion that we should not cajole or ridicule others who have a different view/history/perspective on what *their* trans experience has been. "Follow the Gospel according to me, lest ye be burned flamed at the stake!"

Quote from: Rach_A on April 01, 2012, 08:32:38 PM
I doubt they would, too.

Let me see if I can reword my question, adding a little background.

I've presented as straight male my whole life. I've never really dressed, never wore make up, never told anyone about my feelings.

Now I am at the point where I am ready to start being my true self and presenting her to the world. After suppressing my feelings for so long, it's kind of scary to be letting them out now, even by myself in my car.

Has anyone else found it difficult to go from suppressing these feelings for years to letting them out?

I guess I'm a little afraid that it will be like Pandora's Box and once I let them out, I won't be able to hold them in and I'm not prepared to show the world just yet.

It sounds like you are just worried about what other people think.

I had an epiphany one day while looking for answers. You should learn to not care about what others think about you. The day you can do that, is the day you will be happy, no matter who you *really* are.

I went through most of my life feeling like I needed to be some certain person to make everyone happy. Whether it was my uncles / grandma when I was a child, or other teenagers in my neighborhood when I was a teenager, or my coworkers, I felt like I had to be some boy living by the rules set by society. Once I stopped caring about that, the real me started streaming out very steadily.

My advice to you is to go slow. People are starting to care less and less about transsexuality. You may even be surprised by the lack of conflict you experience when you ease yourself out there. When you open up and start being expressive through personality, you're going to want to go further. You'll push the limits. You may go out and buy a fashion magazine one day or openly support an LGBT cause. From there maybe you'll engage in girl talk with someone or express to a group of guys that whatever they're carrying on about, you don't really understand or cannot follow. But the moment you put on some girl clothes and things go well in public, you're never gonna wanna go back. But unless you're ready, RLE is hell.

Quote from: Beth Andrea on April 01, 2012, 10:42:19 PM
At any rate, the suggestion that "I was always female, never tried to hide behind a male facade" sounds to me like a bit of snobbery..."I'm a better trans than you, because I never learned male mannerisms; I was always a woman."

I never said that nor did I imply it. Someone else did but you are quoting me..

But I honestly believe it's VERY bad for anyone to feel splitting yourself into "multiple centers" and one taking control or the other is a mentally healthy thing to do. You seem to be promoting this.

Quote from: Beth Andrea on April 01, 2012, 10:42:19 PM

Rach_A started a thread that suggested she saw herself as two distinct people:

Which you replied "it's my opinion that we (those of us with multiple aspects of "self") present those aspects only as needed,", that is a DANGEROUS path to -creating- a mental disorder. It does not help anyone deal with their GID suggesting they compartmentalize their genders into different "emotional centers".. If you really have DID, that isn't something very common nor is it related to having GID. That is unless you somehow  created two different people as a way of trying to deal with it. It's why hearing people using 3rd person referring to themselves is a red flag for me.

This subject of a type of duality comes up rather often, I pause to consider that what the OP is attempting to express is that she is well aware of who she is but feels the need to display a male facade to others in her immediate circle of life in order avoid persecution

Quote from: Beth Andrea on April 01, 2012, 10:42:19 PM
It is *my* humble opinion that we should not cajole or ridicule others who have a different view/history/perspective on what *their* trans experience has been. "Follow the Gospel according to me, lest ye be burned flamed at the stake!"

I agree completely.

I never suggested that I saw myself as 2 different people only that I was making a distinction between the male I project as and the woman deep down that I know I am. As I've never been able to be my true self, it will feel like being a whole new person.

Quote from: Rach_A on April 02, 2012, 12:18:34 AM
I agree completely.

I never suggested that I saw myself as 2 different people only that I was making a distinction between the male I project as and the woman deep down that I know I am. As I've never been able to be my true self, it will feel like being a whole new person.

That is good and VERY different than the DID multiple people/personality that Beth Andrea was talking about. Hiding what you feel inside is very normal and most (not all) of us have done this about our true gender. I'm not sure anyone ever lets every inner feeling flood out of them and probably wouldn't be a good idea to anyway My point wasn't to tell people "you have to have the identical trans experience I did" and don't recall saying that.

What I was saying is to separate your gender ID into a "me and her" or a "him and her are both inside me" isn't a healthy way to look at this. You are -not- letting some other person take over your life or "letting them out". "She" is not going to take over your body/life etc. I honestly at one point early on questioned this was what was going on with me and realized this idea of two identities is a reaction to the whole cisgender binary gender rules. Once I understood this feminine gender ID was always there and I just was following the rules about male=man and was pretending to be a man. Like I had been role playing. And these are just feelings I have, not two separate "energy centers" or different personalities.

Even now after transition and living full time now for years, I am the same person I was before. I still like the same things, enjoy the same activities etc. It's not to me like "being a whole new person" even though some parts of my life have changed.  I act mostly like I did before, maybe a little softer but I'm not that different. Some other personality didn't take over my life and it wasn't like "letting her out", it was that I stopped pretending to be something I never really was to start with. Thinking that this will be some sort of drastic 180 degree shift in who you are isn't how this worked for me and of course it would freak anyone out if they thought that is what would happen, if they didn't fight these feeling or "her" off..

Quote from: Rach_A on April 02, 2012, 12:18:34 AM
I never suggested that I saw myself as 2 different people only that I was making a distinction between the male I project as and the woman deep down that I know I am. As I've never been able to be my true self, it will feel like being a whole new person.

I think there's been a bit lost in the semantics in the discussion here.
Everyone presents slightly differently depending on the person they are interacting with, it's natural part of normal everyday socialisation.

How I present myself to my SO is different to the person I present to people I work with, and is different again to the person I present to my friends.  Are they different people?  I don't think so - they are merely different parts of myself that I let out in the appropriate situation.

In our situation with GID, I feel as though there is just another layer below that - for me it's my "male proxy" covering over my female core so to speak.  This "male proxy" does some things differently to what my female core would do, in order to socialise in a relatively normal manner that is expected, but I call it a defensive mechanism - inside I often think "I really want to do/say x,y, or z instead".

I hope all this rambling makes sense.

Quote from: luna nyan on April 02, 2012, 05:54:30 AM
I think there's been a bit lost in the semantics in the discussion here.
Everyone presents slightly differently depending on the person they are interacting with, it's natural part of normal everyday socialisation.

How I present myself to my SO is different to the person I present to people I work with, and is different again to the person I present to my friends.  Are they different people?  I don't think so - they are merely different parts of myself that I let out in the appropriate situation.

In our situation with GID, I feel as though there is just another layer below that - for me it's my "male proxy" covering over my female core so to speak.  This "male proxy" does some things differently to what my female core would do, in order to socialise in a relatively normal manner that is expected, but I call it a defensive mechanism - inside I often think "I really want to do/say x,y, or z instead".

I hope all this rambling makes sense.

It makes perfect sense and of course we act differently to a degree depending on the situation. I might casually drop the F bomb talking around certain friends (I have a trash mouth ) but of course would never say it when I'm at church. Just as I dress differently depending on the situation. We would act differently in a group of men vs being in a group of women etc. 

What bothered me was this talk of "emotional centers" and this concept that "she could take over and I can't stop her".. This implies a 3rd person someone you have no control over. For most people this just isn't the case and to think of it like this would create a panic over something that can't happen! We do not lose control over our lives. Like I said in the very beginning I was thinking this -was- what was going on with me and was scared. Once I realized it was simply GID, I could then start to deal with it.

I think it was clear one poster is explaining this from the POV of someone who has DID, which IMHO is a mental condition whose treatment has priority over dealing with GID. If there are two distinct people/centers inside and a person does really have DID (blacks out/loses time and has no idea what "the other" is doing) is there really a male with GID and a female inside them or?..... Trying to rationalize GID by -thinking- of it like you have DID is NOT healthy nor is this what is going on for anyone who simply has GID.

If they do have two distinct personalities inside them fighting for control, that is something besides GID. It's the main reason they require therapy before they start HRT, to make sure there isn't something else going on that HRT isn't going to resolve. For someone who really has DID, it would only help "her". "He" would freak out over what was happening but would have no control over what "she" was doing to "his" body....

Quote from: Stephe on April 02, 2012, 09:58:04 AM
What bothered me was this talk of "emotional centers" and this concept that "she could take over and I can't stop her".. This implies a 3rd person someone you have no control over. For most people this just isn't the case and to think of it like this would create a panic over something that can't happen! We do not lose control over our lives. Like I said in the very beginning I was thinking this -was- what was going on with me and was scared. Once I realized it was simply GID, I could then start to deal with it.

I don't think you asked what I meant and immediately said I may have multiple personalities. If you're confused, ask for meaning.

I know you're trying to help and I appreciate that but to be honest, I felt a little attacked.

I'm seeing a GT and about to join a group run by another GT, we should leave the diagnosis to the professionals.

I'd love to hear about your experiences at my stage and beyond so I can learn.

I think there's too much confusion, I can't get no relief (sorry Bob Dylan, couldn't resist).

Seriously though, I'm just going to end the conversation. Thanks for your insight everyone.