Counseling

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Hi,

I just had my first video therapy session with a transgender therapist. In addition to addressing my gender issues, she is going to help me with other issues, such as PTSD. I have a good feeling about making this choice. I recommend counseling, but find one that understands the issues, and you can trust.

I am on my 3rd counselor in 30 years.  There is a huge gap between #2 and #3 though.  My first was a woman who was just a little older than I was at the time ( I guess she would still be, lol) and we made some very good progress together over about 10 months.  She got pregnant and so took some time off and I ended seeing a male counselor for a couple of months.  That felt like a total waste of my time and money as he had very little experience with this lifestyle and I eventually stopped seeing him.

I did not seek out another counselor until about 18 months ago, after all of my cancer surgeries were done.  Jeanette and I have some very good progress together and she seems to really understand where I am coming from and what I am seeking to discover about myself and my life in the future.

I would say that having a woman for counseling, for me anyway, is much better with a woman than a man.  Most GG's are supposed to be more empathetic and see things from a very different angle than men do. Or, maybe I was just lucky to find both of these women.

PaulaF

I refuse to talk to male therapists. They treat me the same way as male doctors do. With little empathy and I'm a lesser human than they are.  I see my 2nd psychologist this week, I am being forced into something by the medical field because of my status as Intersexxed I can not obtain supplemental hormones only Testosterone. My hormones are going crazy and I need balance now.

I will do the sex marker change in AZ and go as far as I have to in order to get what I need.  Not something I'm proud of being forced into but this fight is not uncommon among us.

What to talk about depends on your situation. For me it's called finishing what genetics failed to. For others it might be facial fem surgery, breast implants, etc.  In this big world of Effed up morals and ass backwards societal norms it isn't hard to see why we attend therapy. Never feel shame about it, most therapists have their own therapists that they talk to.

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I tend to agree with you about male doctors and therapists. One therapist that I saw and took my my son to was male. he helped us a lot. I mainly talked to him about general anxiety, work and family issues. I would have never talked to him about gender issues. That I did not feel comfortable with. My opinion on male doctors is that they talk at you and lecture. I prefer female doctors. The ones that I have seen will sit down and look you in the eye and ask you how you are doing. Then they will listen to you.

I am currently seeing a woman therapist. She is awesome! She is not a gender therapist, but we talk about so many other things that she helps me with.

Kay

Hi Nathalie

A really interesting topic!
I had been seeing a female therapist for sometime related to a severe head injury I suffered two years ago. During this time I had started to dress en femme for some days a week and I mentioned this to her when booking my next appointment. She challenged me to come dressed as Polly so that was my first outing as a CD. I was surprised at her reaction which was approving and affirming at the same time. From then on all my texts and emails from her have been addressed to Polly as I have attended each appointment as Polly!
To be fair.... I can’t say what a male therapist might have said or done but I have been blessed with mine. We even manage to talk on subject irrespective of my dress. But she does smile a lot!

Hush Polly

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I participated in a peer-to-peer counseling methodology. I did this for about 10 years. One of the things that I learned, among other things, is how easily we lie to ourselves or how we skip around tough and difficult issues. Proof of this is when we have to make a difficult decision or interface with a difficult person, it is not uncommon to create things to distract us and delay doing what we need to do. This is what makes it difficult, though not impossible, to understand what is really going on for us and focus on what we need to think about.

This is where a therapist comes in. What they do is listen to what you are saying, and equally as important, what you are NOT saying. When you look at a situation objectively from the outside in, you can see things that may be missed or discounted looking from an inside out viewpoint. There’s an old saying:

”When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is hard to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.”

That’s what makes it so difficult to understand, and resolve, our own issues. We tend to lack the objectivity needed.

Personally, I rarely give advice. I could as I have a very broad set of experiences with many different kinds of people, but there is a problem with that. Further, this is also how therapy works. What you don’t want is for someone to tell you that they did what you side, everything went sideways and it is all your fault. Ideally, what you want is for someone to get to the point where they make their own decisions and realize that they are responsible for what they do and whatever outcomes happen; positive and negative. So, I’ll ask questions like “Have you thought about xyz?” or “What did you think when this happened before and how did that work out?”. Often, giving advice tends to absolve one of ownership for their actions.

Lastly, while I will ask for someone’s experiences as it helps provide data points, it would be very unlikely for me to ask specifically for advice from a lay person. The idea is to ask for information and insights. After all, I wouldn’t ask my next door neighbor, who is very expert at doing expensive flooring, about my arthritis condition.

As with any occupation, its practitioners can be Good, Better, Best and some that are looking up at Good. The trick is finding a therapist that you feel comfortable with and whom you feel a sense of progress. It’s like auditioning...

Hi Natalie,

I have been seeing a therapist for over two years, completely unrelated to CDing. In fact though I had dabbled in wearing knickers and stockings, CDing wasn't something I had really contemplated. In fact that was probably the part of the issue.

I had suffered an unknown trauma when I was really young and I had become very stuck because of it. My therapy helped me release that trauma and with it alot of barriers that I had put up to protect myself.

As a result I realised that I was very feminine in my outlook, my feminine part of me was very dominant at times and I like female clothes etc. I remember now that I used to pick out dresses for my mum to wear when she was going out, that I was fascinated by her makeup and putting it on, it was fun to walk around in her shoes and I loved shoe shopping for her but I always chose the most garish and shinny shoes possible. I used to pretend that my pants were knickers etc. I had buried it all.

My therapist has been amazing, we are exploring my CDing, my pink mist, my ups and downs, the feelings of emptyness, guilt and wish to purge. The excitement, the purchases and how being unstuck is changing my personality ever so slightly, that feminine me is not scared or feeling judged and that she is coming out more and more each week. Just in subtle ways, in humour, in my sentence construction, in the way I think.

Though the road has been tough, I am so so glad that I was brave and start to travel that road and start to be the true and real me

Charlotte xxx

PS... A therapist does not have to be cd, transgender to understand or provide the right support. I chose a female therapist because I am more comfortable with females.

I resemble that comment, Stephanie!

I am a senior technical consultant, and I spend most of my time doing this:

https://lmgtfy.app/#gsc.tab=0

Ssh!! Don't tell anyone 😁

Love Laura