I hope that you can find a therapist who will not impose some framework onto you that isn't how you see things or what you find helpful. Some therapists are trained to (or personally defer to) explore the client's experience and work to understand it in its specificity rather than imposing a framework or diagnosis. There's lots of different kinds of help out there. I hope you will get some and I hope that you will not kill yourself, though I can understand how knowing you can escape the pain may feel necessary at times. From what you've written, it sounds like you're in a lot of pain. I don't see you as an idiot at all and your experiences seem understandable to me. My experience is different from yours in a lot of ways but I can relate to feeling crazy, lost, isolated, and in pain around gender.

Yes - it is “a thing.” You are describing your own experience and it sounds like you were traumatized by being put on these blockers without understanding the impacts on your health, body, and sense of self. It’s understandable that you feel intense anxiety triggered by being reminded about the trauma of that experience. I am glad you are going to seek support around the painful memories so you can process your experiences so hopefully the wounds will be less raw to being reopened by reminders and triggers.

In the mean time before you see the therapist, I hope you will find some other forms of comfort, soothing, and coping or other ways to process what happened to you, through writing, making art, or sharing with anybody who is safe, in person, on line or anywhere you can find that.

Wishing you all the best.

Hey. I am female and have been on testosterone for several years and am assumed and live as male.

However, like you, more and more I feel my sex is female and that gender does not feel like a useful or meaningful concept to me, or feels like one that gets in my way, no matter how conservative or progressive of a definition it’s given.

I also like the changes of testosterone/HRT. However,I am biologically female and this to me feels like an important fact. I am not sure what to do sometimes in order to live truthfully in all dimensions of myself and feel understood by others.

That’s why I go on Reddit - to read stories like yours - and feel a little less alone or strange.

All that just to say, you — we — are not alone!

I wish that the first therapist I saw, or the doctor who provided the hormones, had asked me a bit more about my history of gender dysphoria - how long I had these feelings, and what was going on in my life when they started. I wish they had been more curious or attuned to my reactions to the provision of transition-related care, checking in about how the care felt for me. I wish these things had been asked in a way that was validating and non-intrusive, curious, and exploring multiple possibilities and paths, leaving it up to me, but making space to explore in dialogue or check in about how things felt for me. If they had done this, this would have felt safer to feel I could openly explore these things I think it would have helped me feel validation in what I was feeling that is specific and mine. I think I may have felt sensitive to this kind of questioning at the time and might have been irritated or hurt. But I think if it were asked openly and if I was invited to explore without coercion or imposition in any direction, I might have been able to accept myself easier in what I am experiencing around internalized misogny, homophobia, and challenges from presenting as gender non-conforming etc. I also think it would have been a relief to be asked, if the asker still allowed me to be the expert on myself and did not impose anything external.

For me - (I am FTM and questioning) I believe there was a lot I was on some level aware of but was so embarrassing, shameful, scary, or uncomfortable for me that I refused to let myself know that I knew it, and I certainly wouldn't let myself express it to anyone else, let alone even allow myself to THINK or write about it. I don't feel I'm in a position to advise you (or anyone but myself) but I do wish personally that I had allowed myself some TRULY free space (a locked diary?! a secret word document?!) to just pour out all of my "not allowed" feelings and thoughts - particularly those I was actively suppressing. I remember on some level being aware I was doing this but what I was pushing down felt so stupid, embarrassing, wrong, bad, dissonant, irrelevant, incorrect, that I just continued to do so! In the end, all of that ended up containing useful information about myself, and I felt sad I had spent so much energy thinking I had to push it away.

Slavoj Zizek — Gender identity & Transgenderism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meSqn5seEZ8

Here is a video I've liked.

Here are some of my notes on things Zizek has said (or how I understood them) that resonated with me. They are not all grand philosophical ideas - just things that hit for me. I also don't claim to be a Zizek expert or to perfectly understand his complex ideas and I recognize I am pulling this out of context. However, I am sharing them because these words were very helpful for me.

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- "I don't trust this passion for categorization"

-"Every social identification comes with a doubt - we are never fully what we claim to be"

- "Am I really what you, the Big Other, say I am?"

"This doubt about who I am is subjectivity at its purest"

"'Floating identities' underestimate the traumatic pain of assuming a certain sexual identity"

"Sexual identity is always at core inconsistent" - "Sex is already a violent imposition"

"Attempts to establish new identities for demarcation always fail"

- Codifying infinite variations of relational process into identity is a byproduct of capitalist society which can categorization as imperative meant to compartmentalize identities -> useful to exploit

- Something will always escape categorizations

- Anxiety regarding sexual identity is a universal feature of human sexuality

- accept the indeterminacy as a core constituent part of sexual identity

- The only true struggle is the struggle for universiality itself

- subjectivity is the PLUS itself (LGBT + ) - not a NEW category but excess over identity

- all creative science questions- why am I what you (the powerful other) say I am?! (Doubt) - opens up a universal dimension

- suffering is inscribed into human sexuality itse;f -

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It's really helpful for me that you took the time to share your view and offer some guidance. I am totally starved to be able to have these kinds of conversations with people and it really makes a difference in how lost and isolated I feel to have someone share like this.

I would suggest using a database like Psychology Today or wherever you can look for therapists where you are... Some of it comes down to training and approach while some is more individual to the therapist. Humanistic therapists, emotion-focused therapists, people doing motivational interviewing, and existential, tend to in general be trained to defer more to the client's expertise. However therapists and counselors of all approaches can be open depending on their personality. I think any good therapist would be open to taking a phone call to consult and you could tell them you need to work with someone who will be open to hearing your unique experience without making assumptions or being labeled, etc. I really hope you find good help!

I love this. I also use Reddit as a diary at times. People on the internet can be mean but at the same time there's something beautiful to me about being able to say our full truths privately and have others hear it. Like direct heart-to-heart truth telling. Many women are flat, as you said, for different reasons, and find love, and I believe you will find someone who will love you and have respect for the journey you went through. Not to minimize the challenges of being different, but I believe there are certainly people who wouldn't devalue you just because you have a flat chest.

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Wishing you hope and love.

"I just know it would risk being misinterpreted as a political statement, people would openly or privately accuse me of being transphobic, etc. I just wish I could talk openly & apolitically about this experience — for the benefit of other people like me — without it being a whole thing"

I feel you on this, exactly