Aiden and Emily are facing pressure and uncertainty.
Aiden looks in the mirror, and the face that looks back at him just doesn’t feel right to him. The day was going so well until he remembered, until he saw the curves. The lips aren’t right. The cheek bones don’t show who I am. The size of my shoulders isn’t right.
Someone misgenders him, calls him by that dead name, the one he won’t even say out loud himself, and it feels like a punch in the stomach.
The waiter is coming to his table, anxiety is flooding his chest, he just wants them to say, “Sir” and not “ma’am.” Please, God….
Aiden’s so tired of this heaviness, this nagging feeling that things are wrong, that it’s so wrong. He wishes it wasn’t this way, but it just is. Why…?
Emily really isn’t sure what’s going on with her gender. She lives in an open home. She knows her parents are cool with anything. But, wait, will they be? Can they handle this with how stressed Dad has been already?
Emily doesn’t want to upset them. She doesn’t want things to be harder. And it would be hard.
And Emily doesn’t really know what’s going on herself. Sometimes she feels one thing, and other times she doesn’t know what she feels. Is “he” right? Are these just weird feelings?
But Emily doesn’t feel like she can really talk to anyone about it. It just feels so off-limits, like such a secret. It’s getting worse, though. The confusion. The tension. The pain. The nagging feeling like she’s missing something. Like her anxiety or sadness might have something to do with her gender.
After months of therapy:
Aiden decided that he is transgender. He came out to his family, all of them, even that one aunt he was so scared to tell. And he’s been smiling now.
Aiden really worked through the decision and even started T two months ago. His voice has already dropped, and he still grins when he hears it – because it’s his voice. Really his voice.
It’s hard at school, figuring it out, but Aiden’s created support with certain teachers and friends and a counselor at school.
Aiden’s realized that he’s hid himself off from the world for so long, it was just too much. He shut down so much. He kind of stopped feeling. But now he is starting to feel deeper things again, and good feelings, too. He’s so deeply relieved.
Emily has realized that her pain was not mostly about her gender identity. It was about the way she felt treated as a girl. She is still wondering if she might be gender fluid, or gender non-binary, but she doesn’t think she is transgender.
What Emily needed was to realize she could be a woman however she wanted to be. Wear the clothes she wants to. Be as loud and powerful as she wants to.
What she needed was someone to tell her it was okay for her to be her, and to shout it loudly with her head held high.
Therapy was hard for her. Excruciating at times even. But it helped her feel and see and know what she needed to know. To have the conversations she needed to have. And now she feels more awake, more alive, and a much deeper sense of peace.
Gender identity – confusing and painful
Gender Identity can be one of the most confusing and most painful elements of our lives. At the same time, gender identity is one of the most important, even crucial, parts of emotional health and belonging.
Not dealing with gender identity issues can be utterly paralyzing for a person. It can fundamentally destabilize and even debilitate a person’s life.
The suffering someone can feel, the fear they can live in, the hopelessness that can suffocate them – it’s so powerfully real. There really is very little that I think is more dangerous to leave unresolved than genuine gender identity issues.
Gender therapy is necessary to help those with questions find answers.
There is no work I find more rewarding as a therapist. The two stories above about Aiden and Emily are based on real stories (with changed names).
About half of the people I work with now are either questioning their gender or working on transitioning or are post-transitioning but struggling with transgender life.
Many people come to therapy with questions or deep pain surrounding their gender and leave literally new people, on the track they want to be on, feeling right in their own skin, glad to be who they are.
It’s incredible. To watch the change happen, to see the confidence begin to blossom, the self-awareness clarify, the greater sense of security and peace deepen. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a lot of hard work – therapy always is – but it’s so obviously worth it for the transgender people with whom I work.
Please don’t wait another day.
I say this from one of the deeper places of my own heart: please don’t wait. Send me a message today at (302) 497-5023. And we’ll walk through this together.