One of the most common questions I am asked from transgender people starting their journey, is, “What can I do to pass as a man/woman?” I cringe at this question every time. Whilst I understand the desire to be seen correctly, I find the term ‘passing’ to be very problematic. In this blog, I want to discuss why the term passing is unhelpful. I also want to share how the term can be rephrased to help boost confidence in our gender identity.
Being transgender is not in itself a mental health condition. However, the experience of being transgender can cause many mental health complications, especially when gender dysphoria is untreated. In this blog I want to address some of the common misconceptions of gender dysphoria and mental health.
When I realized that I was transgender and that I needed to transition, seeing the long journey ahead was overwhelming. I couldn’t imagine reaching the end of that road, and yet here I am. I am at the top of that trans mountain, my medical transition is done. Now I look back on my gender transition journey with wonder and fondness. Though tough and often painful, it has been the most epic adventure of my life. As I am often asked about waiting times in the transition process, I thought it might be helpful to map out my entire gender transition, journey, from start to finish.
The hardest part of going through gender transition is coping with long waiting times. We wait for our first referral, for appointments in between, for hormones and surgery if we chose it. The relief first felt at realising we are trans, is soon replaced with anguish. The road ahead seems impossibly long and the mountain too high to climb. Understandably, our mental health often suffers as a result. Therefore, if we are to survive this process intact, we must learn ways to cope with the wait. In the following blog, I will share the top five things which helped me to get through my gender transition.
One of the hardest things for me in recovery from addiction and mental health challenges, and in going through gender transition, is the deep grief felt at the wasted time.
As both a student psychologist and a man with a trans history, the topic of identity and how it develops over time fascinates me. I have found that my identity never properly developed a stable base. In hindsight, I expect this is why I was diagnosed with a personality disorder. I now believe that my personality disorder diagnosis was likely down to the fact that I wasn’t female. Therefore my gender incongruence likely caused the personality, identity and mental health issues I faced.
In transition, I have experienced a loss and a grieving for my old identity, not because it was one I liked, but because it was all that I knew. Without my old identity, I was in limbo whilst I waited for my new identity as a man to form and become stable.
During transition we are in a constant state of flux. As hormones and surgery change the body we have to get used to our new embodied selves. And, as our gender roles and societal expectations change we have to get used to the new way we interact with others. This constant flux means that the stable identity base is hard to build.
Now, nearing the end of my surgical journey and hormones having done their most significant work, I find I am at last able to put down stable roots to my identity. These stable roots are allowing me more security and stability from which to explore other aspects of myself.
In this vlog I discuss this process and the ways in which I am continuing to actively discover and develop my new identity.
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