Am I being a hypochondriac? What do you think?

I will say first of all that not every trans* person knows from a young age (even subconsciously). Sometimes gender really does change. I identified as a girl for 18 years and out of the blue started experiencing dysphoria. Now I identify as genderqueer.

I have two recommendations. First, you might benefit from talking to a gender therapist. Doctors really can be a great resource, and since hypochondria is a disorder, a psychologist would be able to diagnose you with it and probably start treating it, if that is what's going on. Of course, if you are trans*, the doctor could help with that too.

Second, try experimenting if you want. Don't feel like exploring will make you trans* for sure. There is no line you can cross where you can't go back. Just doing something doesn't make you any more or less trans* than you already are, it's your thoughts that make you trans*, not your actions. Maybe you want to try dressing in drag for Halloween. Or maybe you want to try adopting a female or non-binary persona online. Try to listen to your whims and let them lead you for a while.

 

I believe that a human brain is very powerful and that you can willingly "change your gender" - you can influence how you feel about the body you are living in. Going from being completely OK with it, to severe dysphoria to being OK again.
Then the way you feel about your body will also influence your thoughts about your gender (about the fact if you are trans* or not). It is probably what you called gender hypochondria.

I am prone to believing that you can willingly make someone who is sensitive and not self-confident believe that they are trans* just by planting the idea in their head and give them some pointer. Yes, it would be a very bad joke, but I am sure it would work. Because we all have some feminine and masculine traits and we all are curious and like to think about what ifs. And from that is just a small step to 'Oh, so that does mean that I am trans*!'

If you feel like are happy the way you are, stop looking up the trans* stuff on the internet. It will not make your life better. It already started to mess with your feelings.

No matter if you are trans* or not YOU will always be YOU. That won't change. I know it sounds obvious, but trans* people often feel like they are 'two' or that by transition they finally become someone else - the person of their dreams.

But the truth is, the only thing that changes by transition is the shape of the body and the way you feel about yourself. You as a person will stay the same.

There is a man and a woman in everyone. You may noticed your 'woman side' for the first time but that doesn't necessarily mean that you are trans*

(*hug*)

 

This is a really interesting idea. Nick, have you really experienced this? I find it pretty fascinating. I know for me, what you have described here wasn't the case, but I'm only one person and the way I view myself and my gender is certainly not universal.

 

Hi,
hmm, I don't want to get into details, but no, I didn't write it without knowing something about it. And to tell the truth when I read stories of the trans* people here, sometimes I notice similar pattern. I don't mean it as an insult or anything. I just believe that our brain is capable of incredible things (in good but also in bad sense of the word)

 

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was challenging your opinion, it was more of a "wow! That's a thing? I never knew!"

Since you don't want to talk about your experiences, we certainly don't have to, but I think we need to be careful about analyzing how other people think/feel. I can definitely see how someone could possibly come to a conclusion like yours by listening to parts of my story, for example, but I don't think it sums me up at all. For me there definitely was a lot of denial, and me trying to ignore the dysphoria which only got worse the more I pretended it didn't exist.

I believe that a placebo effect definitely is real, and can be used both positively and negatively, but I'm skeptical how frequent it shows up in gender stuff.

 

no, that's OK. The idea didn't 'come to me' from watching other people.

hmm I have never thought about it as about a placebo effect. I am not sure how you meant that.

 

(I'm not sure how much you know about this, so forgive me if I'm repeating things you already know.) A placebo is something that the subject thinks causes a reaction, there is no reason it should, but it does because the subject thinks it does. The classic example of this is a study where 100 subjects have colds. 50 are given an actual cold medicine, and the other 50 are just given a placebo, a sugar pill- so it doesn't actually do anything. The thing is, the subjects don't know which they got, or maybe even that were any placebos. The 50 who got the placebos will actually get better, sometimes almost as much as the subjects who actually got the medicine, just because they believe they will get better.

It can also work in the negative. If a doctor tells a patient their condition will deteriorate in the next couple days, the patient's condition most likely will, but if the doctor says their condition will improve, that will most likely happen too.

So I can see how this could potentially be the same with gender (or thinking you're trans*), in that someone believes they might be trans* and then starts seeing all the "evidence" of that, and ignoring all the counter "evidence." (I'm putting evidence in quotation marks, because there is no such thing as having to prove your gender, therefore evidence is not necessary.)

Does that make more sense now? Did I explain my thoughts okay?

 

hmm, perhaps. I am not sure.

I will be on a thin ice here I don't want to imply anything, concerning trans* people. I just want to demonstrate how powerful a human brain is.

Have you heard about a false pregnancy?
False pregnancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Women AND men, can persuade their body that they are pregnant.

You can also take the pain of someone else on yourself. I have no idea how that works though. You simply feel what they feel at the same moment.

There was also a person at EC who claimed that they could have started transition just by their will. I would have to look up the posts to quote. They said that they could experience mild changes in their body appearance.

It does sounds very strange, but I believe there are ways to influence your brain that you can not only feel something that you would not normally feel (to cause yourself depression or dysphoria for example), but also cause yourself physical problems (like I mentioned above, or other problems caused by stress).



The thing that I was talking about in my first post relates more to the 'mentally will yourself into dysphoria'.

Sometimes, people get from bad illnesses just because of their positive attitude. I believe that it works the other way around too. And that unsure, and not very self-confident people can just from reading trans* stories get the impression that that exactly is their problem and become depressed, experience the real dysphoria (I am NOT saying that they are faking it), and work towards the transition - which hardly brings them happiness.

Again, no offense intended please. It's not intended to discredit trans* people in any way. I just find it scary to know what our brain can do.

 

Okay, I see what you're saying. My guess would be that it is possible for that to occur, but that it would be very, very rare. I would also suggest that trans* people don't always feel better/more confident immediately after (and especially during) transition anyway. A lot of trans* people have mental health problems (often including depression) that go beyond dysphoria. Some of these can stem from repression of their true selves/ denial of their feelings for so long, from internalized transphobia, or from other things related or not related to the fact they are trans*. So I think that what you're suggesting might be very difficult to document.

 

Hot women are pretty neat, I think a lot of people would prefer to be one ha. If you are happy being a guy then I don't see why you would want to transition. Would you enjoy taking hormones that reduce your energy and make you sterile, removing most of your muscle mass, shaving your body hair, growing hips and breasts, having people see you as "she", never being "one of the guys" again, gaining a layer of fat throughout your skin?????

Those questions are probably to serious at this point, right? So, why not experiment with your gender, shave your body hair, try to feminize your face with make up, try some different clothing styles. If you just have a thing for breasts then that just seems like a sexual quirk.

---------- Post added 3rd Oct 2013 at 01:03 AM ----------

I think you can do this as well, but they will quickly realize that it was the wrong decision to medically transition if that is the case and really, no harm done. I think it would be silly to jump to a conclusion that you are the wrong gender based on some gender role stereotypes. "I played with dolls when I was 5, does that mean I am trans?" That kind of thing is misguided.

I mean honestly, if someone isn't intelligent enough to hop off the transition train when they know something doesn't feel right than I have no sympathy.