Hello all, I'll start off by explaining a bit about myself. I am a 23 year old biological male from the UK. I first had same-sex thoughts when I was around 14, and accepted myself as gay at around the age of 20. For around 6 months I was at peace with that decision, although levels of stress did begin to rise. I noticed myself become snappy, and lose interest in a lot of hobbies that previously held much joy for me. I have also felt detached from my emotions for some time. This continued to the present day. I have not come out to anyone I am close to, but I did come out at work. I think I found it easier to come out at work because these are people I did not previously know (I came out 2 months into the job) and therefore there opinions don't matter as much to me. I have always found it surprising that I haven't come out to anyone close to me, as I'm sure they would be shocked but accepting. After coming out at work, I initially felt better but then the same old feelings of depression and lack of interest returned throughout my life. Anyway, on Friday the 5th of September I was having a conversation with my mum about transexualism. I went to bed that night with it on my mind. While lying in bed, a sudden feeling of realisation and dread came over me that I was transgender in some way. I have had this once before, when I was 20, but woke up the next day having shaken it off as a silly thought. However, this was not the case in this incidence. Ever since that thought, my behaviour has changed. I have almost constant anxiety, which means I often have to lock myself in the toilet to compose myself. I have gone from being an extremely social person to having social anxiety, essentially overnight. I no longer want to see my friends or have much human contact. For the first 2 days, I had a really weird sensation of looking in the mirror and thinking the person wasn't me. Although this has died down now, I still feel awkward looking into the mirror. I also got nervous when I saw a woman out in public, and started testing myself to see how I would feel as a woman. I have completely lost my appetite, and have eaten maximum one meal a day since the thought. I have also lost all my sex drive and have not had a natural erection since. I wake up feeling nauseous every morning, which is a horrible feeling. I stay indoors all day, searching symptoms of transgenderism and if I am one. Even when I go out, I am constantly searching and researching on my phone to see if transgender thoughts can come suddenly and overnight. The confusing part is I would not choose to be a woman. Before this I felt perfectly happy in my male body, albeit without a strong sense of gender identity. When I was highly anxious, and felt like I couldn't cope I tried cross-dressing. Although this temporarily relieved the anxiety, it didn't feel right, and I couldn't recognise myself. I don't have a huge need to do it again. I like having a penis, and previously enjoyed seeing myself naked in the mirror. I also can't imagine having breasts or a vagina, and feel no burning need to have them. I have just felt uncomfortable ever since I had the thought, and have been thinking of almost nothing else for 2 and a half weeks. I am starting University again in a week, and just want this feeling to go away so I can get on with my life as a man. I have tried fantasising about life as a woman, and it doesn't really hold any pleasure for me. I don't get any jealousy when I see a female. I also don't mind being referred to as "he" or "mate", but now I panic when I hear these and question whether I do mind. I would far rather be a gay man, it's just my brain is telling me I might be a woman. Regarding my early childhood, I enjoyed playing with females as well as males, but my teachers would always comment on how well I got on with females. Puberty was an OK time for me, and most of my friends were male. I would never have even dreamed of questioning my gender at this time. I also never cross-dressed, or even thought about it, except for a drama pantomime production. Sexually I am submissive and I wonder if this is what is causing some of these problems. I am wondering what is causing this, and if anyone else has experienced sudden gender discomfort. I do have an active imagination, and seem to spend a lot of time questioning myself anyway. Have I really repressed transgender feelings for 23 years? Am I just a feminine gay man confused about what this means? I really don't want to transition and spend the rest of my life as a female, but even typing this out I am worried I am in denial about my true self. I am also questioning whether my detachment and depression could be linked to undiagnosed dysphoria, as opposed to originating from the stress of being in the closet. Please help me if you can, I am at my wits end. I want my gay identity, appetite and social life back. This really is having a negative impact on my health. I apologise for the length of this but really wanted to let it all out! I have just come to terms with being a gay man, and was about come out, but I don't want to with this all up in the air! Many thanks in advance.
You might have a look at this: http://emptyclosets.com/forum/gende...926-i-think-im-genderqueer-genderfluid.html#5
There are many possibilities, including (but not limited to) the following: – You might be genderqueer, genderfluid, gender neutral, bigender, or any other identity on the infinite sliding scale of gender. Everybody is different, and identifying as any of these things wouldn't necessarily mean that you'd want to change your physical appearance or behaviour, it would simply be an acknowledgement of how you feel. – You might, as you said, be transgender and have been repressing it for a long time (though, from your description, I think that is less likely than some of the other possibilities). – You might, also as you said, simply be a feminine gay man. – The other main thing I can think of is something that happened to one of my friends, and honestly it sounds a lot like your situation, but I don't know you so I'm not all that qualified to judge. She has OCD, and for a while she was obsessed with thoughts about her identity that had never occurred to her before a particular event triggered them. She became socially withdrawn and highly anxious, because the thoughts were very invasive and happened practically all the time. Eventually she went to a therapist, who helped her realise that those thoughts were irrational and prescribed her medication to help deal with the OCD and anxiety. Now, I don't know if you have any history with OCD-type tendencies, and I don't want to invalidate your gender identity at all if this is not what your issue is, but I think it's at least worth considering. Also, I don't want to pressure you into getting any kind of medication, because that is between you and your doctor. If you try to go to a therapist and they want to 'cure you of the gay/queer/whatever' instead of helping you deal with depression/anxiety/OCD, DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE A HOMOPHOBIC/TRANSPHOBIC DICKBAG. I hope you figure out what's going on and can get back to living your life Best of luck!
Thank you very much for your help and comments. I just want these thoughts to go away. Do you think I should see a gender therapist or one that specialises in OCD?
Hello I'm also dealing with issue like this and I'm 33. I don't think it necessarily means I'm transgender but have found a therapist that deals with gender identities and we've talked about what gender really means In all contexts. I associate certain behaviors to gender and I've realized that might have led to my confusion. Definitely get a therapist that deals with gender identity and probably psychotherapy.
Thank you Poppy. I am having a tough time working out what is transgender, what is gender questioning, and what is potentially OCD...if you are able to could you share your story with me?
I'm not an expert by any means but to me, transgender can range from cross dressing to actually transitioning sexually (ie. Sex reassignment surgery). Gender questing might be the step before, when you're trying to define what gender you identify with the most and it doesn't necessarily mean that you want to do anything about your gender or gender expression. I think of it like that and the OCD sometimes makes it harder for people to think a bit rationally, only because you can become obsessed with the idea of being transgender.
Hey man. I have the same issue as you. I just want you to know you're not alone. I have came out for a year and a half, and suddenly one day a thought came to me that WHAT IF I was a girl inside. I couldn't find any strong reason to disprove this idea. When I was young I didn't accept my gay identity, but now I have came out and accept it. What if this trans issue is the same as the gay issue? I think it's OCD, but I want to go to college to learn more information about it. If you figure out your problem, please tell me. Good luck!
hey liveinsummer, cheers for your reply! It's good to know I'm not alone here. This has completely taken over my life and it's driving me crazy trying to find the answers. All the time I used to spend doing things I enjoy is spent researching transgender topics, I feel like I could get a full score on the subject on Mastermind! I had an initial assessment with a counselor at a LGBT centre which helped me explore some of my feelings and emotions that I didn't realise I was bottling up. As it is a charity though, it is in high demand, so I have to wait until the New Year before I start my course of therapy. Can you tell me a little bit about your story? My therapist said it wasn't that uncommon for someone to question their gender, but other factors might be causing me to obsess about it.
They're your thoughts, it's part of you thinking about the things that are important. I've gone through, and still am going through, a similar kind of internal struggle against myself. You call yours OCD, I call mine: procrastination, excessive self-criticism, and self-sabotage. I'll try not to be too preachy, so I'll just describe how I see my issues and what I'm doing about it. For over a year, I've had a massive build-up of procrastination, losing my ability to focus, and seemingly having no internal drive or willpower to work or get on with life. I would write down plans and strategies, I'd have good intentions. Occasionally I would start new projects but -- just like the popular stereotype -- I lost all ability to finish them, despite knowing about it and doubling and tripling the mental effort to force myself to finish them! But the urge to not finish things was fighting back. So, what was going on for me? On the surface I was calm, but underneath I was getting moodier and angrier with myself every day. I'd "waste" an astronomical amount of time on the Internet, surfing through 100s of Wikipedia pages, on philosophy, existentialism, solipsism, the hard problem of consciousness, the problem of other minds, the explanatory gap, dualism, monism, Jainism, Buddhism, Turing, Schroedinger, Goedel... In fact, I now don't think I was losing my ability to focus at all. Instead, my ego was losing its control over what other parts of me wanted, and that didn't make any sense to me. What "other" parts? To me the subconscious mind was just memory and stuff I wasn't thinking about at the time. So why did my life feel like I was struggling against "actual people" whenever I tried to focus on all the stuff I wanted? Why was it that whenever I managed to sit myself in front of the computer and work on some project, I would get an even stronger urge to get up and immediately do something else? It wasn't laziness, it was mentally exhausting. Out of desperation, I finally started listening to some friends' spiritual advice. I finally realised that I had a huge amount of self-hatred buried inside. Whenever I told myself that I was "supposed to do something", that was me setting tough standards and then hating myself for failing to live up to them. Similarly with the procrastination: self-sabotage to relive some familiar feelings of failure, and then hating myself for being too weak. And the "weakness" was just more harsh self-criticism. The closest I've gotten to finding answers is practising thinking of the world as being all in my mind. So if I'm angry at other people and society, I'm just angry at what I see in my mind through my senses. And if I see negativity, that's just me focusing on negativity. The only thing that seems to really help is being aware of it all, and learning to embrace and love yourself for who you are, including the bad parts. ---------- Post added 9th Dec 2014 at 07:57 PM ---------- I think one of the real underlying causes of my procrastination was failing to acknowledge what other parts of me wanted. Being too tough on myself with downtime was just the tip of the iceberg. What about repressed feelings and desires? It was a huge weight off my chest when I started exploring my gender identity and not hating myself for my interpretation of other people's binary social standards. I guess with figuring out your gender identity, the idea is not to hate yourself, but find a label which allows you to like and accept yourself more.
Hey, that sounds a lot like me, through my life i had stages of questioning myself and symtoms but it died down after about 9 years and then came back last year like a truck and i sort of colapsed into a shaky mess iin the shower, spent weeks googling, dyspgorias grew, cut off my hair. Everything came together like a jigsaw puzzle, but propperly this time. Now i see myself as male, even though for about 6 months of my life i was comfortable expressing as female, but since i had that realisation i wasnt cis, i couldnt go back, even though at times i wanted to. This, however is not any proof you are trans, i think if its bothering you then its a good idea to see yoir local gp or try online to look for professionals who can help with feelings of confusion and gender dysphoria. Gender theripists can be really helpful, i know id like one!
Sorry to reply you so late. I just saw it. I'm new here, so I'm not familiar with the forum's functions. About my personal experience, I think I always emotional more connected to female rather than male. During my coming out progress, I watched tons of LGBT videos, and I found some people discribe gay people as "a woman inside a man's body". Before watching those videos, I never saw me as this way before, and I started question myself whether it was true. I initially denied this idea because I was so afriad if it was right. But later I occasionally thought of this question in my daily life, and every time it made me panic. I started to imagine how pathetic if I was inside a girl but I always denied it. When my life goes on well, this anxiety will disappear. But when I think I am a loser, this panic will arise and tell me that's the reason. The most effective method for me to get rid of this idea is to get busy and become a more valuable person, but sometimes it's still hard. Good luck!
hello sebtarrson, i am feeling pretty much exactly like you did at the time of this post, how are you feeling at this point in time?
