I've probably touched on the subject of therapy off an on throughout this blog, but I'm not sure how much I've ever really gotten into it and I thought now was a good time.
I've never been a big fan of therapy, a large portion of my formative years were spent with my grandparents for various reasons and as such a lot of my values either came directly from them or were strongly influenced by them. If they were still alive today they'd be in their 90's so doing the math backwards they were born and raised in/around the depression era which was a significantly different time. I was raised that you handled your own issues and privately at that. If you misbehaved there was no compunction with a good spanking - not that I got many - it sure wasn't like it is here and now. And there was definitely no belief in going and talking about your "problems/etc" with a stranger. Now perhaps I'm over-generalizing that generation, but even if I am I think it's a fair assessment of them. Don't get me wrong - I loved them very much or I wouldn't have spent so much time with them, I'm just trying to give some context on how I grew up.
Well 20 months or so when I strongly was considering transitioning, before I even broached it with my wife I spent a great many hours and days not only thinking about my life and other things such as the pros/cons of transitioning, but also doing LOTS of research into the process. I looked at every step of things including both success AND failure stories of many who had went before me. I wanted to not only be sure that it was the right course of action for ME, but for my wonderful wife J, my daughter, and even M since she's still such a large part of my life. I wanted to be able to answer as many questions as I could about the process and be as informed as possible.
Obviously WPATH SOC came up. For those that aren't familiar with those terms, WPATH stands for World Professional Association for Transgender Health and SOC stands for Standards Of Care. I'm going to oversimplify for brevity's sake, obviously you can research this further - and if you are considering transition I think it's crucial that you do. But to simplify, WPATH is basically a trade association consisting of mental health professionals who deal with Transgender health. The Standards Of Care are intended to provide guidance for addressing the gender issues of transgender individuals. As I said this is an overly simple explanation of each, but even at that it's taken me a paragraph to cover. Please visit the WPATH website - HERE - for more information and better definitions of each.
Part of the WPATH SOC is that there are "requirements" - and technically that may not be the most correct term, but I think the consensus of the community is that it is basically "requirements" for transitioning. This applies to things such as Hormone Therapy (HRT), as well as surgical procedures such as GRS. Now I'm discussing this from a Male-To-Female transgender perspective, but they also apply for Female-To-Male as well.
Once I decided I wanted to transition I knew I would want to get on HRT and eventually have GRS - other surgeries as breast augmentation (BA) or Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS) didn't hold as much appeal to me for multiple reasons including my age. In order to pursue those things I found that I would need authorizations, for HRT a letter from a therapist is sufficient; for more involved processes such as GRS, it takes two including one from someone with a PhD. Now again I'm keeping this reasonably simpler for brevity; but for more specific information, again the WPATH site above is a good place to start.
Now this was still prior to speaking with J - she was on a trip to Alaska - fishing with her parents - so I had a *LOT* of free time at night to be doing this. I started searching for therapists in my area. Even though we're a bit of a drive from St. Louis itself there were a huge number of therapists, but finding ones that specialized in gender issues - well that was harder. I realize it's more of a niche than general therapy, but it was harder than I thought it would be. I ended up finding several; and started filtering the list down. One "requirement" for me was a female therapist so that narrowed the list. I wanted one who I could confirm had been doing therapy for a while, this narrowed the list a bit more. I had other things that further narrowed the list, but they were minor - such as the area they were located. Things like that weren't so much deal breakers like the first two were, but were more used as a "ranking". I narrowed my list to three - two of which actually shared office space at the same location. It was almost a flip of the coin as to who I chose, but I chose one and emailed her.
All things being (even close to) equal I prefer to communicate via email than over phone if possible. It was especially relevant in this case as I was more than a bit nervous as I felt I was starting to climb out on the proverbial limb here. We exchanged emails and while she was willing to see me, she thought I might be a better fit for a colleague and offered to speak to her. I was fine with that, and the colleague happened to be my "second choice" from above - Kelly. It took a few days to hear from her since Kelly was vacation, but we traded emails. Among the topics was that even though I knew most patients would see her weekly, that would be hard for me with the drive (45 minutes or so each way) since that would turn the session into nearly 2.5 hours and with work I didn't think I could handle that each week. I also was unsure about how to present. I'd been out in public dressed as a female a few times in the past, but those were always on Halloween with one exception. I had already decided that my preference was to present female and was glad that she said it was whatever made me comfortable. My thought was that if I couldn't present female and be comfortable in that environment then perhaps I wasn't ready to transition. So I decided I thought she might be a good fit and that it was worth seeing her and made a tentative appointment, pending me speaking with J who was still out of town.
It was at this point that I knew I needed to speak with J, and I wanted to talk to M as well, but J first. I could (and probably will at some point) write entire blog entries on how those discussions went; so lets move forward to my first appointment. J managed to arrange her schedule to go with me, and my friend D also offered to ride along which I was grateful for. I mean I wanted to go, but I was nervous, maybe even a little scared about how this would work. I mean I'm a private person (or at least used to be <G>) and I wasn't sure how I could talk about things like this.
My "lunch break" is over - I'm doing some online training course (which has been a complete waste of time so far) - and it's started back up so I'm going to break this into two parts and post the second part hopefully later on today or tomorrow. Actually that part will contain what encouraged me to write on this topic, but even without that I hope that there might be some thing(s) in here that somebody might find useful, especially somebody who is still at the stage of considering transition.
Thanks.
- M
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