This was originally posted to the TGYouth support mailing list. The author is a 22-year-old male-to-female transsexual who has been living full time for 8 months. She is writing anonymously as she is living stealth. [Editor's note - Sian is not the author's real name]
Something that worries me a lot about people I see on youth lists is their immaturity. Transition is an unimaginably stressful process. Many people told me before I started how stressful it would be. Yet I don’t think even those warnings prepared me for just how stressful it can be. You may well lose existing friends, and worst of all, your parents, as a result of what you are doing. Transition is confronting an issue you have struggled to suppress for many years. As you open your mind to the gender issues, many other problems can surface. For me, this was having to learn to deal with the very bad bullying I had had at school - which until I started transition I had successfully ignored.
You need to be unusually mature for your age to be able to transition stably at a young age. People who are still doing a lot of growing up, as is perfectly normal, just aren't stable enough or prepared with the mental faculties to be able to cope with the stress of transition. Part of the normal growing up process is to realise that other people don't have the answers; you have to work them out yourself. A lot of young (around my age or younger) transsexuals seem to think deep down that someone has a magic solution to their problems. Like the rest of life as an adult, this isn’t true. Your parents or teachers can’t provide you with answers on this one, only you can. As you get older, these people won’t have the answers to any of the other problems you will face.
No one can or should tell you to transition, only you can decide that. This is why I tell new trans identified people to get some counselling before they go and look for hormones. There is usually a lot to sort out. Many young transsexuals have had a lot of bad experiences in life up to now. They may have been bullied at school. They may have become severely, even suicidally, depressed. People need to sort things out in their own minds, and work through gender issues a lot more thoroughly before you go full time. Certainly the transsexuals I know who have transitioned successfully have followed this path.
What I'm basically saying is go sort your head out with someone who is trained to be able to help you do this. They don't have to be a specialist gender counsellor. The counsellor I saw hardly knew anything about transsexualism. But she helped me come to terms with all the bad things that have happened in my life, and work out how to deal with problems more effectively in future. It's not an instant fix - it can take months. There are no instant cures to gender dysphoria and all the related issues of low self-esteem and poor social skills. You have to go get help, work through these things.
It is also likely you will get more depressed as you begin transition, if that is what you decide you need having worked through the issues you face. You often swap one set of problems for another. You feel better inside, but you gain a whole new set of concerns - passing, how friends and family will react, transitioning in your job and a whole load of practical problems. I went from being moderately depressed before starting hormones to suicidally depressed and on anti-depressants a few months later. This was as a result of confronting buried issues, some big problems with my parents and needing to go full time but having to wait for reasons to do with work. Now I’m full time, these things are better. But I still have all the other problems people in the final year at university have - stress about dissertations, final exams and job hunting. They don’t go away, life continues. Hormones have meant I am no longer able to stop myself having any emotions, once a month I will become inexplicably down and moody. I’ve had to learn that that is just hormonal swings and nothing else. I’ve also had to learn to cope with being emotional about things - going from being an unfeeling person to someone who does get upset when they have a row, or their friends have split up with their boyfriends. And to crying at stupid things like car adverts!
Live real life as far as you can - I know it's impossible at times, but even internet chat rooms and IRC [Internet Relay Chat - Ed] help you stay in touch with people. Just don't depend on it - you need to function in the real world as well. Going to Russell Reid and swallowing the pills twice a day won't cure your problems. It will probably make you feel better, but you need to work at your issues, either with yourself or through lists, or with someone trained. A professional is far better, people on a support list just cannot match the kind of skills that come with training - and often have too many problems of their own anyhow. Go see someone independent from the process - that way you won't be worried that what you say is going to hinder your transition. Friends and family often also don’t understand what you are going through. Eventually you’ll understand this - wanting to change gender roles is an alien idea to most people - and once you are living full time, this will make a lot more sense!
Above all else, be honest. If you are depressed, tell people. If you are worried about a certain part of transition tell people. Telling people includes Russell or whoever your psychiatrist is. He needs to know these things. If you go in there and do the "it's all fine" line, you are only putting yourself at risk. Yes, it's easy to read the Net and learn what to say, but you are only hurting yourself, not anyone else by doing this. It's no good turning round in a few years and blaming Russell for letting you have surgery because you lied to him - that is YOUR fault. Transition is a slippery slope. It’s often hard to call a halt at a certain point and go back to where you were before. You must be prepared to though. If things genuinely aren’t any better for you, admit it. There is no shame in being wrong. You have to be prepared to be proved totally wrong about what you thought you were feeling. If you are, go back to the way you were.
I'm not trying to put anyone off transition - it changes your life beyond recognition if it is right for you. I'm just saying don't rush it. Do it right. If you screw it up it's very hard to recover from. Don't just take the pills, take active steps to sort your head out, to learn how to style your hair, how to do makeup, what to wear in what situation, all the things girls have learnt through their lives. If you are going from female to male, learn how men dress, how to shave quickly, how men act together, everything men have learnt in their lives. You've got it a lot easier!