Confusing interaction

[secondlook]

I've been mostly very happy with my therapist, she's very understanding and supportive and has provided some great advice. But at our session yesterday there was suddenly a note of tension when I mentioned that I was in no rush to come out to my anti-LGBT family members. Keep in mind I've only been fully aware of my transgender status for a month or so, and I'm probably years away from presenting as a woman in public. The only person I've come out to so far is my wife. But my therapist suddenly became very adamant that I need to tell everyone, otherwise I'm hiding my true self out of shame. She redirected the session into a discussion about the steps I need to take to come out to family members who will be hesitant or hostile to the news. I mean, the steps she was describing made sense, and I'm sure the advice she gave will come in handy when the time comes, but I don't understand the rush. I don't agree that I'm concealing the truth from them out of shame, I just don't see the point in having a confrontation right now. Am I crazy?

[TommieAnne]

I suspect your therapist, like mine does, may be pushing your buttons to get you to think.

Mine often asks how I'm going to present myself to the world. For which my best answer is "just as myself." But it flusters me to no end.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but you can always ask why you might need to go at a pace that doesn't feel right to you.

TA

[ShawnaLeigh]

I totally agree with you 1000%.  Coming out is an extremely personal and difficult thing and it has to be done on YOUR timeline regardless if it is a day or a year!  She should NOT be pushing you into an uncomfortable position.  If you have judged the situation with specific individuals to be a potential confrontation then there may never be a "good" time but you still must decide for yourself who and when and even how.

 

OK so on the flip side.

Yes the things she may have told you will help you deal with the difficulty of telling those who may or may not take this well but by no means are you hiding behind shame as you have already come out to the most important person; your wife.   That being said it does happen to folks.  They keep putting it off for a later date when "they will feel ready" but then they keep themselves in a loop of anxiety, and fear and even a bit of shame.  They will never be ready so an encouraging nudge is ok but to be pushy and insistent I feel is not right.  

 

This happened to me right before the holidays.  Previously I had started to come out in November and was on a roll.  To my amazement and complete relief EVERYONE was super accepting and positive.  It was getting very easy to tell anyone. Then I told my mother.  It did not go well.  I killed her son and she has rejected me completely.  (Yea-WOW...)

Then my wife suggested we slow it down until after the holidays just in case their are others who do not take it well as we feared it ruining the other family and friends holidays.  I still had some very close and important people to tell too and I did not want to risk a drama stress-fest at any holiday dinners, so I agreed. 

It was hell for me to be rolling so good and getting past the anxiety of it to just stopping completely and be stalled out.  I had to wait until mid January and I had a very hard time "staring" again.  All my fears and anxieties were back.  I got into a phase where I hated being stalled out and complained about it a lot but in reality I was using it to protect myself longer from more possible fallout.  (I actually figured this one out on my own and told my therapist about this which he agreed.)

 

So in short.

Yes I agree with you but don't put it off to long or you will talk yourself into not doing it for any one of a 1000 reasons.

JMO

Good Luck!

 

[ShawnaLeigh]

36 minutes ago, TammyAnne said:

Mine often asks how I'm going to present myself to the world. For which my best answer is "just as myself." But it flusters me to no end.

I've been here too with mine.  BUT he always says with a caveat "on your time line"... So not really pushy.

His latest "nudge" is to start presenting full female in public even though I have an agreement with my wife to not do so quite yet.  Which I admit is getting harder and harder to comply with.

More so try pushing the boundaries with my wife to get her to be ok with it sooner then later.

 

[KathyLauren]

While your therapist may be right about shame, that might also just be an assumption because you may have given her no reason to think otherwise.  This is where you need to open up and tell her what is really going on in your head.

 

Do you have a time line of your own in mind for how you want to proceed?  I wonder if what she said was in response to a perceived lack of planning.  She might just be pushing you to think ahead.

 

A month after discovering yourself is a bit early to have a detailed plan, and a bit early to be coming out to the entire world.  But you should be starting to think about how you would like your journey to unfold.

 

Do you plan to transition, for example?  If so, when would you like that to happen?  How would you see that unfolding?  Quickly?  Gradually?  Coming out is simply one stage of that process.  When it happens is something that you should decide in response to the practicalities of transition.

 

These are things that you should be discussing with your therapist.  When she pushes you to come out right now, steer the conversation to these planning issues. 

 

Regards,

Kathy

[secondlook]

2 hours ago, ShawnaLeigh said:

I had to wait until mid January and I had a very hard time "staring" again.  All my fears and anxieties were back.  I got into a phase where I hated being stalled out and complained about it a lot but in reality I was using it to protect myself longer from more possible fallout.

 

That sounds agonizing. I hate not having control over my own life and feeling like I'm going backwards. I'm sorry to hear you had to go through that.

 

1 hour ago, KathyLauren said:

While your therapist may be right about shame, that might also just be an assumption because you may have given her no reason to think otherwise.  This is where you need to open up and tell her what is really going on in your head.

 

 

It really caught me off guard when she used the word "shame" because I don't believe that word had come up in any of our prior conversations. I can't imagine what I might've said that would make her think that I feel shame about wanting to transition, and when I did push back on the notion, she pushed back even harder. I guess I might have to revisit that topic in our next session, I'd like to know what I said that gave her that impression. 

 

1 hour ago, KathyLauren said:

Do you have a time line of your own in mind for how you want to proceed?  I wonder if what she said was in response to a perceived lack of planning.  She might just be pushing you to think ahead.

 

 

I do not have a timeline at all yet, I'm still very much in the information gathering phase. Literally mid-January of this year is when I had my epiphany. I spend most of my free time researching all the various options. If there was a magic button to make a complete transition happen today, I'd push it so hard it'd probably break. In the absence of such a button, I'm trying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of what's possible before I make any big decisions. 

 

1 hour ago, KathyLauren said:

Coming out is simply one stage of that process.  When it happens is something that you should decide in response to the practicalities of transition.

 

This is one area where I've pretty much made up my mind, though of course I always aspire to be reasonable if new information shows that my decision was rash.

 

For friends and family likely to respond in healthy ways, I'd like to come out once I'm a little bit more androgynous in my appearance. I'm so overtly masculine today in my clothing, mannerisms and speech that I think it would come across as comical today. I need to get to a point where when I tell someone, they can see for themselves that I'm serious and not making a joke. That's been one of the hard parts for my wife, I think, hearing the words come from the mouth of someone who appears to be such a straight-edge man's man. Fortunately she's open-minded enough that she's getting past it, but I can't expect that from everyone.

 

For those likely to be hostile, I'll come out when there's no choice, when I feel like they're probably going to figure it out if I don't. Or maybe when I'm ready to start living full-time as a woman, if that comes first. There is A LOT of hatred of LGBT people in my family, and a fair amount in my wife's family, too. So I'm just hoping to postpone the inevitable breaks that will occur. I'm hoping that some will surprise me and be more accepting than I expect, but there's no way that all of them will.

 

Do I fear coming out to those who won't get it or will reject me? Absolutely I do. I hate the idea of being subjected to hostility and revulsion and scorn. Or if they just ghost me, that'll be just as bad because I'll still know what's behind the silence. But their opinions are not superior to mine, and no matter how much it hurts to lose relationships, it's not going to sway me from what I know is right. 

[ShawnaLeigh]

1 hour ago, secondlook said:

Do I fear coming out to those who won't get it or will reject me? Absolutely I do. I hate the idea of being subjected to hostility and revulsion and scorn. Or if they just ghost me, that'll be just as bad because I'll still know what's behind the silence.

This was a biggy for me too.   I think for many of us to be truthful.  It would work on my mind too about the possibilities with each person to what they would say and how they would react and even if it was a positive reaction I would worry what they really thought deep down.  Are they just being nice to me for the sake of our history and relationship or do they honestly feel that way.   Id rather be ghosted then being looked at with disgust or revulsion.   I suppose we all come into this life knowing well in advance this is a real possibility for any one will tell.  

Like you had mentioned; their opinions are not as important as your own.

 

 

[Jackie C.]

Whelp, that's a weird thing for your therapist to say. First off, I'm going to say that your timeline needs to feel comfortable to you. I'm out to everyone in my life that matters. There are a couple of relatives that I haven't seen in years (decades?) that don't know and, even if I did have their contact information, I'm not in a hurry to tell them. They don't really matter.

 

Personally, I went from presenting male to presenting female full-time in less than a year, so your timeline might be longer than it needs to be. Again, it needs to happen at a pace your comfortable with. Personally, the two biggies for me were voice and clothes. I wanted to have some feminine outfits to wear and get my voice down before I went full time. Fortunately for me, I'm good at voices and my wife likes having an enthusiastic partner to shop with.

 

Now, your therapist could be thinking, "You need to move for your own mental well-being." I would have thought that she'd do a better job of communicating that. It could just be that she's concerned that you're not moving forward. That obviously doesn't help. Not moving forward got you here in the first place. I'd make it a point to talk to my therapist about, "Um, what the heck do you mean?" the next time I saw her and get her to clarify her motives. She might just want to get you thinking about a timeline and could be helping you set goals.

 

Still, she could have communicated it better.

 

Hugs!

[secondlook]

57 minutes ago, Jackie C. said:

Now, your therapist could be thinking, "You need to move for your own mental well-being."

 

It is true that I'm not moving forward super quickly, but that's mostly out of deference to my wife and trying to help her adjust, rather than my own preferences. Which I have told my therapist repeatedly. Maybe she thinks I'm using my wife as an excuse to cover for my own insecurities? Heck, maybe she'd even be a little bit right. I am a little bit worried that I'm going to look really stupid in women's clothes. But I'm also eager to find out, and if I do look stupid, start figuring out what I have to do to not look stupid.

[SaraAW]

Fully understand moving at a pace to help love ones adjust. I would definitely move faster, but my wife is still struggling, so I go slow. I’ve managed to make some progress. A big one being hrt. 
 

My therapist is working with me to help me plan my progress, but it’s really more by getting me to discuss internal and external roadblocks and how I can see myself maneuvering around them. 
 

As everyone else has said, find a pace you’re comfortable with based on everything going on in your life. Be open and honest with your therapist and they’ll be better able to help you help yourself. 
 

Hugs!

[TommieAnne]

19 hours ago, secondlook said:

 

It is true that I'm not moving forward super quickly, but that's mostly out of deference to my wife and trying to help her adjust, rather than my own preferences. Which I have told my therapist repeatedly. Maybe she thinks I'm using my wife as an excuse to cover for my own insecurities? Heck, maybe she'd even be a little bit right. I am a little bit worried that I'm going to look really stupid in women's clothes. But I'm also eager to find out, and if I do look stupid, start figuring out what I have to do to not look stupid.

Women's fashion has spent decades going through odd trends. Some of which might be questionable. But was often intended to attract attention or stand out from the crowd. A "fashion statement."

I doubt you'll look stupid, dear. Although how we look to ourselves is always subject to the lens of our own critical eye, which is much more critical than most casual observers.

TA

[secondlook]

1 hour ago, TammyAnne said:

I doubt you'll look stupid, dear. Although how we look to ourselves is always subject to the lens of our own critical eye, which is much more critical than most casual observers.

 

I very much appreciate the positivity, that means a lot right now. I'm very emotional lately and every kind word is like a virtual hug. On the plus side, I'm increasingly OK with the idea of looking stupid at first, because that'll be a learning experience that helps me look a little less stupid on each successive attempt. Trial and error is not a bad thing! At least, from the comfort and safety of one's own home, anyway.

[TommieAnne]

2 hours ago, secondlook said:

 

I very much appreciate the positivity, that means a lot right now. I'm very emotional lately and every kind word is like a virtual hug. On the plus side, I'm increasingly OK with the idea of looking stupid at first, because that'll be a learning experience that helps me look a little less stupid on each successive attempt. Trial and error is not a bad thing! At least, from the comfort and safety of one's own home, anyway.

《《《 hug 》》》

There is so much more to being feminine than looks alone.

TA