I found a list of 81 choices for transgender people. I do a couple of these, with some but not complete success. I do 32, 42, 67, 78 and 81.
32) I can develop a close relationship with my personal computer and never spend much time outside of my house. I can stay at home and stay where I am.
42) I can get involved in a gender oriented self-help group and see what others with issues similar to mine are like. I can learn how they've handled these things.
67) I need to find more things to read, more books, web sites and articles on gender dysphoria. I need to learn more about this topic.
78) I can educate others about transgender issues and, hopefully, help generate a measure of acceptance and tolerance.
81) Although at times my gender problems seem immense I know things could be much worse. It's possible to find solutions that will work for me, but it won't happen unless I work on it. This may mean I need to talk with important people in my life about who I am, define my issues, and experiment with solutions to my problems.
I used to do 43 but the hormones made that impossible. :-)
43) I don't need a relationship with anyone. I'll live alone and cross dress and masturbate until I go blind. Then I'll go on disability and cross dress and masturbate some more.
What do you guys and gals do?
Hugs,Vickie
Here is a partial list of ways of coping with gender discomfort, various beliefs concerning what might resolve gender identity and role conflict, and some alternatives to genital reconstruction surgery gleaned from my experience with clients working on gender issues. Some of these alternatives may work for you. Some may be more appropriate for you than others and some may work by combining them. And still others may not be appropriate at all. It's even possible that some alternatives may work in combination with surgery. Some may even seem stupid or silly. A number of the alternatives may be considered way-stations in a person's journey to a place of comfort. Expect to have strong emotional reactions to some of these possibilities.
What's important to remember is that you have a variety of choices. Be aware, some of the options you foresee no one else has envisioned. You may have found unique ways of dealing with your gender issues. Discuss your feelings and views with your therapist.
I'll present more alternatives (... how many are there?) for dealing with gender identity and role conflict in future editions of my web site.
1) I can continue to live my life in the gender role I was assigned and socialized in from infancy. With the help of a therapist I can make the best of it and learn to accept myself as I developed.
2) I can work in the gender role I was first socialized in and live my preferred gender role at other times.
3) I can be a cross dresser and view it as a hobby similar to some people who are into golf, model railroads, gardening, etc.
4) I can develop an androgynous life style that will work for me, a gender role that is a personal mix of masculine and feminine characteristics. I can give myself an androgynous first name.
5) I want to postpone this a bit. I'll start working on this gender issue tomorrow ... or maybe this weekend.
6) I can be a volunteer worker or get a part time job in my preferred gender role to test what it's like to work as a man or woman. I can build experience for the future. Maybe this will help me decide how I want to live my life.
7) My religious beliefs will help me deal with my gender issues.
8) I can learn to adjust to life as a cross dresser. Maybe I can find a woman or man who can handle this, perhaps even enjoy it, someone I can live with or marry.
9) I can take hormones forever, but not change my gender role or have surgery.
10) I can take hormones, change my gender role, but not have surgery.
11) I can change my gender role, but not take hormones or have surgery.
12) I can have sex reassignment surgery so I'll have a vagina. Then I'll be able to have sex with men, but I'll continue to live and work in my masculine gender role.
13) I can live with another gender dysphoric person and explore my attraction to TG persons. Maybe we can work things out together.
14) I can get married to a straight woman (or man) and let that take care of the problem.
15) I can get married and have children ... then I'll have to be a mother (or father) and I won't have time for gender conflict.
16) I can get divorced. That will put an end to marital conflict over my gender issues. I'll settle down then.
17) I can get used to almost anything, even an emotional straitjacket. I need to work on this a little harder.
18) I can announce to anyone who needs or wants to know that I'm a cross dresser. Let others make of it what they want. I can then live my life openly and freely as I desire. I can partake of the masculine or feminine gender roles whenever and wherever I choose.
19) I can get high on drugs or alcohol as much as possible to escape my problems.
20) I can work all the time, 25 or more hours a day, so I won't have time to think about this issue.
21) I can get out of the San Francisco Bay Area so I won't be around all these people like myself.
22) I can move to the San Francisco Bay Area so I can be around more people like myself.
23) Everything changes. This gender conflict won't last forever. I will eventually get over it.
24) I can get a job with a lot of public visibility, so changing sex won't be an option.
25) If I changed sex, I'd be really weird, a freak ... a super social reject. I won't do it because I'd end up worse off than I am now.
26) I can get involved in some kind of service delivery to the TG population. Maybe I'll do something like research or counseling with gender people. That should be enough. I won't need to go any further than that.
27) If I change my sex it will ruin the way my parents, spouse, children, and other important people in my life feel about me. They'll go crazy with grief, anger, etc. So, I'll stay the way I am. For them.
28) I can run around in circles looking for a new solution to my problem and not find anything new or anyone to ask for help. I can stay where I am and not change or grow.
29) I can find a therapist to help me go straight and turn me into "a normal person."
30) I can take testosterone and live in the masculine gender role even though I was born a female. I'll have a mastectomy, but I won't have genital surgery. I know I can have a satisfactory or better sex life with my lover or wife.
31) Changing sex will take too much work, time, and money. I can find some other solution to this problem.
32) I can develop a close relationship with my personal computer and never spend much time outside of my house. I can stay at home and stay where I am.
33) I recognize what the problem is. I know what I want. Sex change is what I need. Don't talk to me about alternatives or try to slow me down. Full speed ahead.
34) I can hang around with people who abuse me ... or perhaps find new and creative ways to abuse myself. I can be hostile, angry, and critical toward my self. I can develop skills at negative self-talk.
35) I will always be ambivalent about my gender role. It's part of who I am. I need help learning to accept that ambivalence.
36) I can be a "she-male" and find a man or a woman who wants a relationship with someone who looks and behaves like a woman, but has male genitals.
37) I can envy certain men (or women) and wish again and again I was as fortunate. God, what a pitiful case I am.
38) I can learn to be satisfied with dressing-up on Halloween and maybe New Year's Eve, too.
39) I can be a prostitute, work the streets and hotels, and make money from people who want me to turn them on sexually.
40) The medical risks are too great. Hormones and / or surgery would probably kill me.
41) I'm a carpenter (or a ...). I could never see myself working in my preferred gender role in my occupation. I could never support myself.
42) I can get involved in a gender oriented self-help group and see what others with issues similar to mine are like. I can learn how they've handled these things.
43) I don't need a relationship with anyone. I'll live alone and cross dress and masturbate until I go blind. Then I'll go on disability and cross dress and masturbate some more.
44) I feel bitter and angry because I'm transgendered. I didn't ask for this! Why did God make me this way? I hate all transgendered people (including myself)!
45) I'll consult with a physician regarding medication for depression, compulsions, and self destructive impulses and also get involved in psychotherapy.
46) I can have cosmetic surgery and / or electrolysis to help me feel better about myself.
47) I can spend lots of time blaming nature, my parents, and society for making me the way I am.
48) I can get involved in the creative arts, acting, writing, film, dance, music, comedy, painting, design, etc. That will help me be someone or something else, and escape from who I am, or maybe help me express myself.
49) I can experiment with hormone therapy under the supervision of a physician. For example, I can plan to take hormones for a year, and then discontinue them, and see how I feel. This may help me decide how I should manage my life.
50) I can distinguish and refine my masculine and feminine personae, build two separate closets of clothes, fall in love with my selves, marry my selves, work at living happily ever after, and never be seen in public together.
51) I can grow a beard, get tattooed, join the military, play ice hockey or football, become a rock climber, race motorcycles or cars ... etc.
52) I could never be satisfied being anything other than a genetic man (or woman). Gender role change, hormones and surgery won't work for me. I'm a perfectionist. That's just the way I am.
53) I can have a 1000 hours of electrolysis and cross dress until there's no more hose and I've depleted the world's supply of mascara or, I can get into leathers and chains, act super macho and aggressive and let the world know what a real man is like.
54) I'm not a very good physical prospect for sex change. My hair is terrible, or gone ... in the wrong places. I'm not good looking enough. I'm too short or tall. My nose is too big or small. My hips are too big or not big enough. I'm too muscular or not muscular enough, etc.
55) I can have sex reassignment surgery with the mistaken belief that surgery will cure my problems getting along with myself and other people, but find that those same problems still exist after surgery.
56) I can finally accept that the Real Life Experience is the only way of knowing if I can be happy in the alternative gender role. Fantasies and part-time episodes will never give me the information I need. I can always return to my original gender role if it's clear things can't be worked out.
57) I can continue to live my life as I have been doing for years, in my present gender role, and not seek help or work on changing to build a more satisfying life. I can grow progressively more unhappy, miserable, and regretful as I grow older, while clearly knowing what the problem is, but fail to take the necessary steps to change and improve my life.
58) I can move to another city, state, or country where life won't be as tough. I'll leave these gender issues behind.
59) I can work at getting to know who I am and what I want. I can learn to take good care of myself. I'm the only person I'll always be with and who I'll never lose or who will never leave me.
60) I can call Shirley MacLaine for a consultation. She's gotta know a way out of this situation.
61) I'm too old. Change isn't possible at my age.
62) I can gradually, step by step, work at making the outside of me match the inside and not do anything irreversible unless I'm sure it's right for me. I'll work with professionals in the gender area to make sure the steps I take will help and not hurt me.
63) I can sit around and not do much, wring my hands, and become an expert at feeling sorry about my life.
64) To hell with society! I'll just live my life, MY Way! I'll do whatever I want, by myself! I don't need other people! I don't want to be around them! I'll read metaphysics or study the occult, mental telepathy, and stuff.
65) I can be a "mental cross dresser" or maybe a "mental transsexual." I'll fantasize about sex change, all the time, as much as I want.
66) I can obsessively worry about my life, spend most of my time trying to figure out why I'm this way and perhaps go crazy and end-up in a ward of a state hospital!
67) I need to find more things to read, more books, web sites and articles on gender dysphoria. I need to learn more about this topic.
68) I can settle down and realize that cross dressing is my hobby, a harmless avocation. If others have problems with what I do, that's their problem, not mine. I refuse to see myself as "sick." Society is the patient and needs treatment for trying to force me and others to live rigid, restrictive gender roles.
69) I can try for a new world record in deep depression.
70) I can double-up on my efforts at hiding who I am from myself and others and in the process get in shape for trying for a new record in repression and denial.
71) I can do the Real Life Experience, as quickly as I can, then have chest or genital reconstruction surgery and be done with this problem. I'll never have any gender issues again. I'll live happily ever after.
72) I can find a therapist to help me put the feminine and masculine parts of my two selves together ... to form one whole person ... who has peace-of-mind and is happier.
73) I've got too much free time to think about these things. I need more diversions, compulsions, escapes, hobbies.
74) I can recognize that when I fully accept myself, and clearly and consistently communicate my gender, the chance that significant others will accept me will increase. In other words, I will encounter opposition from family and friends as long as I communicate ambivalence concerning who I am, and a willingness to negotiate my expression of gender with others.
75) I'm willing to wait until medical science develops penis (or vagina) transplants. Maybe some kind of gene therapy can help me. I'll bet it's not far off!
76) The woman I'm living with is a fem and she wants me because I'm a butch. It will kill her if I become a transman. It won't work.
77) Forget the Real Life Experience! I can go to Mexico (or someplace) and surgically change my chest and /or genitals for "cash on the barrel-head." But then I might become a recluse and not really develop myself personally and socially and still be upset with my life, or worse yet, I might conclude I did the wrong thing.
78) I can educate others about transgender issues and, hopefully, help generate a measure of acceptance and tolerance.
79) I can accept that gender identity is forever.
80) I can practice finding positive consequences associated with being the kind of person I am and reduce my inclination to dwell on the negative.
81) Although at times my gender problems seem immense I know things could be much worse. It's possible to find solutions that will work for me, but it won't happen unless I work on it. This may mean I need to talk with important people in my life about who I am, define my issues, and experiment with solutions to my problems.
2) I can work in the gender role I was first socialized in and live my preferred gender role at other times.
3) I can be a cross dresser and view it as a hobby similar to some people who are into golf, model railroads, gardening, etc.
4) I can develop an androgynous life style that will work for me, a gender role that is a personal mix of masculine and feminine characteristics. I can give myself an androgynous first name.
5) I want to postpone this a bit. I'll start working on this gender issue tomorrow ... or maybe this weekend.
6) I can be a volunteer worker or get a part time job in my preferred gender role to test what it's like to work as a man or woman. I can build experience for the future. Maybe this will help me decide how I want to live my life.
7) My religious beliefs will help me deal with my gender issues.
8) I can learn to adjust to life as a cross dresser. Maybe I can find a woman or man who can handle this, perhaps even enjoy it, someone I can live with or marry.
9) I can take hormones forever, but not change my gender role or have surgery.
10) I can take hormones, change my gender role, but not have surgery.
11) I can change my gender role, but not take hormones or have surgery.
12) I can have sex reassignment surgery so I'll have a vagina. Then I'll be able to have sex with men, but I'll continue to live and work in my masculine gender role.
13) I can live with another gender dysphoric person and explore my attraction to TG persons. Maybe we can work things out together.
14) I can get married to a straight woman (or man) and let that take care of the problem.
15) I can get married and have children ... then I'll have to be a mother (or father) and I won't have time for gender conflict.
16) I can get divorced. That will put an end to marital conflict over my gender issues. I'll settle down then.
17) I can get used to almost anything, even an emotional straitjacket. I need to work on this a little harder.
18) I can announce to anyone who needs or wants to know that I'm a cross dresser. Let others make of it what they want. I can then live my life openly and freely as I desire. I can partake of the masculine or feminine gender roles whenever and wherever I choose.
19) I can get high on drugs or alcohol as much as possible to escape my problems.
20) I can work all the time, 25 or more hours a day, so I won't have time to think about this issue.
21) I can get out of the San Francisco Bay Area so I won't be around all these people like myself.
22) I can move to the San Francisco Bay Area so I can be around more people like myself.
23) Everything changes. This gender conflict won't last forever. I will eventually get over it.
24) I can get a job with a lot of public visibility, so changing sex won't be an option.
25) If I changed sex, I'd be really weird, a freak ... a super social reject. I won't do it because I'd end up worse off than I am now.
26) I can get involved in some kind of service delivery to the TG population. Maybe I'll do something like research or counseling with gender people. That should be enough. I won't need to go any further than that.
27) If I change my sex it will ruin the way my parents, spouse, children, and other important people in my life feel about me. They'll go crazy with grief, anger, etc. So, I'll stay the way I am. For them.
28) I can run around in circles looking for a new solution to my problem and not find anything new or anyone to ask for help. I can stay where I am and not change or grow.
29) I can find a therapist to help me go straight and turn me into "a normal person."
30) I can take testosterone and live in the masculine gender role even though I was born a female. I'll have a mastectomy, but I won't have genital surgery. I know I can have a satisfactory or better sex life with my lover or wife.
31) Changing sex will take too much work, time, and money. I can find some other solution to this problem.
32) I can develop a close relationship with my personal computer and never spend much time outside of my house. I can stay at home and stay where I am.
33) I recognize what the problem is. I know what I want. Sex change is what I need. Don't talk to me about alternatives or try to slow me down. Full speed ahead.
34) I can hang around with people who abuse me ... or perhaps find new and creative ways to abuse myself. I can be hostile, angry, and critical toward my self. I can develop skills at negative self-talk.
35) I will always be ambivalent about my gender role. It's part of who I am. I need help learning to accept that ambivalence.
36) I can be a "she-male" and find a man or a woman who wants a relationship with someone who looks and behaves like a woman, but has male genitals.
37) I can envy certain men (or women) and wish again and again I was as fortunate. God, what a pitiful case I am.
38) I can learn to be satisfied with dressing-up on Halloween and maybe New Year's Eve, too.
39) I can be a prostitute, work the streets and hotels, and make money from people who want me to turn them on sexually.
40) The medical risks are too great. Hormones and / or surgery would probably kill me.
41) I'm a carpenter (or a ...). I could never see myself working in my preferred gender role in my occupation. I could never support myself.
42) I can get involved in a gender oriented self-help group and see what others with issues similar to mine are like. I can learn how they've handled these things.
43) I don't need a relationship with anyone. I'll live alone and cross dress and masturbate until I go blind. Then I'll go on disability and cross dress and masturbate some more.
44) I feel bitter and angry because I'm transgendered. I didn't ask for this! Why did God make me this way? I hate all transgendered people (including myself)!
45) I'll consult with a physician regarding medication for depression, compulsions, and self destructive impulses and also get involved in psychotherapy.
46) I can have cosmetic surgery and / or electrolysis to help me feel better about myself.
47) I can spend lots of time blaming nature, my parents, and society for making me the way I am.
48) I can get involved in the creative arts, acting, writing, film, dance, music, comedy, painting, design, etc. That will help me be someone or something else, and escape from who I am, or maybe help me express myself.
49) I can experiment with hormone therapy under the supervision of a physician. For example, I can plan to take hormones for a year, and then discontinue them, and see how I feel. This may help me decide how I should manage my life.
50) I can distinguish and refine my masculine and feminine personae, build two separate closets of clothes, fall in love with my selves, marry my selves, work at living happily ever after, and never be seen in public together.
51) I can grow a beard, get tattooed, join the military, play ice hockey or football, become a rock climber, race motorcycles or cars ... etc.
52) I could never be satisfied being anything other than a genetic man (or woman). Gender role change, hormones and surgery won't work for me. I'm a perfectionist. That's just the way I am.
53) I can have a 1000 hours of electrolysis and cross dress until there's no more hose and I've depleted the world's supply of mascara or, I can get into leathers and chains, act super macho and aggressive and let the world know what a real man is like.
54) I'm not a very good physical prospect for sex change. My hair is terrible, or gone ... in the wrong places. I'm not good looking enough. I'm too short or tall. My nose is too big or small. My hips are too big or not big enough. I'm too muscular or not muscular enough, etc.
55) I can have sex reassignment surgery with the mistaken belief that surgery will cure my problems getting along with myself and other people, but find that those same problems still exist after surgery.
56) I can finally accept that the Real Life Experience is the only way of knowing if I can be happy in the alternative gender role. Fantasies and part-time episodes will never give me the information I need. I can always return to my original gender role if it's clear things can't be worked out.
57) I can continue to live my life as I have been doing for years, in my present gender role, and not seek help or work on changing to build a more satisfying life. I can grow progressively more unhappy, miserable, and regretful as I grow older, while clearly knowing what the problem is, but fail to take the necessary steps to change and improve my life.
58) I can move to another city, state, or country where life won't be as tough. I'll leave these gender issues behind.
59) I can work at getting to know who I am and what I want. I can learn to take good care of myself. I'm the only person I'll always be with and who I'll never lose or who will never leave me.
60) I can call Shirley MacLaine for a consultation. She's gotta know a way out of this situation.
61) I'm too old. Change isn't possible at my age.
62) I can gradually, step by step, work at making the outside of me match the inside and not do anything irreversible unless I'm sure it's right for me. I'll work with professionals in the gender area to make sure the steps I take will help and not hurt me.
63) I can sit around and not do much, wring my hands, and become an expert at feeling sorry about my life.
64) To hell with society! I'll just live my life, MY Way! I'll do whatever I want, by myself! I don't need other people! I don't want to be around them! I'll read metaphysics or study the occult, mental telepathy, and stuff.
65) I can be a "mental cross dresser" or maybe a "mental transsexual." I'll fantasize about sex change, all the time, as much as I want.
66) I can obsessively worry about my life, spend most of my time trying to figure out why I'm this way and perhaps go crazy and end-up in a ward of a state hospital!
67) I need to find more things to read, more books, web sites and articles on gender dysphoria. I need to learn more about this topic.
68) I can settle down and realize that cross dressing is my hobby, a harmless avocation. If others have problems with what I do, that's their problem, not mine. I refuse to see myself as "sick." Society is the patient and needs treatment for trying to force me and others to live rigid, restrictive gender roles.
69) I can try for a new world record in deep depression.
70) I can double-up on my efforts at hiding who I am from myself and others and in the process get in shape for trying for a new record in repression and denial.
71) I can do the Real Life Experience, as quickly as I can, then have chest or genital reconstruction surgery and be done with this problem. I'll never have any gender issues again. I'll live happily ever after.
72) I can find a therapist to help me put the feminine and masculine parts of my two selves together ... to form one whole person ... who has peace-of-mind and is happier.
73) I've got too much free time to think about these things. I need more diversions, compulsions, escapes, hobbies.
74) I can recognize that when I fully accept myself, and clearly and consistently communicate my gender, the chance that significant others will accept me will increase. In other words, I will encounter opposition from family and friends as long as I communicate ambivalence concerning who I am, and a willingness to negotiate my expression of gender with others.
75) I'm willing to wait until medical science develops penis (or vagina) transplants. Maybe some kind of gene therapy can help me. I'll bet it's not far off!
76) The woman I'm living with is a fem and she wants me because I'm a butch. It will kill her if I become a transman. It won't work.
77) Forget the Real Life Experience! I can go to Mexico (or someplace) and surgically change my chest and /or genitals for "cash on the barrel-head." But then I might become a recluse and not really develop myself personally and socially and still be upset with my life, or worse yet, I might conclude I did the wrong thing.
78) I can educate others about transgender issues and, hopefully, help generate a measure of acceptance and tolerance.
79) I can accept that gender identity is forever.
80) I can practice finding positive consequences associated with being the kind of person I am and reduce my inclination to dwell on the negative.
81) Although at times my gender problems seem immense I know things could be much worse. It's possible to find solutions that will work for me, but it won't happen unless I work on it. This may mean I need to talk with important people in my life about who I am, define my issues, and experiment with solutions to my problems.
© 2002 by Rebecca Auge, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
--
=======================================================
Yahoo IM: vickiecd
Email: davis.vickie@gmail.com
http://vickiedavis.blogspot.com/
Website Director of http://tvals.org/
If you are not working to integrate your life
you are working to disintegrate it.
Callan Williams
"Courage is not the absence of fear
but rather the judgment that something else
is more important than fear."
Ambrose Redmoon
(by way of Donna Rose's 2006 SCC Speech)
People will do anything, no matter how absurd,
in order to avoid facing their own soul.
Carl Gustav Jung
=======================================================
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