Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘integration’

Jan 15

Coming Out and Integration.

I wrote recently about the ‘coming out’ process for the transgendered individual and suggested a particular method (the letter).  This post  furthers that discussion and talks about the concept of integration.

Coming out involves integration.

There’s the integration of what you suspect about yourself into what you know about yourself. This in itself can be a lengthy and difficult process and may or may not involve a full acceptance of the knowledge.

There’s the integration of what you know being known by others in your world.  This is what is typically referred to as “coming out”.   This involves letting others know.  There’s also the idea of the knowledge spreading, i.e.  people knowing who among other people in your life know and what they know.  When you look at it from a purely mathematical perspective, the permutations get very large very quickly.

Other people’s level of acceptance of you effects your level of integration into family, society, work and friends.  This can also change over time.  For example when you first come out to someone, you may be in a very beginning stage of accepting what you know about yourself.  Later on, you may have evolved with your self acceptance and integration, and the next time you talk to that person, you may be presenting a very different view of yourself.  My thoughts on this are – don’t fake it.  If you are ambivalent, or unsure or hesitant – then that’s where you are.  It may change in your own good time, but there’s no point in presenting yourself as super-trans when you’re not feeling it.  It’s ok, to take your time with your own self-acceptance process.

Perhaps the most important one is the integration of what you know about yourself being consolidated into your identity.  One small example would be having gone from suspecting you feel female to knowing you feel female, you then integrate that knowledge into your identity by wearing more female-type clothes.   This can start slow – I’ve often had people come into my office and tell me that they are wearing some male/female undergarment.

You can often tell when one has successfully integrated a sense of themselves as transgendered.   Very often people seem more comfortable talking about their trans identity and transition path and engaging in politics and activism and even forgetting about being trans and working on their careers or love lives.  This can often be confused with having attained hormones, or SRS or a new wardrobe.  The integration of being transgendered into ones identity is related to those things, but also separate.

The more fully one has integrated one’s identity, the freer they are to reach out to others, to participate in community and to engage in relationships.  I think everybody has seen examples of people with poorly integrated identity (trans, queer or otherwise) and It always has some kind of limiting effect on them.  For example, one might have a partner, but might not feel comfortable taking them to a family event.

Of course the main problem with integrating or incorporating a trans-identity into your personality is that its part of a stigmatized group and it takes some not small amount of courage to go there.  However, knowing that you are integrating an authentic part of yourself into your whole identity can help.

Find out about Psychotherapy when dealing with Gender variance in yourself or someone close to you.


Dec 9

1 Comment

The need for Post Transition Support

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the suicide of Christine Daniels / Mike Penner (October 10, 1957 – November 27, 2009). To briefly summarize, Mike Penner was born a genetic male, and around the age of 48 transitioned to female (Christine) and wrote about her transition and life as a sportswriter for the L.A Times. Because of her high profile, there was a lot written about the story (NPR).  The transition included a painful divorce.  About a year later she started using her old name of Mike Penner in her/his byline signifying some return to the male gender, and then suicide. So we are left with a lot of questions about what went wrong.

The incident raises the question of aftercare for post-transition individuals.

My experience is that people come into therapy when they want to transition, and very often their focus is on physical and practical matters, such as hormones, Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS), voice, facial hair, etc.. People have been focused on ‘transitioning’ for so long in their own private thoughts and the process is so involved that very often the individual and perhaps their therapist are not as focused on what happens afterwords. The gender dysphoria has been such a problem in one’s life that ‘transitioning’ comes to be seen as the solution.

Many other problems emotional and otherwise are understandably not addressed because of the overwhelming nature of gender dysphoria, and so it can be something of a rude shock to find these issues emerge after transition.

There also can be some level of dissatisfaction with the outcome of transition, one’s presentation, and various maintenance functions that are needed to maintain the gender identity.

Relationships with family, co-workers and others may be challenging.  While the transgendered person has had a lot of time to think about their gender and transition, other people in their lives have had much less time.

For MTF (Male to Female) transitions, there’s the problem of suddenly experiencing sexism.  In addition one might be suddenly seen to the outside world as lesbian, if one’s sexual orientation is towards woman.  If someone has been living life from a place of male privilege, and never having been in a discriminated against group before, this can be a pretty big adjustment to make.

I can only imagine that Mike/Christine suffered from some of these problems.   What has your post-transition experience been like?  Did you seek any type of help specifically for post-transition issues?

 

Find out about Psychotherapy when dealing with Gender variance in yourself or someone close to you.


Newer Entries »
%d bloggers like this: