Shadows of Doubt
Peering into the Void of Gender Identity
A man chronicles his descent into gender obsession—and gets some useful advice on r/detrans:
My heart is racing constantly for a week after learning about tr*ns stuff, what do I do?
The only thing that can calm me down is large quantities of alcohol. It's a serious issue. I wake up heart racing, I can't focus. Everything seems about gender everywhere. I can't find joy in anything at all, like I used to. I don't even feel sexual desires, which is basically the only thing I knew to trust before.
I am a male 40 years old and I've written more about my situation elsewhere, but basically I realize that as a child, I was maybe more GNC [gender-nonconforming] than I thought, like I was knitting and stuff, just an example, but a lot of that, joined at the hip with my mother, I saw some pictures of me wearing my mother's clothes. I had gender swapping fantasies, but how much?
The only thing I can find peace in is sports. I am constantly plagued by ideas that I'm a false person etc. That my lifelong social anxiety is because of dysphoria etc.
When I don't have this racing anxiety I feel calmer and mostly like myself, but it takes almost nothing to send me spinning into feeling like a fake, that the only way to find peace is to give in.
How much of that was my mother leading me that way or protecting me with accepting/protecting, but not affirming, I am not sure, which makes it worse. I used to think my mother might have been to blame, but now I'm in doubt.
I do remember myself as a boy and being aware of being a boy, at least for most of my life. I think I asked my mom if I were a girl at some point, but generally I seem to remember identifying as a boy from early puberty forward, albeit one boy who felt his personality was very feminine.
Anyway, I'm in serious distress, but I don't dare contact the psych ward, because I feel they'll "affirm" my feelings. I have an appointment with an older sexologist in 10 days, a woman, but she seems trustworthy.
He’s not exaggerating when he says he’s in serious distress. The picture he paints of his mental state is a dire one: racing heart, spinning head, drinking too much. And he’s right to be wary of seeking help from mental-health professionals, who might feel a responsibility to “affirm” his distressing thoughts that he is a “false person” as a deep personal truth.
Fortunately, he gets some compassionate advice from someone who’s been there before:
It's really important that you calm down and don't start making rash decisions. Also stop drinking or at least taper off, getting drunk is going to make this much worse whatever it is. Stop drinking completely until you've had some time to think about it (although be careful if you're an alcoholic because of withdrawal you'd have to taper).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like this has all come pretty suddenly? You're combing through your personal history to figure out if you've always been this way, but by your admission you're having an intense psychological reaction to something that you found out about a week ago.
Now I can't tell you if you're transgender or not, but around 10 years ago I experienced something that sounds exactly like this. I hadn't seriously considered being transgender, but one night I was lying in bed reading about the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch (lol, it's a musical about a gay man who has sex reassignment surgery) and something snapped in my head. I went to sleep thinking I was just sick or having some weird brain spasm, but when I woke up I felt the same anxiety in the pit of my stomach. It's a long story but I spent 2 years literally obsessed with the fear that I might be transgender. I literally spent days doing nothing other than obsessively scrutinising my past and my feelings trying to figure out if I had any secret desires to be a woman or whatever.
I'm fine now, now after years of struggling with it. What was it? I don't know, some people would say I had 'Pure OCD'. I'm not a doctor so I don't know, but after years of trying to 'accept' my gender identity (which wasn't real) the only solution I found was to... stop caring. I had to say to myself 'okay so let's say I'm transgender, what then...?', 'I guess I should transition?', 'But I don't want to transition', 'Okay then lets just see if that changes'
Being at peace with that open question is really what ended my anxiety. Which to me suggests it was simply that, some strange kind of anxiety disorder. The most toxic thing I did was interrogate my thoughts and memories trying to find evidence that I had some transgender tendencies, that really tanked my mental health
Anyway IDK if this is you too. But I think your instinct to be sceptical of gender therapists is the right one, they might be helpful but they really only have one prescription. In my opinion, there are people out there with anxiety about this who are not actually transgender. IDK if you're gay or straight but sounds to me like you're just aroused by a gender swap fantasy and you're worried that means you have to transition
He describes the same obsessive fixation on the idea that he might be trans, which crashed into his world out of nowhere—from contact with a musical of all things. He then spent years trying to get to the bottom of a question with no possible answer, destroying his mental health in the process. In the end, the only way out was to let it go, to “stop caring.”
The original poster responds, observing that he’s “had other obsessions, even very bad ones, but they've been easier to disprove.” This is something I see all the time in online trans communities and it’s a subject that came up in the conversation I had with Steven last summer:
"For the last few years that I identified as trans, I spent a lot of time trying to ‘solve’ the ideology. It became an obsession for me for a while… I was trying to sort out in my head how all the things I believed could possibly be true at once, and I wasn’t able to solve that. I kept hitting a point where it all just didn’t make sense anymore."
Trying to make the nonsensical make sense traps people in ideology. Steven kept trying to “‘solve’ the ideology.” Because he couldn’t make it add up, because he couldn’t disprove the possibility that had been planted in his mind, he couldn’t move on. I suspect this is one the reasons ‘trans’ ensnares so many book-smart kids, who set out to master a new set of ideas and find themselves up to their necks in quicksand.
The commenter who escaped his own gender obsession responds with what may be the best advice for anyone grappling with gender issues:
I think my main advice would be: deep introspection tells you nothing.
You can spend weeks diving into your subconscious, turning things over and over in your head trying to figure out 'what did that mean?', 'what did I really feel?' etc, but you're chasing a shadow. There's nothing there! It's like staring into the darkness so long that you start to hallucinate, it's scary but that doesn't mean it's real.
Even from the little I know about you, you said "The only thing I can find peace in is sports". Isn't that interesting, that this is something completely outside yourself and it one of the only things that makes you happy? That should tell you something. Firstly, if it makes you happy it's probably good for you. If you were telling me that dressing up as a woman was the only thing that made you happy, I'd tell you to do that, but you aren't saying that. Secondly, scouring your brain for a fundamental root of your psychological issue can do more harm than good.
It's always a good idea for a sad or anxious person to get outside, socialise, try to distract yourself with life. In my case, I was at a boring and depressing stage of my life and I was obsessing as a consequence of that. When I surrounded myself with people the problem just gradually got easier to handle until it didn't exist anymore. I know that's a really hard solution to implement, but even a little step (maybe spending more of your time on the sports you love?) can make an enormous difference.
I hope something I've said can help, I really feel for you. Honestly as soon as I read your post title I thought 'I could have written that', but it got better for me and I believe it can get better for you too
I can’t think of a better analogy for what people in thrall to gender are experiencing: “staring into the darkness so long that you start to hallucinate.” This set of beliefs about the self is inherently distressing. Take this belief system on board and you can never disprove it. You can’t wrack your brains and find a definitive answer: yes or no. You can’t come to a clean resolution. Because it’s nonsense. Because there is no there-there, only hallucinations in the dark. The only thing you can do with nonsense is reject it and—if you cannot reject it—you will run into all kinds of trouble. You will come to believe, like the man with the racing heart, “that the only way to find peace is to give in.”
But there’s no peace in giving in, either. These communities are clogged with doubt. The obsession with gender deepens, rather than lifting. People try to make light of their distress—yet another shared ‘trans’ experience to bond over!—but the pain comes through:
My doubts after starting HRT are really funny
Me irrational: What if it's just a phase? What if I'm just cis?
Me rational: If you're cis that must mean you're male.
Me irrational: NOOOOO NOT MALE maybe non-binary?
Me rational: If you're non-binary you can also take HRT!
Me irrational: But, but, irreversible bla bla man with boobs bla bla
Me rational: You're not a man, you won't become a man with boobs. And you've also preserved fertility already, what do you fear?
Me irrational: But, I'm not sure if I 100% want to be fully binary woman! Like, 90%, you know, only 90% woman...
Me rational: If you're so unsure, just try stopping the hormones for a few days and see?
Me irrational: NOOOOO I DON'T WANT TO IRREVERSIBLY RUIN MY BODY ANYMORE NOOOOOO
Me rational: And you've said you want to be 90% woman, and why are you saying "still cis tho"?
Me irrational: Uh, huh, something cisnormativity something not trans enough something internalized transphobia something...
Me rational: Remember only a mere three weeks ago when you had crippling dysphoria? You got 88% on that goddamn IDR lab test and still not trans enough?
Me irrational: Muh just a phase didn't always know didn't fulfill the diagnostic criteria of TERF island whatever
Me rational: And you just read some TERF arguments to digitally self-harm and internalize more transphobia, that's the reason why you're calling yourself "trans-identified male" instead of who you are. Who are you, Scarlett, or [deadname]?
Me irrational: Scarlett that is, fuck [deadname]
Me rational: Do cis men ever want to be treated as women, use women's names and voluntarily take estrogen?
Me irrational: Muh just a phase muh brain immature
Me rational: Are you legally adult? And read again that goddamn research paper you're writing right now, how can an immature child write and publish anything close to that?
Me irrational: But muh neurodiversity muh it's just autism muh not really trans, my dysphoria must have other causes
Me rational: Who has a better understanding of yourself, YOU, a neurodivergent trans girl with a high IQ, or that random transphobic dude around the corner? Honestly these stupid still cis tho moments didn't sound very smart for you...
Me irrational: But, but, what if I change my mind?
Me rational: Just stop the hormones if you do change your mind, but can you even imagine a male self? Didn't you always picture yourself as a girl since who knows how many years old?
Me irrational: But, the odds are too low! Only 1 in 3,000! How can that be?
Me rational: Firstly it's not 1 in 3,000, it's 1 in a few dozen. And then look at your own damn examination score. 50/290,000 which was 1 in 5,800. Does that mean you should be sitting in some random vocational college or sweatshop rather than in the office of this elite university?
Me irrational: Maybe I should accept myself as trans... But not a woman yet! I'm just a man who wants to become a woman!
Me rational: You literally talk to yourself aloud in your room and tell yourself 10 times a day on average, ALOUD, EVERY F**KING EVENING, that you're a woman already.
Me irrational: But, but I don't pass!
Me rational: Tell me that again three months later. You started at 22 and have a quite androgynous baseline and your body is responding very well to estrogen. Notice that damn breast bud and nipple pain, and even the beginning of fat storage and body hair growth slowing down? You're only 3 f^^king weeks into estrogen and already this! You already started growing boobs on the third damn week, how on earth do you conclude that you'll never pass?
Me irrational: Doesn't that mean I'll become a cute girl in no time? That's amazing! But I don't want to lose my masculine energy...
Me rational: Stop pretending that female sports players don't exist.
Me irrational: Errr... Maybe I'm a girl... [disappears]
Me rational: Now enjoy your day, Scarlett!
This is a 22-year-old man desperately seeking refuge from his doubts. He belittles his fears (“Me irrational”). He pulls numbers out of nowhere (“1 in 3,000”?). He clings to his “high IQ” and his score (88%!) on the University of Toronto’s Gender Dysphoria Test. But what does it mean to score 88% on such a test? What’s being tested by clinicians (something like gender preoccupation) is not the same as what’s being sought by the patient (confidence in one’s new trans identity). (Never mind, for the moment, that the ‘test’ traffics in the same absurdities as the battiest of online communities: what does it even mean to agree that “over the last year, I have felt more like a member of the opposite gender”?) It’s just “internalized transphobia.” He’s “legally an adult.” He's capable of writing a research paper. He tells himself 10 times a day that he’s a woman!
And he doubts.
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This is utterly compelling reading. Anyone who has observed their own untamed inner dialogue can see what is going on here. Your mind goes where habit and obsession take it. Wondering about gender is the ruminative subject par excellence. Reading about this made me consider that introspective and compusive observation actually pushed all other thinking and planning in third and fourth place. Questions such as: What did they mean? Was I boring? How can I get a job? Am I really enjoying this course? What will I do at the weekend? are all subservient to the performance of identity. There is also a serious stifling passivity about tending to a gender identity. Being different in other ways - a lesbian perhaps, having a minority ethnicity, a minority first language or a different skillset than peers calls for activating positive coping strategies and reaching out for understanding and connection. Waiting on the effects of hormones and surgery in contrast, assessing whether you pass and looking to others - everyone in fact - to guarantee your emotional safety by endorsing your self-assessment is to hand your well-being to others. A sure sign of disappointment.
The compassionate advice provided to the first OP is excellent and should be the first-line of defense offered by all therapists for most anxiety problems, including gender dysphoria. It should also feature prominently in all parenting books as the way they should be guiding their children through puberty.