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From the bad place, keeping it here long term.
15 or so years ago I had a therapist I was sure was going to be the key to figuring out how to make my life better on many fronts. Based on prior experience with other therapists, I wanted someone who "got it" on a lot of big fronts from the start, and who could keep up with me as I talked my way through my issues by way of philosophy, pop culture, and painfully mixed metaphor. This one hit all of those requirements: theologically trained, trans, queer, quick and clever with a restless mind, and older, with more experience in the world I was hoping to learn from.
We established the groundwork quickly, and at first it seemed to be going swimmingly. While I would have to pause to explain some of my pop cultural references (music, in particular), it wasn't odious, and she was more widely read than I was in Western philosophy as it touched upon, or was used by, progressive theology.
It stopped working around the 18-24 month mark. In retrospect I think it might have been a mix of analyst to analysand transference (something I had never considered until much later) and too long a time in which I set the rules and she eagerly followed along. In relation to our work, it seemed like she collapsed and withdrew, unable or unwilling to challenge my thinking when it wasn't serving me, seemingly lost. She agreed that I described my situation in sharp detail, but had no suggestions for how to change it.
One of the early gems of our time together was the realization that I made about radicalization around the concepts of sex and gender, and how I'd broken the pattern a lot of trans people seemed to have, based on those I knew and read about.
My theory was that many trans people transitioned to something that served them better (almost always something that could be interpreted as a point on the gender binary, at least initially), and then with a mix of relief of that particular trans pressure, plus maybe different personal experience, some (the ones I read obsessively, anyway) went on to realize that the idea of sex and gender being fixed, solid categories was not accurate either personally or systemically.
I hit everything mind first. It's both a blessing and a curse, but it's my mind and I've come to accept that. For me, part of studying transness became picking at the threads around sex, gender, attraction, manifestation, change over time, change by culture, the structural limits of binarism, and multitude of plateaus possible to either visit or inhabit. The seed of this great unwinding was well planted and germinating before I ever engaged with endocrinological shift, greymarket, OTC, or medically supervised.
One of the consequences for me was that the idea of "transition" seemed a bad investment; why would I work rigorously to seemingly reinforce concepts I found both anathematic and incredibly painful? As an AMAB person, the incline is steep (because of the sociocultural distortions of patriarchy and its dependent misogyny). Having realized the foundations are all bullshit, even if the power consequences are quite real, I had/have no appetite for standard transition work.
And now I'm in my 50s, still unhappy with my place in the world, still radicalized, still seeing no way forward. I keep remembering my therapist saying, "What you describe sounds accurate, and I don't know what to say."
15 or so years ago I had a therapist I was sure was going to be the key to figuring out how to make my life better on many fronts. Based on prior experience with other therapists, I wanted someone who "got it" on a lot of big fronts from the start, and who could keep up with me as I talked my way through my issues by way of philosophy, pop culture, and painfully mixed metaphor. This one hit all of those requirements: theologically trained, trans, queer, quick and clever with a restless mind, and older, with more experience in the world I was hoping to learn from.
We established the groundwork quickly, and at first it seemed to be going swimmingly. While I would have to pause to explain some of my pop cultural references (music, in particular), it wasn't odious, and she was more widely read than I was in Western philosophy as it touched upon, or was used by, progressive theology.
It stopped working around the 18-24 month mark. In retrospect I think it might have been a mix of analyst to analysand transference (something I had never considered until much later) and too long a time in which I set the rules and she eagerly followed along. In relation to our work, it seemed like she collapsed and withdrew, unable or unwilling to challenge my thinking when it wasn't serving me, seemingly lost. She agreed that I described my situation in sharp detail, but had no suggestions for how to change it.
One of the early gems of our time together was the realization that I made about radicalization around the concepts of sex and gender, and how I'd broken the pattern a lot of trans people seemed to have, based on those I knew and read about.
My theory was that many trans people transitioned to something that served them better (almost always something that could be interpreted as a point on the gender binary, at least initially), and then with a mix of relief of that particular trans pressure, plus maybe different personal experience, some (the ones I read obsessively, anyway) went on to realize that the idea of sex and gender being fixed, solid categories was not accurate either personally or systemically.
I hit everything mind first. It's both a blessing and a curse, but it's my mind and I've come to accept that. For me, part of studying transness became picking at the threads around sex, gender, attraction, manifestation, change over time, change by culture, the structural limits of binarism, and multitude of plateaus possible to either visit or inhabit. The seed of this great unwinding was well planted and germinating before I ever engaged with endocrinological shift, greymarket, OTC, or medically supervised.
One of the consequences for me was that the idea of "transition" seemed a bad investment; why would I work rigorously to seemingly reinforce concepts I found both anathematic and incredibly painful? As an AMAB person, the incline is steep (because of the sociocultural distortions of patriarchy and its dependent misogyny). Having realized the foundations are all bullshit, even if the power consequences are quite real, I had/have no appetite for standard transition work.
And now I'm in my 50s, still unhappy with my place in the world, still radicalized, still seeing no way forward. I keep remembering my therapist saying, "What you describe sounds accurate, and I don't know what to say."
