Dear Living life as a girl
I was just wondering if u could give me some advice or some help on a certain topic of mine. I’ve been struggling with who I am as a person, as in my sex. Always felt more female, living life as a girl. I don’t know where to start about asking one for help or how to go about it? I know someone needs to see a therapist for a good yr or so before they ok someone to start transitioning. If u could lead me in the right direction with a little help on where I should get started or where to go for the help and guidance that would be greatly appreciated. =]
Thank you for your time.Living life as a girl
Dear Living life as a girl;
There is a process of psychotherapy therapy involved in Sex Reassignment Therapy (SRT), which is an umbrella term for the process involved in 1. psychotherapy, 2. hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to modify secondary sex characteristics, 3. sex reassignment surgery to alter primary sex characteristics, and 4.permanent hair removal for trans women. The standards of care where this is outlined comes from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) the first and fore most accepted standard for Sex Reassignment Therapy. Many individuals going through transition are not in favor of the psychotherapy component. Feeling that it causes them to have to admit to pathologies just to get the SRT. There is a reported higher incident of mental health disorders among Transsexual individuals than the general population. My clinical experience leads me to believe that this is more of the result of living in a society that has very limited and rigid sex roles than from being Transsexual. The rationale given for the need for psychotherapy during the process of transition is the "lasting personal comfort with the gendered self in order to maximize overall psychological well-being and self-fulfillment."
The process involves a recommendation letter from a mental health therapist that documents the individual’s psychosocial history to a medical provider before any medical interventions, another letter recommending hormonal replacement therapy and two more recommending genital surgeries. While these requirements may seem very strict, there is a very low rate for individuals with post surgerical regrets. With the current revision of the WPATH standards of care there are no set time frames for psychotherapy.
There are three web sights I would suggest you check out. Wikipedia’s Sex Reassignment Therapy site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_reassignment_therapy WPATH Standards of Care web site http://www.wpath.org/publications_standards.cfm, a great site for general info. http://www.transsexual.org/ and Laura’s playground http://www.lauras-playground.com/gender_therapists.htm for a list of Therapist that works with transgendered individuals including a listing of those in Oregon. Finding a therapist that you feel you can work with is a very important step, regardless of the recommendation letters. This person will be helping you make the social and emotional transition from being one sex in society to another.
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