Dear S:

You shared that as a kid, in the neighborhood, you were bullied “for being ‘gay’.. constant childhood bullying”. Your parents did not protect you from that constant bullying, neither did they attend to your emotional needs otherwise.

At home, emotional suppression was a rule that your parents set, and your way of life was to “Suppress, avoid, deny, distract, every day since I was a kid”. Fast forward, as an adult, you still live in your parents’ home. This is your current experience there: “My family are so suppressive of their emotions and so am I. I cannot speak any words of emotions without my sister yelling at me. I want to scream and cry. But I have to hold it in so my sister doesn’t yell at me”.

The way your parents dealt with your childhood distress was to repeatedly take you to a mental hospital, and “forcing me to take medication”, 20 different psychiatric medications; “I’ve had several mental breakdowns. Got to emergency room 3 years in a row for being so stressed out. It’s  been going on for decades now… I’ve been to the mental hospital every winter and just pumped with drugs to ‘feel better’ for 3 months then the process keeps going on”.

Since childhood, you’ve been addicted to junk food, the internet and to porn. At 17, you broke everything in your parents’ house, arrested and spent time in a juvenile detention center. At 19, you became addicted to substances, and you “medically transitioned genders”- to a woman. Feeling uncomfortable, you detransitioned back to being a man. You then “started having sex with older guys” and at 21 you were sexually assaulted.

After transitioning to a woman, you felt “some relief in my anxiety”, but later, you felt that you “didn’t fit into the box of a woman”, so you reversed the transition. When you had sex with older guy, if felt creepy (“it was creepy”). Currently, every time you express your gender expression, you have a mental breakdown (“I try to express it, my gender expression, but every time I do, I have a mental breakdown”).

Currently, you live with your parents, and with your sister. You do not have a job, and you feel “stuck in this house”. You take four hours in the mornings to wash your face, brush your teeth and shower, and you “use porn 5 times a day”. You see a therapist, “an older man who doesn’t know anything about LGBT things”.

More about your current emotional experience: “I am afraid of my emotions. The fear, anger, sadness… Nothing ever happens. I do the same things every day…. being so stressed out. It’s been going on for decades now. I’m exhausted. My emotions are extremely unpleasant- my heart is racing, my vision is spotting from anxiety/ stress/ trauma, my chest is heavy. I either feel that or I feel nothing, numb… I don’t know who I am at all… I am stuck in this house, I feel horrible…  I don’t know if there’s a way to feel better… I want to scream and cry… I can’t do this anymore.. “I’ve ‘tried’ every quick fix, get a job, make friends. Still felt emotionally numb… My organs feel like they’re shutting down from how anxious I am right now”.

And now, my input: you wrote that your therapist “doesn’t know anything about LGBT things”. It would have helped if he did, but it would have helped more if he knew (does he?) more about the basic need of every human being (every human if any and every sexual orientation and gender expression)- and that is the need to connect and express.

Before you were sexual, before you discovered porn, before you read LGBT literature… before all that, you were a human, a social animal, born with the intense and uncompromising need to connect to others and express to others. This very early, very basic, very human need of yours was not met at your home. Every social animal whose social needs to connect and express are not met- becomes sick.

When a social animal does not connect and express, the animal is stuck in a state between life and death: dreadfully isolated, going back and forth between intense anxiety and numbness. Emotions unexpressed/ suppressed turn around and around in the brain, increasing in intensity, like winds growing into hurricanes. Certain chemicals are released in the brain and in the body (neurotransmitters, hormones), causing those very unpleasant experiences that you mentioned (“so stressed  out..  my heart is racing”, etc.).

There is a rule in your  house: to not connect and to not express anything that is unpleasant to your parents. Reads like your sister is enforcing your parents’ rule by yelling at you when she perceives that you are expressing or about to express something that will be unpleasant to her parents.

There is a whole lot in your original post, and if you want to, we can communicate about what you shared over a period of time, lots to talk about.. before you get to know who you are (“I don’t know who I am at all”). The place to start to get to know who you are is in the basics of what is true to all human beings, and that is the human need to connect and express.

anita

Dear Sean:

You are welcome. It felt good, for me, to read that you felt being seen by me. Thank you for letting me know that.

“I once felt an emotional connection to a boy.. and all the anxiety and depression literally disappeared in those moments. When that ended, it’s like my life did too”- an amazing testimony to how indeed Connecting = Calm/ Feeling Alive.  Disconnected= Anxiety and Depression.

You shared that you lived away from home for two years and experienced only “a slight decrease in inner turmoil”, and you wrote: “I would love to communicate with you. Enough about the past, though. I’m here to embrace the now”-

– Until and unless we resolve the past, we take it with us wherever we go. I understand that living at home still, as you do, you want to distract yourself from your home-life/ the past. You want a Now that is different, a Now where you feel alive, free from that inner turmoil. But I am not here to provide only a distraction. I am here to slowly, gently, help you take the first step, or second step, to resolve the past that fuels your inner turmoil.

“I’m not sure how this forum works. Do we reply to each other on here?”- we can. You can post at any time and when I am at the computer (which has been every day for years), I will read from you and reply. Other members may reply to you as well. You can always start a new thread if you want, a new title, new category. There are certain guidelines to the forums, you can find those if you click “FORUMS” at the top of the page.

anita

Dear Sean:

In your recent posts you shared that as a kid, you were used as “a punching bag for 3 years”, bullied primarily for appearing feminine/ assumed to be gay. Once the bullying stopped, you hated yourself more than ever, and your anxiety was intense and ongoing.

You were a straight A student, “came out as gay”, then broke down, had more therapy, became dependent on weed, attended “college parties that were pretending to have fun, sex and relations with men who made my gut feeling hurt… I would smoke weed, drink, take sleeping pills all at the same time and meet up with guys”, “The lines of consent got muddy a few times.. I was falling asleep while he did the things he did. Or I just didn’t even wanna do it, I just wanted to be seen and loved for who I am”, you were a “hyper sexual trans package” to men.

You are 23, “frozen at 14, with the same unresolved emotional issues”, “the past.. been repeating itself for years and years and years”; you are “so far from where I want to be.. I want to be free and happy”, that you are “afraid.. So I do nothing most of the time.. scared.. It’s horrifying… And numb with meds that I can’t seem to get off after 8 years”. You had a few jobs, but none filled your emptiness, you are currently unemployed.

“Now I have to make a decision, for college.. when I don’t even know who I am or my true nature”-

– I think that I can help you know your true nature because you clearly shared what it is, and what is not. First, what it is not: the kids who bullied you, bullied you because you appeared feminine and because they thought you were gay. These two things I italicized are superficial elements, not core elements of your true nature. You were painfully bullied, and you suffered tremendously because of these superficial elements of your nature.

Because these are only superficial elements of your nature, the following did not resolve your suffering: transitioning from male to female, re-transitioning back to male, coming out as gay, expressing your femininity, joining college same-sex parties, having sexual encounters with men, and using porn daily.

Your core true nature is indicated in these words: “I once felt an emotional connection to a boy a couple years ago and all the anxiety and depression literally disappeared in those moments… My friendships were surface level… I would love to communicate with you… It seems almost impossible to find people to connect and express… I want to feel connected to myself… to be free to express who I am… I just wanted to be seen and loved for who I am”-

– you always wanted to be seen and loved for who you are. But expressing your femininity is not expressing your core true nature, neither is having sex with men, nor is it appearing male or female. A “hyper sexual trans package” is definitely not who you are at your core, if at all. Men who see you as a hyper-sexual-trans-package do not see you as you truly are any more than your parents, your sister, or the kids who bullied you.

You are a person who wants to connect deeply with others, to be valued and respected by others; a person who needs to be seen and loved for being a loving and lovable person.

In your core, you are loving and lovable: you love and you want to be loved. Loving others and needing to be loved in return (seen, valued and respected) is what your core is about.

In the sexual context, you need to be loved first, that is, to be valued, not as a sex object, or a package, but as a person with feelings, needs and values. You value love and you don’t value sex when it is empty of love.

I will stop here, for now, not because I have nothing else to add, but because better communicate in smaller portions.

anita