oh what to say to the psychiatrist...

well,long story short

27 year old,physical male

ive known about wanting to be female for about 21 years,and figured out i wanted the "body change" as i call it for about 16 years(which is to say,when i found out such a thing existed)

im finally getting all of my health insurance and papers re-obtained (the disadvantages of losing your wallet),just working on getting my medicaid reactivated and re-obtaining my birth certificate

i live in the state of missouri in the united states.while it isnt necciscarily the best place in the world for an mtf to live,its fairly decent,especially the town i live,where odd or non normal things are treated with indifference,rather than hostility (which surprisingly i dont have an issue with)

rather than just being a woman trapped in a man's body,aside from the different private parts,i actually look quite feminine when i groom myself,and my natural voice is considerably higher pitched than normal,which causes people to mistake me for female on the phone quite abit

as for family support,to the extent that i have a family,its unconditional support and full knowledge.
my father is basically nowhere to be found,and refused to sign my birth certificate (which legally causes abit of a headache for the SSA,given i receive SSDI,as legally i have no father)

my father,as for what i knwo of him,is a steroid taking,drug abusing psyco-path,as most of the people on my father's side of the family is (especially the males).

my mother however,comes from a relatively long line of military folk,and is ex-military herself.she gives me unconditional love and support.she is,how do i say,the "mother bear" type,in that on more than one occasion she saved me from getting the stuffing beaten out of me at public school by DIRECTLY intervening,which strangely enough in the desert tundra of wyoming doesnt cause alot of problems.(wyoming being where we lived for about 7 years).she is supremely intelligent and has two college degrees.she has always protected me,the fearsome guardian,acting as both mother and father throughout my life.

but fast foward to now,my mother will turn 50 this year,and she is permanently disabled.she has always protected me,but im 27 years old now,and as i said earlier,i need to get the change,and am working on getting my health insurance and cards back together to do so.

she still unconditionally supports me in this,but is heavily encouraging me to go after it under my own power as it were.

which brings me to the main point.soon i will have my health insurance fully restored (ive checked,and it will cover everything involved with the change).this is my first major effort under my own power as it were.and im terrified.

when i go to assert my feelings on this matter to the psychiatrist as it were,im so nervous that ill mess up.now normally i can tolerate many negative sensations,but this is,how do i say "my zenith",at the moment my one goal in life.my feelings are so strong on this,what do i say?how do i say it?is there a certain way i have to say it?

i cannot afford to fail my attempt when i do make it,id love some guidance on this matter.

not to mention this is compounded by several other factors

1.my normally fairly flat "breast area" will,at random times through the day,literally swell to an a-cup size,and then go back down again,when this does happen i often sweat uncontrollably.this will happen even more if i drink things like green tea or spearmint tea (some of my favorites,i use a little bit of honey)

2.the above highlighted situation is often accompanied by a compression type pain in the genital area,which seems rather odd

3.i have a smaller bottom jaw than normal,which causes my face to have what i call a "blade's end" shape,which means that if i dare grrom myself (shaving the facial hair,taking care of the skin),i look very feminine

4.i have very long and thick dark brown hair (that was intentional)

5.all of this is severely compounded by the fact that when my heart rate or blood pressure ticks up even abit,my whole lip area swells abit,and my lips turn literally a dark,crimson red color.and facial hair or not,when you have large poofy lips that look like you have been sucking your lips into a glass jar,that nearly impossible to hide,which combined with the first thing i mentioned in this numbered series,makes going out in public impossible at times

(sidenote,bigthanks to anagram for directing me to the right forum section)

I'm not trans, but I think the best thing is to not worry and be yourself with the psych. The real you will come out, and that's what's important, right?

The physical things are very intriguing. Hopefully you'll get some answers to those during this transition.

are you going to see a psychiatrist that is familiar with gender identity, I've found in the mental health system those who aren't specialized while doing their best just lack that understanding so I felt I couldn't be honest about the way I felt because maybe they thought it silly. Anyway, if you are going to see someone who is specialized they will know the questions to ask they'll possibly just assess you based on your family/background, just go into details about how you've felt since you were 6 or 7 and talk about how you've felt since. Probably important to mention about your mom being supportive too.

Good luck

-- Fri Mar 25, 2016 3:50 am --

also important to talk about is dysphoria, how you feel physically and socially disconnected and such. It's worth having a look at susansforum and posting there as there are plenty lovely folk willing to share their experiences

ah,im not sure what anyone at the pathways clinic specializes in.the time i was in there for anything significant was when i was ordered by the government to undergoe an examination for my SSDI

since i dont own a vehicle and the local bus service wasnt open at the apointment time,i walked about 3 miles through a rainstorm to get there,

and then after a 4 hour examination they said i have schizoid personality disorder and an i.q. of 82

none of which is accurate unfortunately

after i got back home i felt a little insulted,the entirety of the thing was a sort of "surface skimmer"

asking crude questions about the world in general,things like "who is the dalai lama"

asking what i do throughout my day,like as if my eating habits have anything to do with my intelligence

and then the so called "test" part was things like the kinds of crude memory tests you can find all over the internet


and i got approved for SSDI within one month

but see i went there with the impression that this person would probe to get to "the meat of the matter" as it were.and it felt more like a 4 hour survey

not to mention that by the time i got there i was throuroughly exhausted,and that has a tendency to make me sound drunk (slurred speech,simplistic vocabulary).

i play music.i spread my time throughout a guitar,a synth keyboard,and a small violin.i write programming code.make 3d art work with a small army of programs.i edit sound (admittedly using audacity because its free,but i also payed for morph vox audio editor for voice morphing).i also like studying chemistry.etc.the list goes on and on,you would be surprised what i do to fill my time when i have ZERO social obligations.im one of the more extreme examples of a book worm

but this so called test didnt probe for that,and as aresult,completely missed the deeply rooted gender dysphoria and wish for "the body change" as i call it,and pegged me as a low grade moron

so i cant fathom how i would ,even if faced with the same 4 hour examination,dump that much deep emotion on someone who i dont know anything about.my mother is "the big brain" of the family,but is also disabled,and has severe "leaving the house" phobia.so it would be hard to get her to come with me

I also believe it would be best to find a psychologist that is known to work with transsexuals. I only went to a few many years ago because I couldn't afford it, so the others were low-fee types. One of the reasons they say go to those that do is they will sometimes issue you a letter stating why you are crossdressed in case you are stopped by anyone. I had a transsexual friend that had one. I wasn't aware of this but I've been told that regardless the person who stops you can still use their own discretion whether or not to accept the letter. A TS on another forum was saying there are instances where a male-to-female was cited and put on a sex offender registry anyway for using the women's restroom, the same as they would do with any male they caught in the ladies restroom. That would have been a deal breaker for me I think. I would have stayed as a male if I were enough that that would happen. My friend is 6'3", and not totally passable, but she always denied having any problems with the police or using the ladies restroom. I have no idea if that is entirely true, though, because I know she did lie about a few things in the past, so you have to guess if she lied about one thing then there is 20 more lies she told that I'm unaware of it.

Though may I ask, how were you able to get SSDI? I've been trying to get that for nearly two years now. I was always told you have to have worked for the past 10 years to get SSDI, unlike SSI. I've known many transsexual who were getting SSI because they had worked very little and didn't qualify for SSDI. I actually applied for both SSDI and SSI as I was working in housekeeping for the past 15 or 20 years but due to physical ailments I could no longer do that. It didn't help my case any. I thought if I was turned down for one then maybe I'd get approved for the other. Not so.