Detrans person confronts their "gender therapist"

The problem for the therapist is when most of the main institutions in society, commend a particular course of action. This immediately creates a clash between professional discretion and a zeitgeist which the client on this tape refers to as "helping people to dance around in their delusions". I would be interested in why people train to be "gender therapists" - its fairly clear from this that the training is rather one-sided. The therapist said she did other kinds of therapy too - I wondered if there were people who became solely "gender therapists".

And it is true that is what therapists aim to do - let the patient find their way and explore in a safe space. NOT advise them not to do something or give a strong opinion - that is conversion therapy.

This is where this new bill has the potential to enrage both sides - because as a therapist, my remit is to help a client choose for themselves, so I would neither affirm them as a woman if they were a man (or vice versa), nor would I affirm that transition is the wrong thing to do (i.e. because you cannot change sex, even if I believe that personally). The only "affirming" I would do would be to acknowledge their thoughts and feelings as their own.

Having said that, a large, significant caveat:

We as therapists are plunged into grey areas when it is clear that what a client believes is one thing is plainly something else - when a client believes that they can escape trauma and abuse through the deeply held conviction that they are "in the wrong body", for example.

When this is the case, it is my job to help a client address and process the trauma and its roots, not to pander to the client's maladaptive responses to trauma.

If I were to go along with everything a client believed? Well, that way is damaging to the therapist, and devastating to the client.

So in cases like this, I think that the phrase "watchful waiting" also applies to adults who are in the kind of abject physical, psychological and emotional pain that this man is clearly experiencing. To ask them to hold off on making any decisions; to try to stay with the process - including the pain; to walk with them through it. Also to refer appropriately in cases where a patient's life/health are at stake (I would not refer to a gender clinic in this case), and to make an intervention if I felt a crisis was so severe that the therapeutic environment wasn't enough.

Essentially, it is never about a blanket set of treatments/approaches or a particular path that a therapist commits to and then doggedly follows - sometimes to the peril of those in their care. It is about a moment-to-moment response to what is arising; close supervision; and knowing if and when that instant arises that more is needed, or where a therapist's ceiling of expertise has been reached.

And anyone put on insulin IS given counselling to help them cope with this massive life change.

Exactly. There are specialist courses and counselling on successful management and how to cope with the usual emotional consequences.

And, for some conditions like NAFLD, the early stages of CKD, pre-diabetes, pre-hypertension etc., there is lifestyle counselling with the intention of arresting the risk of progression (respectively) to liver cirrhosis, more severe kidney disease, NIDDM or hypertension.

'After all , if I were putting a man on insulin I wouldn't send him for therapy

The irony in his case being that oestrogen worsens his autoimmune disease.

It did for me when I went on the pill in my early 20s. Gps also at the time denied it; it got better when I came off. But then deteriorated.

What a painful childhood. I wonder if there was any therapy to help reduce the trauma, or to deal with the trauma. Now there is more trauma because his body has been damage more and he says the 'treatment' they dished out made him sterile.

It seems to be the wild west. I hope there is a class action of some kind. Even if the people doing this feel immune as they get their clients to state they understand it is all experimental, if the clients are unwell can they really be in a position to waive any rights to decent medical care?

* '*After all , if I were putting a man on insulin I wouldn't send him for therapy.'

False equivalence.

A man who needs insulin does so because of physical malfunction or damage in his body. Nobody who wants cross-sex hormones has any physical malfunction or damage in their body that can be repaired by administration of cross-sex hormones. CSH in the quantities prescribed for identity issues cause substantial damage to the body.

If you don't put a man with T1 diabetes on insulin his body will fail and he will die within a few days or weeks, whereas if you don't put a man on cross-sex hormones his body will not come to any harm but he will be distressed and requires emotional support and counselling.

And anyone put on insulin IS given counselling to help them cope with this massive life change.

Spot on @Fallingirl. The surgeon Johanna Olsen Kennedy claims to have transitioned more people than any other practitioner of this legalised butchery. She thinks therapy is just a nuisance , slowing down business. ' After all , if I were putting a man on insulin I wouldn't send him for therapy.' Then again , listening to the therapy this poor lad received, you'd almost wonder is it such a loss.

It's not true anyway that therapy is always a safe space to explore whatever the patient wants.

Within certain areas that's true. But when patients come in who have paranoia, or thought patterns that are false and causing them harm, or think they are Jesus, their therapists don't just let them explore that and go along with it.

It's subtle but there is a line between what we consider a possible, if odd belief, and what is outside reality and so harmful to the individual. My crazy Catholic aunt never had flack from her therapist about her Catholicism, or even her politics, but when God started to tell her to do rather odd illegal things in their phone conversations, that was a different story.

And it is true that is what therapists aim to do - let the patient find their way and explore in a safe space.

Without going through what is behind the patient thinking they may be the sex that they are not, there isn’t actually any exploration going on. A patient turning up saying they are ‘trans”, and the therapist responding by agreeing, is not exploration. There isn’t even a hint that there was any exploration of what the patient meant by ‘trans’.

As for a “safe space”. As the therapists is the one sending them on to the endocrinologist to be put on hormones, the therapists office is the least safe space for anyone to “explore” whether they have this ill defined condition called “transness”.

“A safe space to explore…” is just another meaningless platitude.

I think the problem in the gender distress field is that the therapist is working with an affirmation-only model for "treating" dysphoric individuals, and the endocrinologist is assuming that by the time the person gets to them the psych avenues have all been tried, otherwise, why would the therapist have sent the person for such a drastic thing as hormone treatment.

And it is true that is what therapists aim to do - let the patient find their way and explore in a safe space. NOT advise them not to do something or give a strong opinion - that is conversion therapy.

So why, when my adult child told their therapist that they were self-harming, in a confidential session, did the therapist call me in to discuss how to safeguard their patient and try to prevent harm coming to them? Why did the therapist give their patient advice on how to prevent them self-harming? What conversion therapy was going on?

This week I've been grateful for extremist activists showing the general population their 'post modern neo-religion' circular arguments . And in this thread I'm grateful for a post that has highlighted an important issue to raise in the consultation. You do not tell lies to children. If you're responsible for a child in someway (including as their therapist) and say nothing when other adults tell them lies, then the therapist is even more responsible for the lie because they are responsible for the child. Therapists may have had good intentions in this and been trained by 'experts'. They need the ability to see when adults have lied to children and the tools remove dogma from the therapy room and these children's lives.

Very worrying.

Where are the safeguards to stop young people going down the wrong path?

I'm struck by similarities between this young person's experiences (and eloquence) and those of Sinead's (Watson) with some clear differences in terms of the cause of the driver; family abuse v male sexual abuse and desire to find safety in cross dressing, escaping extreme masculinity (?) verses escaping the impact on women of extreme masculinity.

I also thought that, Warrior. There is ultimately no doctor taking responsibility for checking whether the patient is ill and that’s unacceptable.

It's quite clear that a non medical professional referring to endocrinologists for treatment is irresponsible.

NOT advise them not to do something or give a strong opinion - that is conversion therapy.

Useful input for the consultation on the "conversion therapy" bill.

That there are activists who would define "conversion therapy" as "advising someone not to do something".

And that's what they want to be illegal?

simply due to societal pressure to stay within whatever is determined as a "norm"

Yet another person who's not actually listening to this young person.

None of his detransition was about that.

It was specifically health, infertility and worsening mental health issues.

He describes severe childhood physical abuse.

He recognises his gender dysphoria but that counsellors, not medically trained, unaware of any research around the area, thinks he therefore must transition despite the physical harm this is doing to him.

And it is true that is what therapists aim to do - let the patient find their way and explore in a safe space. NOT advise them not to do something or give a strong opinion - that is conversion therapy.

Alternatively, as the young man in the recording pointed out, it may turn out to have been a form of assisted harm. There are occasions when therapists should seek to intervene when their patient wants to pursue a pathway that will lead to harm.

But perhaps his lived experience is irrelevant to you.

I just love all the comments from the "qualified" therapists on here about someone who clearly needs therapeutic help.

Many trans people go through a lot of question, indeed detransitioning and retransitioning simply due to societal pressure to stay within whatever is determined as a "norm"

And it is true that is what therapists aim to do - let the patient find their way and explore in a safe space. NOT advise them not to do something or give a strong opinion - that is conversion therapy.

Yes exactly Any. In one of the videos he says that he was the first client to ever mention agp to one of the therapists and they'd never heard of it.

I've also long felt the US have more of an issue re the insurance system, particularly for under 18s. Though afaik here it's fairly easy to get what you want when over 18 here.

Whether she herself was evil, or another victim of the machine, I couldn’t tell. It appears that affirmation is absolutely the mainstream in the US. If she was trained in that, and had not seen any obvious harm, up until he presented it to her, then you might argue she ought to have checked all the studies, but there must be many people who learn how to do their job, but never really question the ethics around what they’re taught, and trust their teachers to be giving them solid information, based on sound evidence.

I would have hoped that experienced therapists, who had been trained earlier and told that the golden rule was never, ever to agree with a delusional patient, might have had alarm bells ringing when faced with the affirmation model, but as activists are so pleased to tell us, even the WHO and mainstream sources now state that “being trans” is a thing that exists and is not a mental illness. We don’t know either, whether she falls into that group or not.

Obviously she isn’t a victim in the same way he is, but she may still, in future, experience huge pain if it is discovered that what she has been doing is not helping people (presumably her aim in becoming a therapist) and indeed was doing the exact opposite.

Heartbreaking. The contrast between the therapist's vacuous platitudes and her patient's desperation is chilling.

F

Part of me feels she's also been a victim of the trans machine. She's had flawed training and fake information.

This awful situation he's experienced is exactly what Prof Michele Moore has been speaking about for years.

The DARVO from her, "you're being abusive" and then telling him she can't change him into someone else while also telling him she regularly helps people turn into something else.

I wonder about the professional standards of some occupations and the ostensible lack of oversight.