I think it’s so interesting how anti-therapy this whole ‘gender affirming’ shebang is: it’s as if they want to keep kids locked into fantasy/feelings of disembodiment/alienation etc, the very things good therapy or counselling can help with.
Yep. Here's Helen Joyce talking about it:
In any other culture and time, nobody would have said, "Ah, you're probably of the opposite sex inside". Because that's a crazy thing to say. But it's now such a powerful narrative, that you don't even need to go to the doctor to get it.
That's another thing, of course, it's not just that we all live online, it's that ideas are spread online. So a child who - as many, many children do at 12, 13, 14 - feels profoundly wrong about themselves: you go and you type out "Why do I feel so terrible? Why do i feel different from everybody else?"
Loads of people feel like that. It might just be ordinary teenage angst but, you know ,you might actually be on the autistic spectrum, you know, loads of things. You might have been abused as a child and this is why you've dissociated from your body. Loads of reasons. But anyway, the answer you will find is "you might be trans". And the advice you'll be given is to meditate on your gender, to think about it all the time, like ALL the time.
There's no better advice for making somebody mentally distressed than to get them to ruminate about what they're mentally distressed about. It's the opposite of CBT; it's the opposite of what's wise, I understand.