How Masochism & Avoidance Can Hurt You!
Dr. Z talks about masochism and avoidance and how they tend to go hand in hand in transgender community.
What does she mean by masochism? Let her be clear: there is masochism defined in sense of getting pleasure (sexual pleasure primarily) out of pain—for example when you like to be dominated or have pain inflicted on you to receive sexual pleasure. She's not talking about that type of masochism. She's not talking about sexual masochism.
She's talking about masochism she can observe consistently again and again and again in trans community. What kind of masochism? The tendency in the beginning when you experience dysphoria—you're experiencing tremendous amount of psychological pain because of restrictions in your environment, restrictions in your life, obstacles, things that prevent you or make it very difficult for you to come out and do anything about your life, maybe even take transition-related steps.
As result what happens: you start to endure pain. You start to endure psychological pain on daily basis. She's not saying as it continues you start getting pleasure out of it—there's nothing pleasurable about being able to sit through dysphoria or live through dysphoria.
Watch to find out why masochism leads to avoidance and delays medically necessary treatment.
