Age 28 & Up Can Your Mind Make Up That You Are Transgender?
Can your mind convince you to create a delusion that you're transgender when in reality you're not? Dr. Z answers for age 28 and up.
(Last week's video was for age 18-28 because age plays a significant factor—18-28 haven't fully had prefrontal cortex developed, the part of frontal lobe responsible for decision making, cognition, choices, seeing how actions have consequences.) For older population age 28+, your prefrontal cortex is already developed.
If you're still wondering "is it possible I'm convincing myself I'm transgender but in reality I'm not," especially if you don't have traces of childhood memory like a lot of people apparently do—is that a telling sign?
Is it possible for your mind to convince you? Everything is possible, but the probability is very very small. Dr. Z has yet to see anybody age 28+ who woke up one day and said "you know what, I'm going to be transgender, go through everything transition entails—medical transition, surgical transition, hormones, change my name, spend a lot of money, turn my world upside down, come out to everybody, see what people stay and what people leave."
Nobody wakes up and decides to be transgender. People have a realization later in life that something about their gender identity doesn't fit right—something about biological sex and gender assigned doesn't resonate. That realization might be late, much later in life without traces of childhood experiences, but for every reason it has come up to the surface and is waking you up. You're starting to experience dysphoria in different shapes and forms, then eventually most decide to do something about it—deciding to transition to alleviate gender dysphoria.
Watch to find out why nobody wakes up deciding to be trans because of age, midlife crisis, difficulties in life, or something else (it's usually an internal gender schema that has been organizing since childhood that just now decided to be visible, become central, in the front lines), why you belong to a generation more conservative toward gender expressions where language to describe variations of gender spectrum didn't exist (as a result, true gender identity becomes repressed until it comes out later in life), why most of you have had intimate relationships, sexual relationships, friendships, held jobs, went to college, finished projects, are married, have children, lost people—you have life experiences, you're well-rounded (well-rounded individuals don't wake up with conviction they're trans, your mind can't convince you of something you're not, but your mind can bring to forefront a part of you that's been in denial, buried, repressed, dormant for a long time), and why Dr. Z has clients in late 60s-70s-80s asking "is it possible I'm telling myself this, I came up with this"—no, you don't come up with this, it's very deep, dynamic, at core of overall big pizza pie of identity, not something somebody makes up at your age category.
