Confused about trans and non binary.

[thekj74]

Don’t know if this is the right place to ask this and sorry if it isn’t.
I would like to know if you can be still be trans or non binary if you identified with your assigned gender at birth, throughout your childhood?

My story is that I was a typical cis boy during childhood. I had no dysphoria and no desire to change gender.

This changed, somewhat, after puberty. I hated puberty and being told I was now a man as I really did not see myself as such and still don't.

During or shortly after puberty I began to crossdream. I used to wish I had been born female, but still did not have dysphoria as far as I can remember. I was unhappy with my male gender, but I wasn’t overly distressed about it. I did suffer from depression and anxiety from age 14, but this was diagnosed as social anxiety.

Roll on 30 years and I have now been diagnosed with mixed personality disorder, major depression and an eating disorder, and I am very distressed and extremely confused about my gender.

My psychiatrist thinks this is just a trait of my personality disorder.
My therapist says it is my choice as to what gender I identify with and only I can make that decision.
I feel like I fit into the non binary box, but because I never felt any discrepancy about my gender until puberty I am unsure if I can say that is what I am.

Any help and guidance on this is much appreciated.
Thanks
K.
Thanks for reading the end of this post.

[Steffi]

Hi
I am a post-op transsexual and know almost nothing about non-binary itself, nor am I a doctor or psych.

Personally, I know that depression which starts early in puberty often is due to gender dysphoria. In that case there are usually other symptoms, particularly of wishing you were the other sex.
However, I do not think it definitely exclusive that the wishing was not present.

I have a friend who is now 63 who has been through the NHS gender program and is now awaiting surgery and her gender dysphoria showed very few of the classic symptoms until she began cross-dressing at about 55.
When I met her she was 60 - from the first meeting, I was fairly sure that she was transsexual.

From this and a few similar though less striking cases I have seen I conclude that a late-onset of gender issues is indeed possible, although the more usual pattern is of some symptoms of GD being present early on which later escalate until unbearable.

To better unravel your own problem you would need to talk to a psych who has wide experience of gender matters.
Unfortunately, AFAIK that is not covered by the systems in place for transsexuals, who do effectively conform with the binary - they (by inference) agree that there are two sides; they just want to swap sides.

The forum is a lot less busy these days - not in traffic but in the sense of a group of knowledgeable people hanging around here in the way that we used to. If you go to the Transgenderzone Facebook page you might find people who have better advice and more knowledge of non-binary