Can Therapy Help Me with My Gender?
Here is the short answer: yes! Therapy can help you with your gender.
Now the long answer.
If a prospective client were to come to me and ask if I could help them with their gender, I would start by giving them the short answer (absolutely!). Then I would ask some questions.
Tell me about your gender?
Many people have not consciously thought about their gender identity or gender expression for any extended period of time. (Need a refresher on language? click here- insert hyperlink to First Thing’s First Article- for an introduction to talking about gender and sexuality with precision). For some people, their gender has been an internal ache for much of their life. Others find themselves vaguely aware of some secret discomfort or a veiled part of themselves that feels hidden or inaccessible. Some folks report twinges or shocks that travel across their body when referred to as their gender assigned at birth or when wearing clothes that match their sex. Still others only ever feel truly themselves when they dress or behave in ways that don’t align with the expectations of their gender assigned at birth.
Therapy can be helpful here in a couple ways.
First off, when starting therapy, you and your therapist get to decide the shape and size of the journey you are about to begin together. When the journey is going to include some gender exploration, I suggest starting by figuring out what you may be bringing in with you. Before we can get started with our exploratory expedition we need to know where we are starting and what supplies we are starting out with.
Setting the Stage
No one comes to therapy with a completely blank slate regarding what it means to be the gender they were assigned at birth. In fact, from the moment we are assigned one, our gender influences just about everything we experience. From the clothes we are dressed in and then taught to select for ourselves, to the words we use and the way we speak, to the people we talk to, what we are told is “good” behavior, how our imagination is shaped, and the kinds of dreams we give ourselves permission to dream, our assigned gender has its grubby little hands on everything.
Looking deeper at what we bring with us on this gender journey, we also are likely to notice that our assigned gender is not something that was ever really ours. Said a different way, our gender was not something that we had immediate control or power over. In fact, it was assigned by a medical doctor according to a sort of template which bestowed it upon us from a template made up of only two options. Meanwhile, we were taking our first breath and our brain was trying to make sense of what light was. Based on that doctor’s prescription, we were then instructed to adhere to an endless set of rules and live in our blue or pink world. If we strayed from these rules, we were often punished. If we followed them, we were often rewarded.
Gender, understood in this way, is sometimes talked about as a performance. Instead of being a quality that is innate to us – like our biological sex, eye color, or skin tone – gender exists in how we interact with our sex. Gender lives in the way that we feel about our sex and in how we choose to adhere to social or cultural expectations of how someone who is that sex behaves. Gender is what it looks like for us to be putting our biological sex into action. Because gender requires an internal relationship between ourselves and our sex as well as between ourselves and others who observe us, gender is innately social. Here is where we get the phrase that gender is a social construct, because gender is constructed from and reinforced by social interaction.
The way that gender roles and beliefs about appropriate gendered behavior have impacted any particular individual is going to be unique and exquisitely complicated. A therapist who is specially trained to work with gender issues can help you to deepen your understanding of your specific history with gender. Sometimes this can mean tying together feelings you have now to messages you received growing up about what it meant to conform to your assigned sex. Sometimes this can mean talking an honest account of how our culture forms gendered expectations and the scars that not meeting those expectations can leave.
Time for an Adventure!
With a clear sense of where we are starting, we can more clearly map out where we would like to explore. We may begin by looking at sources of internal tension around your gender. Does your gender identity fit you well, tight like a form fitting cocktail dress? Is it baggy with lots of room for movement or ill-fitting like pants whose legs drag behind you in the mud? Perhaps there have been moments in the past where that tension was particularly uncomfortable or delicious moments where that tension melted into unbridled joy. Exploring in this way, according to the Gender Freedom Model developed by non-binary sex therapist and educator Rae McDaniel, clearly places the focus on play, pleasure, and possibilities (McDaniel, 2023). Believe it or not, learning more about your gender feelings (with the help of an expert guide) can be a blast! There may be some tears, there may be some rough patches, but in the end, the journey gets to be about what makes you feel most honestly, accurately, and quirkily yourself!
For some people, their feelings around their gender are clear and do not create internal discomfort. Instead, some tension exists around how they would want to label their gender, what pronouns they might want to use, how they would dress, or who they would want to share this part of themselves with. This part of the journey would focus more on the expression of gender.
In therapy, you could try some things on (both literally and figuratively) and explore options for different kinds of behavior with an emphasis on playful authenticity. Want to figure out what kinds of dresses you could wear that compliment (or hide) body hair? Therapy’s a good place to do some brainstorming. Not sure if you want to start hormone replacement therapy? Your therapist can help explore the emotional and psychological benefits and risks and provide suggestions for medical providers who can discuss the biological and medical side. Not sure how to get your dad to stop calling you “princess” without your grandma disowning you and ruining Christmas? Time for a therapy strategy session.
If a gender adventure sounds like it might be helpful for you or if you’d like an expert guide alongside for the journey, Entelechy Therapy can help! Visit our Sex Therapy page or reach out and schedule a time to meet with one of our expert gender adventurers (queer therapists) today!
References
Barker, M.J. (2022) Social Mindfulness. Rewriting the Rules. https://www.rewriting-the-rules.com/zines/
McDaniel, R. (2023). Gender magic: Live shamelessly, reclaim your joy, & step into your most authentic self. New York: Balance.
Nordmarken, S. (2019). Queering Gendering: Trans Epistemologies and the Disruption and Production of Gender Accomplishment Practices. Feminist Studies 45(1), 36-66. doi:10.1353/fem.2019.0018.
Richards, C., Bouman, W. P., & Barker, M.-J. (Eds.) (2017). Genderqueer and non-binary genders. Palgrave Macmillan London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51053-2