stella41b
Posts: 4258
Joined: 10/16/2007
From: SW London (UK)
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SimplyMichael, please don't take any of this personally, I half agree with you here but I also don't agree with some things. Bear this in mind, okay?
quote:
ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael
I think before you condemn others you need to find a giant mirror and look into it because from where I am sitting I see someone who has an overblown sense of how evolved and empathic they are.
I see this exaggeration too but I wouldn't be able to say whether this is negative or positive based on the OP, I just see it as a system of beliefs and a hierarchy of values.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael
The woman you described does sound like a basket case but who exactly is the one who couldn't see her for the train wreck she is? Who is using this other woman to feel OH SO SUPERIOR?
This is where I disagree most strongly. The woman described isn't a basket case - she's transgendered and has self-esteem issues stemming from her past. Being transgendered isn't a mental illness, it's a mental condition. Consider that I am just like the woman described, and I am just like LadyEllen making that same uphill struggle to overcome my issues. Consider that I'm under the care of specialists at Charing Cross in London, on one of the best programs, I have met all the requirements but unless I get to grips with my past and these issues I cannot get any further in my transition. That's the long and short of it.
Let me put this in a way which you might relate to better. You've posted about your past and your issues with anger, right? Well you know I have had those self same issues and had I have not gone for transition I would either be dead or one abusive sonofabitch. I spent three years living a double life in Warsaw, being oh so controversial in theatre and burning myself up with acidic, caustic seething resentment. It's taken me two years but I have overcome my anger and resentment, and this is the problem I have now. I constantly have to assert myself out there in life and I don't know how to be assertive.
My issues of loss of self-worth and crippling self-esteem come from my childhood. My parents wanted a girl, and they got me instead, and boy were they disappointed. For sixteen years I lived through hell - they made me pay dearly for being born to them, and I was put through every single form of abuse and they did everything they could to fuck up my life and condemn me to a life as a misfit, a social reject, or if you prefer.. a basket case.
I don'\t have the real time emotional support of a dominant, I'm getting through my transition largely on my own, independently. When I had my theatre and the support of a dominant I got free of my issues, as is evidenced by my early years in Warsaw theatre. This is why I practise Buddhism, this is why I write, direct plays, this is why I go out and do so much voluntary work and which is how now recently I've finally made the grade as a kink friendly lay counsellor with my own support group in West London.
You know what it's like yourself to have issues, and I do fully respect you for being so open and honest with us here over these issues, and I do sincerely hope that I can get to Folsom next year with a theatre and be able to buy you a beer. I mean that. But gender reassignment isn't just taking hormones, developing boobs and the butchery of getting your nads changed for a vagina, it's also a complete and total internal transformation where any and every single issue you have has to be worked out and overcome.
All I'm asking here is that you try and imagine what it's like for someone who is transgendered to overcome such issues and gain social acceptance not in one gender but in a second gender before you start labelling such a person a basket case.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael
Perhaps if you climbed down off your high horse and realized that you are just as human as she is and stop using her as an emotional footstool she might actually develop some self esteem but frankly, without YOU changing I can't much imagine that poor girl changing any time soon.
Here I'm inclined to agree with you. I'm reading the OP and wondering whether the M/s dynamic is helpful and whether a less restrictive D/s dynamic wouldn't be more supportive and positive in the long run. My suspicion here is that for the submissive enslavement is a copout and merely maintains a sort of unhealthy status quo and perhaps a better strategy for the OP to adopt would be to revert to a D/s dynamic keeping M/s as an option.
The danger is here that the woman in question needs to learn new social skills in her acquired gender and this requires a certain amount of freedom and independence. If this is denied her in an M/s dynamic and she goes through the transition and through surgery, if the relationship then ends she will end up being after surgery but with underdeveloped social and living skills.
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ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael
Punishing someone for having a bad self image only reinforces that negative image. At the same time, saying "woe is me" gets her attention and you don't want that either. Research "shaping" as is done to train dogs. It is a technique where you reward behavior that is closer to what you want and as they slowly respond you keep moving the carrot of emotional support closer to where you want her to be.
I agree with the first sentence. I would be more supportive of the dog-training idea only we're not talking about a dog and I feel that there are better solutions to Pavlovian behaviourist strategies and Meyerhold's constructivism which I suspect all this is based. To me these issues have developed through some sort of a process and that process needs to be reversed with her wanting this if these issues are ever going to be overcome. I would recommend perhaps some psychoanalysis and TA (Transactional Analysis) and somehow breaking down these behaviour patterns and finding some sort of better response and payoffs which lead to better interactions and relationships.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael
However, fixing self esteem is a long hard road, the person with the issue has to not only want to fix it but must be at a place where they are ready to fix it. That repair can be helped from the outside but the work must be done by the person with the issue, it isn't something you can "make" happen.
However, she is never going to get there with the attitude I see displayed here.
I agree with the above. I am at that stage at the moment, I know what is wrong, I know what to do, and I have got my clue by four, but I don't have the necessary tools and circumstances to be able to do it and now I need to get myself back into that situation where I am able to work on myself. In the basence of a supportive dominant here with me I have to call on my theatre and my support network of friends and somehow take it from there.
The woman in question needs structure and motivation which she can hold on to but she also needs a certain amount of freedom and independence to be able to make her own efforts and her own achievements. You cannot spoonfeed anyone their self-esteem. If you could, rest assured I would have received it in bucket loads from people here on the boards and from the people around me in life. But no, this is something which I have to do on my own, because it's me working on my relationship with me. All you can do is support and encourage, but the person themselves really has to do this on their opwn. Not as a slave, but as a free independent human being.
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