Gender-Identity.co.uk
Title
Gender and Transgender Counselling and Psychotherapy, London - David Hawley
Description
Transgender Counselling
"Trans" or "Gender identity" counselling can be beneficial to clients who may refer to themselves as: Transexual, Transgender, Trans, Transvestite etc. as well as those who are not sure what they are or do not feel comfortable with any label.
The majority of people are reasonably content with the gender label – “male” or “female” – which is assigned to them at birth based on their physical characteristics, and with the role which this gives them in their family and in the world at large. This is usually the case even if their sexual orientation is gay, lesbian or bisexual. A significant minority however are not comfortable with their given gender label: they feel, sometimes from a very early age, that they are “in the wrong body”. This condition has been given the medical description of “Gender Dysphoria”, which is to say unhappiness with gender. For those with this condition the only available solution, from a medical perspective, is treatment with hormones and surgery to bring their body into conformity (in so far as it is possible) with their inner psychological reality.
Unfortunately however the situation is often far from straightforward. For one thing if you have been labelled as, say, “male” you will have been brought up and “trained” from birth (some would say that the training begins even before birth) to be a male. No matter how uncomfortable this may have felt it will have had a powerful effect on how you experience and deal with the world, and on how you expect it to treat you. The same is obviously true for someone labelled as female.
Languages
English
