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You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist is a podcast for seekers, dreamers, and questioners that intimately explores the human experience. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills years of wisdom gained from her practice as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She invites guests from a broad variety of disciplines and many walks of life, including researchers, writers, artists, healers, advocates, inventive outliers, and creative geniuses. Together, they investigate, illuminate, and inspire transformation - in the self, relationships, and society. Curious about many things, Stephanie’s uniquely interdisciplinary psychological lens tackles challenging social issues while encouraging personal and relational wellness. Join this journey through the inner wilderness.
Swell AI Transcript: 111. Detrans Chat FINAL.mp3
Bob Withers:
Historically, we feel very guilty collectively about pathologizing homosexuality. And I think there's been a move in the therapy profession to make sure that we don't do that with trans people. But unfortunately, it's led us to just take the trans person's narrative as fact and to reinforce it and to affirm it rather than to interrogate it and work with it and have an exploratory approach. So we've let trans people down by just affirming their identity, and that's resulted in them going down these medical pathways that you guys have ended up regretting. And we're not really trained then how to deal with the detransitioners. As you said, it's not part of the education because it's been taboo until very recently to even admit that detransition is a fact.
SPEAKER_03: You must be some kind of therapist.
Stephanie Winn: Today I'm here with three very special guests to discuss a topic that is near and dear to my heart. If you're familiar with this podcast, you know that I'm very interested in the intersection of detransitioners and the mental health profession, both the ways that they've been harmed and alienated by the profession and what needs they have if they're open. to those needs being met by those of us in the mental health professions, and what better way to discuss this issue than with Layton, Nicolas Blooms, and Bob Withers. So I'll have each guest introduce themselves in a moment, including what episode they previously appeared on, but let me just say briefly that Bob has experienced counseling people with transition regret since I was a child, and so his expertise is so valuable on the subject. And then we have 2D transitioners who have had their own personal experiences with psychotherapy, the good, bad, and the ugly, and what is truly helpful in the helping professions. So I'm really excited for today's conversation. We're going to talk about what detransitioners need in therapy, what people considering transition or experiencing transition regret need in therapy, as well as the obstacles to providing those services. We're going to have cross-generational and cross-cultural perspectives given everyone's unique background. We're also going to talk about dissociation, which is something that all of our guests have some unique insights into. But part of the way I want to frame up this issue before I hand it over to my guests is that detransitioners or people experiencing transition regret, or those I sometimes refer to as sort of lost in transition, one way to think of them is that they are a rapidly emerging clinical population. for psychotherapists to consider. And I think this is important because I was in grad school not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. I was in grad school 2010 to 2013. And anyone who knows anything about the counseling field knows that you're taught to think in terms of clinical populations. whether that's populations based on demographics, diagnoses, or lived experiences. And therapists are encouraged to gain a wide variety of experiences with different clinical populations, but also to think about which ones they might want to specialize in. And I was taught about all kinds of clinical populations when I was in grad school, but this was not one of them. The idea of people who had at some point in their lives identified as transgender and then come to regret that choice or think of themselves differently was not a concept I was introduced to at all. And yet today it is an exponentially growing population with a growth curve that's sort of following a few years behind the exponential increase that we've seen in people identifying as trans. So here we have a rapidly emerging population of people, many of whom have extensive trauma and extensive psychiatric needs. And yet, last time I checked, they're not being considered in grad programs. And what I do hear from people who are studying the counseling profession This is something you simply do not touch. So we're going to talk about it here, though, because we talk about the things you're not supposed to talk about on this podcast. And we talk about how there is a whole cohort of people who have complex psychiatric needs and have also some of the lowest rates of trust in the counseling and medical professions to help them. And so I think it's one of the most important things we could possibly be talking about. When you have people who are at high risk of mental illness, of crisis, and yet have the lowest trust, for good reason, mind you, in the people who are supposed to help them, that is a problem that we should talk about in the counseling field. So that's my preamble. That's how I want to frame why I think this issue is so very important. And with that being said, I'm going to let each of my guests introduce themselves. They're going to let you know which episode they were on before and what we talked about so that if you're familiar with this podcast, you might recognize them or if not, you can go back and listen if you're interested. And then we'll dive into the conversation. So we'll start with Leighton.
Layton: So my name is Layton. I was in episode 95, transing the gay away cults, actual conversion therapy and dissociation as well as episode 96 from cults to gender clinic misdiagnosis D transition and healing where Stephanie and I had a really incredible conversation about me having been raised in a cult experiencing a lot of trauma being diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder due to so much PTSD and fragmentation going through conversion therapy and how all of that led to my transition and ultimately my detransition.
Nicolas Blooms: Hi, my name is Nicolas Blooms. I was on episode 98 called Trans to Detrans, a graphic novel journey from self-hate to self-compassion with Nicholas Blooms. In our conversation, we talked about my graphic novel that heavily illustrates the experience of someone that experiences gender dysphoria and going through a journey of discovering the soul and learning to love myself, where you can dive into the graphic novel and really have an experience of what that would feel like in your body.
Stephanie Winn: And then we'll have Bob introduce himself. And since Layton and Nicolas were actually on pretty recent episodes, but it's been a while since I've seen Bob, he's also going to fill us in on what he's been up to since then.
Bob Withers: Okay, thank you very much and thanks for asking me about Stephanie and nice to meet you Layton and Nicolas. So my episode was episode 47, the scapegoated body, transition, regret. And in that episode, I was talking about my work, which went back to the early 1990s with my first experience of a detransitioner who had lived as a woman for nine years, having fully medically transitioned and then realized that it didn't fulfill his hopes. And so he came to me wanting to go back to living as a man and finding what it was that had made it difficult for him to feel comfortable in his male body to begin with. I'm not just a practitioner in therapy with people with gender dysphoria. I've got a lifelong interest in the mind-body relationship, in psychosomatic medicine, in dissociation. And I work as a Jungian analyst, seeing ordinary people and teaching and writing about Well, I suppose my special interest is working with dissociation, trying to overcome it therapeutically, not just with trans people, but generally with ordinary people. You know, we're all dissociated in various ways, to various degrees. And mind-body dissociation, I think, is a very prevalent and deeply entrenched kind of dissociation that we suffer from as a culture. I think we spend so much of our time, actually, what we're doing now is a bit dissociated. We're just talking to heads on the screen, aren't we? And our bodies are not really present with one another. We have to do it to a degree of benign dissociation from our bodies in order to to exist in this this world that we've made for ourselves. We spend a lot of time on screen, a lot of time, I spent quite, not a lot of time on, I spend more time on my bike which is embodied than in my car, but I used to spend more time in my car, not something else but disembodied. Recently, so then this became an interest of mine, the trans thing became an interest, because once the huge upswell of numbers of people identifying as trans and wanting to transition, once that started hitting people around the clinic where I work in Brighton, in the south coast of England, it became important for me to try and understand what were the obstacles to people engaging in effective psychotherapy prior to making changes to their bodies that they could come to regret. And so I've made that a focus of some of my research work and some of the papers that I've written. and the talks that I've given, and quite a lot of the people who I've been involved with have also been involved in a similar sort of work with different perspectives, culminating in this conference that Stephanie was talking about, which I went to on Saturday in London, and that was called The First Do No Harm. It was the first clinical conference laid on by the, it's called the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, and it was, besieged by trans activists who put the word out on Twitter that this was a conference of conversion therapists. It was nothing of the sort. It had people who had their lived experience of detransitioning, people who were doing research on the suicide figures. Michael Biggs talked about the fact that although there's a huge perceived risk of suicide if you withhold medical treatment from young trans people, actually the evidence in favor of giving them the treatment as a suicide prevention is very, very poor and the suicide rate is extremely low. But despite that, we had the protesters outside, took over the building or tried to get into the building, stopped us from getting into the building to go to the talks, and they were shouting out that their slogan was, because the conference is called Do No Harm, and they were saying, do no harm, that's a lie, you don't care if children die, which is using the sort of suicide narrative to scare everybody into medicalizing any young person with gender distress. And the police were so badly outnumbered that they just sat by and let these people take over the front lobby of the, you know, they're all wearing masks. Some of them came with weapons. No, unfortunately, in England, we don't have easy access to guns. God knows what would have happened if it had been in the States. Anyway, I digress. That's me. That's my background. That's what I've been doing recently. And I'm very glad to be here today. Thanks very much.
Stephanie Winn: Thank you, Bob. So you mentioned several potential starting points there. I know dissociation and the mind-body connection is a shared interest of everyone here. You also mentioned addressing the obstacles to effective psychotherapy for people who are considering making major permanent bodily alterations. And I think that could be a great starting point. But one point I'll just add to before we dive into any of that is that I like to periodically reiterate my reasons for talking about this issue at all. And so you address the suicide narrative and how the evidence for that is very poor. I will go a step further and say that it's the opposite of the truth, and that's why I'm speaking out on this issue. We know that all-cause mortality is higher in post-operative transsexuals. than age-matched peers. And that has to do with both increased rates of suicide and self-harm and psychiatric hospitalizations and medicalization for post-operative transsexuals, as well as the medical complications that come with that, the risks to the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, endocrine, of course, the bones. So it's the fact that all-cause mortality is so much higher in people who go through with these things, that is my very reason for speaking out on this issue and saying, hey, all else being equal, would you prefer your child to have diabetes or not have diabetes? I don't think anyone would say it expresses phobia or hatred toward diabetic people for a parent to want their child to be healthy and not dependent on insulin shots for the rest of their life. So similarly, all else being equal, would you wish for someone a healthy life? or a life that's prematurely cut short where they're riddled with medical problems. And so the fact that there is no evidence that gender dysphoria is some kind of absolute indicator of some permanent you know, gender identity, the fact that this gendered soul hasn't been located in science, you know, is my reason for speaking out about this. So I just wanted to express my strong opinion on that matter. But that being said, Bob, you had mentioned, as I said, dissociation, which I know is an interest for everyone here.
Bob Withers: Thank you. Can I just, you know, end the conversation about the suicide narrative? Because I've I think that it was one of the things that came out of the conference, the people who were talking about suicide were saying that actually there's been very little proper research. Nobody's bothered to follow up why the suicide figures are so high in people post-operatively. It's just been put down by the trans lobby as being due to minority stress. But you would think that if people were passing, their minority stress would be less, because they've had the surgery in hormones that make them pass more easily. So a gender dysphoria, if it was getting better, should result in a lower suicide risk.
Stephanie Winn: And on that note, if minority stress was the explanation, then wouldn't we expect to see the suicide rates in that population bear some resemblance to the suicide rates in other populations that experience minority stress? But that's not what we see. What we see is that the suicide rate in the trans-identified population matches people with the same psychiatric comorbidities. And then it goes up once you're post-operative. And anecdotally, I don't know if there's any concrete evidence for this, but anecdotally, it certainly seems like from the preliminary evidence that I'm seeing just as a person witnessing this is that the more invasive surgery someone has had, the higher risk of suicide they are. You know, I'll wait.
Bob Withers: I mean, I'm an old timer here. And as long as long ago as 2011, there was a study by somebody called Denier in Sweden, who followed up 300 trans people post-operatively, and found that if you matched those people to people of the same age, socioeconomic achievement, status, and mental health disturbance, they were 19.1 times more likely to actually complete suicide than their controlled match group. But nobody's actually asked the question, why is that? It's just been put down to minority stress, but it could be down to A number of other possibilities, including transition regret. You know, like my patient, you think it's going to help you, but it doesn't. And then you're in despair because you've got no hope. Another possibility would be that the rates of self-harm are quite high to begin with. So it might be that these are people who are already inclined to self-harm and suicide is the most extreme form of self-harm. And the other thing that hasn't been investigated is what is the effect of estrogen on the male body? These were mainly male to female transitioners. And whereas the female body has various ways of keeping estrogen at a constant level within the body, the male body doesn't have those same receptor cells to do that. And in women, we do know that rapid fluctuations of estrogen such as occur around you know menopause or before period or often. the birth of a child, those are those are times of a woman's life, she's much more likely to commit suicide. So if it's if there's a link between the extreme fluctuation in estrogen level in the woman, and if the male body isn't equipped to deal with estrogen, isn't it at least the possibility that flooding a man male body with estrogen may be connected with the increased risk of suicide, but nobody's bothered to investigate it because to do these scientific investigations is deemed transphobic, just like having a medical conference to talk about best practice is deemed by the trans activists who think it's their human right to have access to these unproven medical treatments. They just think that anybody who does any questioning or investigation is transphobic and attempting to practice conversion therapy and should be shouted down and probably attacked and certainly denied a platform. So That's the real transphobia, it seems to me. It's the transphobia that denies trans people the rights to evidence-based medicine that the rest of us enjoy.
Stephanie Winn: I think that's a good segue to the topic of what are the obstacles to effective psychotherapy, because you're mentioning the obstacles to sound research. So what are the obstacles to effective psychotherapy for trans-identified people?
Bob Withers: Well, I don't want to hold the whole show, and I'd be very interested in hearing what Layton and Nicolas's experiences, what your experiences were of trying to engage in therapy prior to transitioning. So, shall I come back at a slightly later stage, if you'd like, if you're able to share your experiences there and say what you thought the obstacles were, or maybe you didn't have any obstacles, maybe. I'd be interested in hearing what your stories are.
Nicolas Blooms: Yeah, for me, it's been, I don't think I've ever gotten therapy for gender related things. I went to therapy from an early age, like probably sometime around middle school. And I was already experiencing gender identity and wanting to explore that. And I would talk about that with therapists, but because I wasn't willing to share my intimate thoughts, even with the therapist, because I didn't trust anybody, I kind of just was in my own world. obsessing over it and not sharing it. So it kind of just grew and grew and grew. So even when I had a therapist ask me questions, I would shut my mouth. I would not talk about it. And that was kind of how I transitioned. I transitioned without a therapist. And then once I transitioned, I felt like my mental health got worse. So I was like, OK, maybe I need to go see a therapist. So I went to go see a therapist I've had, and during the transition time I had two different therapists. The first one didn't know how to talk about transition at all, so we never really touched on it. Nor was I wanting to talk about it because I didn't think that my root issue with anxiety and depression were connected to the problem of medication as well as, you know, deeper rooted traumatic experiences from the past. So those weren't really discussed ever until I considered detransition. When I considered detransition, I had one therapist probably in her 70s or 80s or so, and when I told her that I didn't even meet with a therapist to talk about transition, she was very shocked. She was like, how did you even get hormone medication and go on and become transitioned without even meeting with a therapist? She was so shocked. And she helped me really uncover and discover that I transitioned from a traumatic place instead of a healthy and balanced place. Because when I was considering detransition, she was really asking me all these questions to help me uncover, like, who am I biologically? Who am I really? instead of taking all these hormones because I was like, the spell had broken at that point of believing that I'm a woman, believing that hormones are going to fix me because they never will and never have. So that was my experience with therapists. And I don't think I'll ever go back to therapy ever again, just because I feel like I've found my own way of really discovering how to navigate mental health. And I've had a life coach mentor spiritual mentor that really guides me because I need someone that can be intimate with me, someone that can really just know me in and out versus someone that just is kind of like there for temporary reasons and I can't build a relationship with is feels really cold to me therapeutically. So for me to discuss mental health, I felt like I needed someone that felt maternal, someone that I could count on, someone that would believe in me. And that was never my experience with therapy. It's always kind of just been like, okay, here you, but I'm not giving you solutions because I don't know how to help you. That's kind of been my experience with therapy.
Stephanie Winn: I love sleep. Sound sleep is a crucial foundation of good mental and physical health, from mood and concentration to metabolism and cellular repair. And I sleep very well thanks to my Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. My side of the bed is programmed to be warm when I get in and cool down to a neutral temperature in the middle of the night so I don't wake up overheated like I used to. How would you customize your bed temperature? Visit 8sleep.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take up to $200 off your purchase. Even if they're already running another sale, this code will get you an additional $50 off. 8sleep currently ships not only within the USA, but also to Canada, the UK, select countries in the European Union, and Australia. Thanks for considering purchases that support the show. And I'll add here that, Nicolas, you've spoken in such glowing and heartwarming terms about your relationship with Kim, who was featured on episode 80 of my podcast. And so one of the things we've done on this podcast over time is sort of discuss how the therapy profession seems to be falling apart and what are the alternatives and when is coaching or mentoring or something else actually more suitable for someone. And I think you're giving an example of how, for you, it wasn't so much psychotherapy as this warm maternal mentorship relationship that you had with Kim that filled a missing need and allowed you to sort of internalize, I think, some of her self-soothing tools. And I see those incorporated into your book. So for you it sounds like your perception of the coldness and sort of austerity of the counseling profession has been alienating. And also you mentioned your own, when you were younger and less mature, your own kind of inner obstacles, Nicholas. the defenses that you had against opening up to someone, which is something you talked about on my podcast and in your book as well. So I think when we talk about barriers to psychotherapy, we can talk about both the external barriers, the limitations with the therapists, limitations with the systems that govern psychotherapy, but also some of the psychological defenses that might pose challenges to treatment for people who are at a certain stage in their growth. Layton, what are your thoughts on that?
Layton: I love where you just ended there, because it brought me back to my experience in therapy, where after having been in a cult, and having someone that literally ran my entire life at all times, someone that I had to check in with about everything that I did when I was in the cult, suddenly having a therapist, again, that kind of relationship I was kind of primed to just say, okay, you know me better than I know myself, and anything that you tell me that I'm feeling or anything that you say is real for me, that's just what I'm going to think is real for me. I had no identity whatsoever. I had no sense of self. And I think that I also really would have benefited at the time from the same kind of relationship that Nicolas was talking about. And I know in my own life, after the fact, like coming out of out of transition and everything, it was those mentorship-type relationships that offered me such a safe and healing place, especially because there was less of a hierarchy where I wasn't seeing myself as a sub-person next to this other person who I'm looking to tell me who I am and to give me my, you know, my identity. And that's not necessarily the fault of the therapist that I went in there with that mindset. But having the trauma that I had and having been through a cult and everything, that should have been recognized. And so I feel like that was a big barrier for me, because I went in there and I obviously had been through a cult, I had been through conversion therapy, I was suffering with severe dissociation. And those things were not only overlooked, but, and I don't want to say completely overlooked, because we did talk about it, but they were overlooked specifically in regards to transition and how that would impact my identity, how that would impact my connection to my physical form, my human body, my femaleness. all of those things were, you know, totally overlooked. And it, yeah, it, I would have really benefited, I think, from a different kind of relationship at the time where maybe I was learning from someone or being mirrored by someone in a way that was more gentle, so that I wasn't going into it with that mindset as much because I had a massive wall up. And that wall was, you know, I've been primed my entire life that I have to say things a certain way and I have to do things a certain way and I have to just submit. I have to listen to my authority figures and this is my authority figure and so whatever they say I'm not going to question. And if you claim to be a specialist with dissociation and things like that, or if you go into a situation seeking to help someone that has just left a cult, or even an abusive relationship, or anything that's going to really erase someone's identity, that needs to be the the foundation of the conversation that awareness needs to be there. And the therapist also needs to be very firm with boundaries and, you know, not crossing certain boundaries, because the boundary issue was also very present in my relationship with my therapist, where there were not, it's not necessarily that I was crossing boundaries, I was just following, you know, what my therapist was doing. And there were times that I questioned the way that things were done, and I, at the same time, was so relieved to have someone actually listen to me and to believe that I was safe this time that I ignored the red flags.
Stephanie Winn: And Layton, I want to frame that. On the one hand, your story is pretty extreme, both in terms of the fact that you had come from a cult. That's an extreme, unusual experience. And the boundary crossings on the part of your therapist were no joke. And for anyone who really wants to hear that story, go and listen to episode 95 and 96, where Leighton shares her full story, because that therapist was super inappropriate. And yet, the way you're describing it here so succinctly points to something that is probably a lot more common than the level of egregious boundary crossings that you experience, which is barriers on the part of the therapist acting out the role that may have been projected onto the therapist as being the authority figure. Your therapist took that and ran miles with it. But to a lesser degree, that's a trap for any therapist to watch out for. It can hook into our ego, the desire to be special or important to someone, to be a savior, to be in a position of knowledge. Those hooks are there for so many of us. And I think it's easy to overlook how a young, vulnerable person, because I think you were like 21 or so at the time, how someone at that age, especially, or someone in a vulnerable time in their life, for whatever reason they're vulnerable, could place so much weight on that therapist's opinion. And, you know, I come from a relational psychodynamic background, so my inclination when I pick up on stuff like that, at least when I'm cautiously aware of it, I'm sure it evades me all the time, but when I'm consciously aware of it, my inclination is to process it in the here and now, with my patient to, you know, name the dynamic and kind of get curious about it as opposed to acting it out. But it's so easy to fall into acting out both the ego issues on the part of the therapist, the countertransference issues on the part of the therapist, and those vulnerabilities on the part of the client. They can be a perfect match and form sort of a perfect storm.
Bob Withers: It's very interesting hearing Layton and Nicolas and also your reflections on it, Stephanie. And if I can start with that thing about the countertransference and relational therapy, I do think what Nicholas was looking for, and maybe yourself as well, Leighton, was a relationship with a real other person in the therapist. And one of the important things I think is to try and be involved as much as possible in a relation, in a unique relational relation, therapeutic relationship with the individual. So that instead of doing something by the book in a kind of fixed way, like a blank screen, classic psychoanalytic way, we're prepared to actually get emotionally involved, but to do so in a boundaried way. Because as Stephanie says, if we're not aware of the traps that we get drawn into as therapists, we can end up breaking boundaries and repeating traumas and making things worse. Which is why, of course, the best therapy trainings, in my opinion, are the ones where the therapist themselves has to have a lot of therapy before they're let loose on the public, because it's through learning our own blind spots and working through our own traumas contacting our own areas of madness or of dissociation, that we can then recognize where we're being drawn into something through the client and where something that we've not worked on in ourselves is actually being triggered. And it's that awareness which I think a good psychodynamic training can give a therapist. But I think as therapists also, we do have to reflect on the way that our classic training has not equipped us for working effectively with the sorts of plants that Leighton and Nicholas were. So yeah, I think being prepared if you need to, to express something of your humanity as a therapist, to have what some people have called a moment of meeting or a sense of being a real person in the room with a real other person. That is important to be able to do that, to adapt the way that we work. to reflect what's needed with the individual client, and also to reflect on how our failure to do that as a profession has contributed to our difficulty actually helping this group of clients, where it's so important that we can reach people if possible before transition, before doing something permanent to the body. And the sorts of things which I think have stopped us from doing that Historically, we feel very guilty collectively about pathologizing homosexuality. And I think there's been a move in the therapy profession to make sure that we don't do that with trans people. But unfortunately, it's led us to just take the trans person's narrative as fact, and to reinforce it, and to affirm it, rather than to interrogate it and work with it and have an exploratory approach. So we've let trans people down by just affirming their identity, and then as Stephanie was saying, that's resulted in them going down these medical pathways that you guys have ended up regretting, and we're not really trained then how to deal with the detransitioners, as you say, it's not part of the education. because it's been taboo until very recently to even admit that detransition is a fact. If you try and speak out about that, people will say, well, don't you understand all the studies show it's only 0.5% and you look more closely at the studies and actually it just breaks down the definition of what detransition or transition regret in those studies is so narrow. that it's impossible to include ordinary de-transitioners in the figures. So I think we've got a lot of reflection to do as a therapy profession. And the other thing as well is that working with people, a lot of people are on the spectrum or have quite severe dissociative issues. And that is a challenge to conventional therapy. I think we need to examine our ways of working and try and reflect on how we can improve our ability to engage people who, you know, typically people on the autistic spectrum find it difficult to symbolize. And, you know, working symbolically is part of the ordinary psychoanalytic method. And when it works, it's fine. But if you don't symbolize very well, then that's a challenge for the therapist, how to work with those areas of the psyche, which are not accessible to the client, really. And there may be feelings in the body. And finally, the other thing that you both said that's really interesting to me is the link of trauma. And I think we are developing, we're developing a relational approach in psychotherapy, which is great. And we are also developing better ways of working with trauma. But it's taken quite a long time. We're a bit slow to learn as a profession. I think we tend to just fall back on the tried and tested models and regard anything else as sort of heresy. And that's not been helpful. So I think we need to think as therapists to reflect on our part in the failure to engage clients. And then we also need to think about the individual client and what their needs might be, which might be very different in, you know, Leighton's case from Nicholas's case, or in the case of the transitioners I've worked with. Everybody's unique, and every person who identifies as trans and wants to transition also has a unique story, which may require a different way of working with them, an individual way of working. And that's one area that I quite like Jung in, because Jung talks about the centrality of individuation, which is this process of becoming yourself in a fully embodied way that is unique for each individual.
Stephanie Winn: You've said so many gens there, Bob. I'm wondering which one to pick up with. Discussion about how the needs of autistic people might be different in therapy, and And something I heard you sort of alluding to there also is expectations going into therapy. And this is where, again, I come back to that relational approach. What's happening in the room or in the virtual room for those of us who work online? What does it mean if someone has transition regret or has de-transitioned? What does it mean to them to be seeing a therapist that's going to probably be highly influenced by their past experiences? And if they feel that they have been permanently, physically scarred by things that had any connection to previous therapy, then it's a miracle that they're showing up at all, right? I feel like when you're doing relational therapy, therapy, you do want to learn what you can upfront and over time from your client about what it means to them to be in therapy, what it means to them to be seeing you, their expectations, fears, hopes, longings, the projections onto the therapeutic relationship, and that whole process is just going to be magnified so much more for someone who has that level of trauma pertaining to mental health practitioners. And then another theme I've noticed with the transitioners is, and this is in some ways mirrored in anyone who has enough pain or regret around anything, it's hard not to vacillate between shame and blame, right, between it's all my fault and it's all your fault when something really, really painful has happened. And so I noticed with detransitioners, one theme that seems like something that would come up a lot in therapy is how they've internalized, whether it's because, I mean, detransitioners can have a variety of beliefs on whether, you know, oh, there is such a thing as true trans, just not me. I was wrong about myself. The belief that these surgeries should be available to people I made a mistake versus I don't think anybody should have access to this. I think it's the doctors and the policies that are wrong. And where a person falls in terms of their beliefs at any given time, They're going to be influenced by a number of factors, including who their friends and family are, where they're spending time online, things like that. And of course, they're going to affect their healing process. It's my belief that I tend to lean toward thinking a person does need to go through a phase of being angry. identifying with their feelings of victimization and helplessness, realizing they were wronged, not to live with the victim identity or mindset forever, but to go through a phase of externalizing the way in which they've taken on that sense of self-blame. And I think detransitioners I've met have been at different points in that process. And I noticed a variety of reactions when I start to acknowledge that maybe you were mistreated. Let's say someone has a belief that some people are trans. I was just wrong about myself. I have a libertarian philosophy that these surgeries should be available to people over 18. I just think that I was misdiagnosed. If someone has those types of beliefs and I come in and say, well, actually, I, as someone who works in this profession, thinks that we made a Horrible wrong turn and that my profession should have never agreed to sign off on these things in the first place And I don't agree with how doctors roles have been rewritten to you know away from the philosophy of doing no harm Towards just give the patient whatever body modification they want regardless of how it affects their health in the future if I come in and say I have a different belief system and And I think you were mistreated. And I don't think this should have been available to you. And I see you internalizing responsibility for this. But if my field hadn't messed up so badly, then you never would have even been able to harm yourself in this way. So maybe you shouldn't blame yourself. Then that's going to create a major potential relational conflict. in the therapist-client relationship, or now I do more coaching and consulting. Let's say I'm working with the transitioner in that. It could really sort of erode against the person's belief system and also their ways of internalizing to cope, because there's sort of that sometimes people blame themselves for their problems as a way of maintaining control rather than identifying with feelings of helplessness or victimization. So I think there's just so much there. I was seeing some looks on your face I was wondering what was going through your mind when I was saying all that.
Bob Withers: Actually, you know, what was going through my mind was that although I agree with what you're saying, and it's very true, what was going through my mind was the dissociation in our culture as well between the doctors who look after the physical body and the psychotherapists who look after whatever you want to call it, the mind or the soul. And some of the de-transitioners that I've worked with it's been quite hard to join up the bodily care, which is often done by physicians or doctors, with the psychological care, which is done by psychotherapists. So my first detransitioner guy, you know, he came along to see me for a long period of time in a very, very dark kind of suicidal depression, which I worked on psychotherapeutically, diligently, with very little effect. He still felt very suicidal. And then finally, he went to see a doctor who referred him to an endocrinologist and the endocrinologist said, well, how much testosterone are you taking? And he said, well, I'm not taking any testosterone. Nobody's prescribed it to me. So he said, well, you're on estrogen then, are you? No, no, I've stopped taking the estrogen. So the endocrinologist just said, well, you know, your body isn't producing testosterone. You haven't got any testes anymore. And it's no wonder you're suicidally depressed. You need some testosterone. So just that simple sort of joining up of the care, I mean, I hope it's better these days, but this feels like a massive experiment where, you know, people are casualties and the transformative effect on my patient, I call him Chris when I write about him, you know, it was massive. He just got such a lift when he started taking testosterone, suddenly came alive again, and this sort of really dead, dark depression lifted. And he was very angry with me for a while, I've been trying to treat this thing psychologically, when actually it was a bodily issue that hadn't been picked up on. So there's this dissociation in our culture between psychotherapy and physical medicine, which is, you know, part of the problem, I think. I'd be interested to hear what degree of bodily care Layton and Nicolas are receiving, and if it's joined up with the life coaching or the psychological emotional support, or if you just have to go out and mix and match. And of course, also individually, people transition in various different ways to various different degrees, and so their physical needs are going to be different. I could talk about that. a bit longer, but I'd be interested in hearing about your experience of that, Leighton and Nicholas. And what Stephanie was saying earlier, I totally agree with as well. That was great. But what about that side, the bodily care? How good is that now you've transitioned
Nicolas Blooms: So for me, what's been interesting, I love that you're talking about how our society has this disconnect about the body and mind and healing it separately when I feel like there is a huge interconnection that is being miscalculated. For me, as I de-transitioned and I dug deep into the wounds and trauma that I was experiencing, there was a physical component to it as well. I've had gut issues my entire life and it stems from trauma with my mom and being bullied. So my nervous system was dysregulated for over a decade. So I naturally met with a naturopath and the naturopath, he immediately was like, yeah, your gut issues are directly related to your nervous system. And I never heard that before. I didn't even want to go to a regular pharmaceutical, you know, general practitioner doctor. Cause I was like, they're going to prescribe me, prescribe me pills. And I'm never going to take pills because I know I can heal this. I know I can, because I know that, The mind and body are connected, so why would I need to take a pill when I feel like there's something deeper than just physical? So as I was getting help from the naturopath, I showed up suicidal, I showed up depressed, I showed up with so much anxiety. And as he prescribed me homeopathic medicine, which is just like sugar pills mixed with a herb, the emotions arose. They started to show up to the surface and then be released. And then within six to nine months, I feel like a completely different person. It's almost like the trauma from my past was not being experienced and felt and was stored in my body. And through this practice of connecting with the naturopath and him helping me realize, like, him helping me realize, wow, the emotions are directly connected to my body. Why have I never been taught this? It was like an aha moment of discovering and learning to navigate my nervous system and regulate it and give it some love and really gave me an opportunity to dive into what my wounds were, what my perfectionist tendencies were, where my internalized homophobia was, where my depression and anxiety was coming from, because it didn't just start from nowhere. It had to start from somewhere. So it was a digging process related to my stomach and I still have issues here and there, but I would say a year ago, my stomach was like so tense from eating salad that I would have to go to the bathroom immediately because it just, my body was so shocked that something like this would be, was being put into my body, but now I can eat salad and be fine. So there is a huge component with the mind, the nervous system and the body. But I feel like Layton has so much to talk about this as well.
Bob Withers: Yeah, thanks. Just before you, Layton, as I say, that's really interesting. And thanks for that insight and the way the trauma is stored in the body. And emotion also is dissociated and split off and felt in the body for a lot of people. And I think that's really important in terms of gender dysphoria, because sometimes people feel that discomfort as discomfort with their genitals or their hairiness or you know, breasts if they're female. And very often it is that there's some emotional trauma which has been encapsulated and split into that organ, which is then felt to be alien. And that's the sort of the role of dissociation there. And I've actually also… written about homeopathy and the role of dissociation in homeopathic medicine, because I used to work as a homeopath before I trained as a psychotherapist and did quite a lot of research on homeopathy. And what you're saying, I think is really important and interesting, that it can somehow, even though, as you say, it's sort of sugar pills with not very much chemical effect, it can nevertheless act as a vehicle, it seems, to help undo that somatization of painful and difficult emotion. And it can help a person get much more emotionally in touch with parts of their split off personality, which have been stored and trapped in the body. And the person experiences the body as the problem, but actually the way to healing is to reconnect with the emotion behind the bodily symptom and homeopathy. can do that, even though I believe through my research it does it through a sort of symbolic route rather than a chemical route. But that's another story for another day, I think. Leighton, I'd be really interested in hearing a bit about your journey in relation to this.
Stephanie Winn: Whether you're a long-time or first-time listener of the podcast, Odds are you're just as concerned as I am about the gender ideology crisis that's affecting today's youth. What you may not be as aware of is another insidious practice occurring in med school classrooms, practitioners' offices, and hospitals alike. The discriminatory practices that focus on race instead of qualifications of healthcare providers. These universities, associations, and sometimes even states are breaking federal laws in their racially discriminatory practices. And one group is holding them accountable.
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SPEAKER_03: Learn more and sign up at donoharmmedicine.org slash sometherapist. That's donoharmmedicine.org slash sometherapist.
Layton: I really loved what you were just saying about homeopathy too. So before I get into my experience with like the somatic side of things, I wanted to say that I really think you're onto something because from a spiritual perspective, I believe that there are etheric and elemental forces that live in these plants. and that when we take them, they do have an impact on our bodies, however subtle it may be, and I think it can impact us astrally and physically and really add a sense of balance. That's been my experience in a lot of ways. And Yeah, I could not possibly say enough about what somatic work and somatic experiencing has done for my life. I, from a very young age, was extremely suicidal, extremely traumatized, very dissociated, and honestly, my life was hell internally, even if things had changed externally for me at any point in time. I would not have been able to integrate that because of the state that I was in. And so for me, regular, you know, talk therapy, I was just talking in circles because I did not have that element of embodiment that was so necessary in order to actually have some idea of my core self or what it would mean to individuate. I was so disconnected from my body that I couldn't do that. So somatic practitioning. When I finally started working with a somatic practitioner, I had very low hopes. I wasn't expecting anything from it at all. And it completely changed my life. And now that's the work that I do and I also mentor detransitioners completely for free on top of the work that I do because I'm so passionate about it and I believe that that missing connection in the body is going to change people's lives just like it changed my life. I had so much trauma that was in my body that was manifesting in so many different ways and I mentioned in my podcast episode with Stephanie that when I was very young, I also had a head injury. I still have a massive scar across my forehead from it that kind of triggered that onset of severe dissociation. So then everything else that I experienced, I would just dissociate even more. So I still have quite a bit of nervous system damage because of that. I go to physical therapy pretty much twice every week to work on nervous system issues. However, even despite the damage that I currently still have to my nervous system, the state that I am in mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually is not even remotely comparable. I see myself as someone that lives a very whole and stable and healthy life that if I had not had that physical component of really getting embodied and experiencing the sensations that my body needed me to experience and feeling into my body, I don't think there was any other way for me to stop dissociating because something that I recognized was that this wave of emotion that would come up before I would split when I was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and I would kind of essentially black out in a lot of ways. That was this physical sensation that was so overwhelming and overpowering and scary to my body that it didn't feel like it was physically possible to heal. And so I had to work with that in very small ways, which I also incorporated a lot of inner child work and self-comfort and you know, speaking to my body regularly, saying that I'm safe. And what I would do is I would allow myself to kind of integrate these physical sensations in very small ways. And I wasn't dissecting them and saying, you know, what is this? Because associating it with that trauma before I was embodied was too much for me. I couldn't be going into the trauma if I wasn't even in my body. So, for me, that really made a massive difference. And then, like Nicolas, I also had a lot of gut issues that I didn't know I had that mainly stemmed from being in fight or flight in my entire childhood. Changing my diet helped tremendously in the sense that, I mean, I could eat salad and I'm not going to have those issues, but for me it was more so. I am not that kind of person. My body, my nervous system, it does not like stimulation. It doesn't like caffeine. It doesn't like sugar. even carbs, they're just too harsh on my nervous system compared to other people. And so having that element to really helped tremendously. And I just don't experience that anxiety. I mean, if I went on a sugar binge, I would start feeling anxious, but I don't experience that anxiety and that dissociation or depression or anything like that, now that I know the issues that were impacting me, I experience now, you know, the normal human emotion of nervousness before something happens or of sadness or of grief if something happens, opposed to it being this thing that kind of takes over and controls my life. As far as the clinical aspect of things, I really have not received much help. My doctor doesn't really know what to do with me. So I've kind of had to figure things out as I go. And I get acupuncture regularly. I meditate all the time. I live an extremely healthy lifestyle to the best of my ability. And I'm also aware that I have damage done to my endocrine system that I don't know how to fix. and damage done to my body that I don't know how to fix. So it to me, it's, it's a every day as a journey, and I'm, I'm open to trying different things. And what I do the most is I go within and I listen to my body. And I do a lot of muscle testing to and ask my body what it needs, because so far, my body and, you know, reestablishing that connection has been the greatest teacher that I ever could have had.
Stephanie Winn: I noticed similarities in Layton and Nicolas's stories that both of you at some point in your own maturation, really took your healing into your own hands, decided to be your own doctor, did your own research, went within to ask your body what it needed, went through sort of a spiritual process of reconnecting with your body in a compassionate way and finding that sort of inner healer. And you both sought to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships with people who are meaningful in your life, who could help you regardless of what their credentials may or may not have been. And now you're both in a place where you're both feeling grounded and clear, able to help others. You're both mentoring other detransitioners. And so there's a place I want to go next. I'm also curious to hear where you were going to go, Bob. The place that I was curious was from your experiences doing sort of that peer-to-peer mentoring for other detransitioners. Because I guess I'll frame it this way, that I've met detransitioners in a variety of contexts. In this podcasting context, and personal context, and through counseling and coaching. And, you know, some of the detransitioners I've met have been really, really suffering physically and mentally. Others I'm happy to see thriving, like you guys, I think are examples of people who are in a pretty good place in your lives, you know, able to be a source of inspiration to others. And so here I am still sitting with this question of, in terms of the therapeutic relationship for people who are willing to go to therapy, because some detransitioners are just never going to trust a therapist again. But or, you know, maybe if they're willing to trust a coach or a mentor, and that person happens to be listening to this podcast thinking, how can I help in the context of a helping relationship where the D Transitioner is the person being helped? I'm still sorting through this question of what to what degree is it necessary? for someone to go through feeling wronged, to go through… Because I see that as part of purging the poison, getting the arrow out of your system. I have been harmed, and the danger in not doing that is continuing to internalize blame. And so for me, worldview plays a part in that because my worldview, as I was saying earlier, and I'm sorry to be repetitive, but my mind is still on it because I really want to know what you guys think, right? Like in my worldview, there's right and wrong about what helpers should be doing and what healthcare professionals should be doing. And there are people who have been wronged by that because those in charge have lost their way. And so I'm thinking that it's necessary for some people to go through that phase in order to move on to healing and self-compassion and self-forgiveness. It's not my fault. In the same way that someone who was molested when they were young, and there are many detransitioners and people with transition regret who also have sexual trauma, someone who was molested probably spent years of their life feeling like they did something to deserve that, that it was their fault, they must have wanted it. And sometimes it's only until much later in life through maturation or psychotherapy or what have you, you can look back as a molestation victim and be like, no, I was just a child. I was groomed. This was not my fault. I think there's something really similar in those two processes. Again, not to say that people should be stuck there, but it's just something I've noticed is a dilemma in the process of trying to figure out how to best be of service to people with this particular lived experience. And I guess I'm just left wondering what you guys think, Leighton and Nicholas, based on your own experiences. I don't know how similar or different that question is to where you were about to go, Bob.
Bob Withers: Well, I'm very, very interested in hearing about that. So I was only going to say something that I was really sorry that Layton still has some medical issues. And I was thinking about there must be lots of detransitioners who are left with medical issues. And I hope that we as a society can pick up on that. and help with that part of it as well. The other part I was really impressed that you used your body to re-contact your emotional self that you've been cut off from before and I was also just thinking it's really important to do that in relationship to somebody else as well who can help you with the emotions and so that sort of by segue quite conveniently into your work with the Transitioners, where I suppose you were helping them share their trauma with you, and the fact that you've been through some of that trauma as well will probably help them regulate the emotion around it without having perhaps to dissociate, i.e. cut off or be overwhelmed. So yeah, like Stephanie, I'd like to hear a bit more about that great work that you're doing with the Transitioners.
Layton: I mean, even when I work with them and they know, they have, I always make sure that they know they have full autonomy, you know, they can take whatever advice I give and they don't have to use it. I won't be angry with them or upset with them or stop working with them if they don't, unless it was obvious, of course, that they didn't actually want to continue with with that healing, but I have yet to have that happen. But I also I bring up, you know, the elements of Are you exercising? What's your diet like? Do you use drugs, all of these different things that I think are really important, because they do affect how we feel about the world, but also especially how we're going to feel in our bodies, And, like, for me, consuming a ton of sugar or consuming a ton of caffeine, that made me a lot more disembodied. It worsened my dissociation and that was never brought up to me. So I think it's so important that we have these very dynamic approaches. And I think to touch on what Stephanie was saying about what about what it's like to mentor other detransitioners, I think that When you have kind of gone through that yourself and you know, okay, this is what was missing or this is what was lacking in my experience, it can be really helpful to kind of bring that up in another person. And with everyone that I mentor, you know, some of them do have a therapist, some of them don't have a therapist. And some of them feel like doing somatic work with me is it's just making so much more progress for them. And then when we stop meeting, I encourage them to go see a somatic therapist specifically because somatic practitioners and somatic therapists are obviously different still in various ways. And I think it would be very beneficial. But yeah, I think having that dynamic approach is really important. And Stephanie, you had asked something right before this that like totally slipped my mind. What was your question?
Stephanie Winn: I really just want to open up a conversation about the needs of detransitioners, whether it's therapy, coaching, mentoring, with regard to externalizing, going through, this wasn't my fault, I was mistreated, and some of, you know, whether that's helpful or not, as well as some of the problems the problems and solutions that might be created from going there, and how the therapist, you know, if a therapist is gender critical like me, the potential match or mismatch between the therapist and client, given that not all detransitioners have the same worldview, have the same gender critical perspective. In fact, some detransitioners report feeling wronged by the gender critical community. It's just layers and layers of complexity, but wherever you want to go with it.
Layton: No, no. I think that's a really good question because it brought me back to what I was thinking when you initially asked that question, where if we're looking at the gender affirming care model, that model is inherently flawed. It makes no sense whatsoever that someone would go to their doctor and say, I have this thing and we're just taking their word for it. We wouldn't do that with with anything else. And To my knowledge, that's the model that is being used most places. So I would say that opinion or not, it's kind of there's an element, I think, that's just objectively wrong, because it doesn't make sense. We don't do this with anything else. Even if you go and you say, I have stomach issues, for example, to your doctor, they're going to go deeper and say, Okay, what kind of stomach issues? You know, what's going on with this? Maybe we can do a GI map or a stool sample or try and see kind of what the root causes. And I feel like there, we're really lacking that when people go and they say I have gender dysphoria, and you just have this the therapist or psychiatrist or doctor or whoever it may be, and they respond by just immediately affirming that, immediately giving you hormones or whatever it may be. It just does not make sense. I think that we're kind of at a point where there is this element of objective reality, objective right and wrong, and I think that when we look at that in comparison to the way that we would treat anything else, it just does not make sense. And so generally, I tell people that I think it's wrong to, to like, I just, I can't, I can't really feel any other way about it. If you like I was saying, if you go in and say that, and and your doctor responds by just immediately believing you and does not look into anything else, that is just wrong objectively from my perspective. But at the same time, I also let people know that it's completely okay if they have a different opinion and they will be safe with me. It's okay if they're still unsure if they want to go through with continuing to detransition because some people see me because they don't know how they feel. They don't know if they want to detransition or they don't know if they want to continue transition. And I ultimately want them to have a safe space where we do touch on reality, but they don't have to worry about ideology. They don't have to worry about that rejection at the same time. But of course, they might see reality as an ideology depending on where they are. So I think that I'm usually just really careful in how I approach it. And you can only be so careful as you know, because the other person might be in a state where they feel very triggered by different things. I have two close friends that I met when I was transitioning, and they are both still trans identified, and they know that I'm a de-transitioner. And we agree on a lot of things. And they know how I feel about a lot of things. And so I think that you can absolutely love people without necessarily buying into a certain ideology. But because we are really lacking nuance in this area, and there's so much extremism, and you have like the radical trans rights activists and everything it it definitely impacts how people relate to that nuance in their own life and their ability to integrate that and if they can't integrate that they may not be able to feel those heavy emotions that are so important. I would completely agree with Stephanie that that's a necessary step in moving forward because if you have been wronged by something and you are unable to acknowledge it, there's this element of not being in touch with reality and not being fully connected with reality. And if you're not, then how do you move forward?
Stephanie Winn: If you're looking for a simple way to take better care of yourself, check out Organifi. I start every day with a glass of their original green juice powder mixed with water. It contains moringa, ashwagandha, chlorella, spirulina, matcha, wheatgrass, beets, turmeric, mint, lemon, and coconut water. 100% organic with no added sugar. It's the best tasting superfood supplement I've ever tried. It's super easy to make, and it makes me feel good. Organifi also makes several other delicious and nutritious superfood blends, such as red juice, immune support, protein powders, a golden milk mix, and even superfood hot cocoa. Check out the collection at Organifi.com slash Some Therapist. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com slash Some Therapist. And use code Some Therapist to take 20% off your order. Yeah, I think part of my concern is that on the one hand, I think it's so necessary, and I have very strong opinions about this myself as a person with my lived and professional experience. On the other hand, I think some people, depending on where they're at ideologically with regard to the process of detransitioning, that for me to press on that and say, well, I don't think it was your fault. I think doctors shouldn't have done that, even if he wanted them to do it. When I say that, it presses on a sensitive part of their internal structure that might be holding things together for them, even if that's sort of like an internalizing defense, right? It's all my fault. Because if there's someone who does have that different view, like, I'll give an example of something that was on my mind recently. You guys know Casey, the detransitioner. He just goes by Casey. I've been following her since the beginning, and she's gone through different stages with regard to things. And I was watching this YouTube video that she released recently. I was not at all expecting to hear my own name. So I'm listening to her YouTube video just like, oh, I wonder how Casey's doing. And then she said, Stephanie Lynn and Sasha Ayad. And I was like, what? And so what it was, was she was talking about the New York Times article that came out in February by Pamela Paul that Casey was in. And she described it as a mistake or as an error of some kind for the article to mention me, Sasha Ayad, therapy first. and the rabid onset gender dysphoria hypothesis. Like, she considered it a mistake. I'm just like, what? But she said something like, because I guess she has her issues with gender critical people. She said something like, gender ideology didn't make me trans. It's internalized homophobia that made me trans. And I just found myself thinking, I just have such a different perspective. Maybe it's partly because we're different generations as well as different lived experiences. But she grew up in a time where this stuff was available and it was part of the pop culture. To me, of course gender ideology had to be part of the picture, because there's no such concept as being born in the wrong body and needing to transition without gender ideology. But she's pushing back against the ways that she as a detransitioner feels exploited by the gender critical community. And I'm not going to personally take responsibility for that, but I see what she's talking about. And I see why a lot of detransitioners end up feeling that they're kind of used by everyone and that they have to just keep pushing everyone and everything away until they finally figure out who they are and how they feel. so that they don't feel like they're just being made a pawn of another social group with its own agenda. And I think that's a recurring issue that's going to, of course, affect trust in helpers and all kinds of issues.
Nicolas Blooms: I can understand where Casey is coming from. I feel like this sort of waves come and go. For me, when I detransitioned, I was in no place of blaming anybody. I almost saw it as a gift because I was like, okay universe, I can either keep being trans or I can detransition and I'm just gonna let life choose for me. I wasn't like stuck on one idea or not. So I wasn't really like, I didn't feel the need to really blame anyone until one day I woke up with so much anger. Anger towards my endocrinologist, anger towards Planned Parenthood for just allowing and I was just like, wow, where is this anger coming from? And just was like, I think certain things only come when you're ready to process. And I feel like that was the layer for me that needed to be seen. I feel like there's a lot of parts of us are women and their children that didn't get to express and fully feel. And I feel like that was mine was I have a huge component of anger that's still suppressed and shows up here and there. So I think that was what happened for me is anger needed to be seen at that moment because the more I ignored my emotions, the more I dissociated I became. So it's just like, why would I ignore anger? I feel like anger towards these people and experiences had to be seen and processed in order to be released. Because if I identify with the feeling of, oh, I'm angry at these people, these people are horrible, which To a degree, I feel like they are, but I didn't want to identify. I was just allowing it to process because ultimately I know that's not who I am. I'm not anger. I'm not an emotion. I think that's where this all started, was identifying with an emotion and embodying as trying to become a woman, which never will happen. So I think a lot of it has to do with layers and going through different emotions and really allowing yourself to feel. I think that's what this is all about is reconnecting with the body and how much can you allow yourself to feel and feel safe in that feeling so that the feeling can process because feelings are fast, they don't last. So that was my experience with, you know, if I were to help a de-transitioner be like, okay, let's see what's here. Let's get a little bit curious to this emotion. I don't think I'd necessarily press on a belief system. I feel like it'd be more of what shows up in the moment because I think my beliefs, my beliefs about gender identity doesn't matter to the person I'm helping. I'm just here to hold space. I'm here to guide. I'm here to, give them the tools I've used in order to help them. And I think that's what's ultimately important is allowing them to feel and process so that they don't no longer identify with that emotion and they can move on and live a healthier life.
Stephanie Winn: I think what I'm really doing is sort of revealing my personal biggest countertransference challenges, at least some of them, in working with this population, and probably naming that for any therapist who feels similarly to me. When someone is in that place where their current system of making meaning is, I did this to myself. And that belief is, on the one hand, protecting and helping them in some ways, and in other ways, maybe hurting them. That's a real challenge for me to not rush ahead and say, no one should have done this to you. You shouldn't have had the option to do this to yourself with the help of medical professionals. That's a real challenging point for me
Bob Withers: Yeah, no, I think that's an interesting point, isn't it? Because it's very easy to go in with this kind of protective role to be the rescuer and, you know, think of the poor detransitioner as being a victim or something like that. But behind your question as well is, what about the role of anger and how does a person who has dissociated from their anger actually safely get back in touch with their anger without being patronized by a therapist who says, of course, you must be angry. And I get stuck on that thing in the countertransference that you're talking about, Stephanie, which is that sometimes when I'm doing something of which I think is planned to help, I'm trying to help. perceived by some of these people with these issues as a persecutor. And that's very uncomfortable to sit with. But one thing that I have found that's quite helpful is to acknowledge that not only am I uncomfortable in that position, I'm sometimes pretty damn angry about it myself. And I think I have a tendency to think of myself as a good guy and a therapist and to dissociate from my anger. So if I can't acknowledge the anger that I experience when somebody it re-experiences me as some kind of persecutor, you know, maybe they had a violent father and they experienced my attempt to help, might have been too clumsy as a repeat of their traumatic relationship with their father or, you know, whatever and so on and so forth. If I can't sit with my own anger, then how can I help them to reintegrate their anger or to undo their dissociation? So sometimes the work is done in the therapist and that being able to sit with it and not say, for goodness sake, I'm here to try and help you, which is a reinforcement of dissociation, but to sit with it and to suffer being experienced as a persecutor or even an abuser for a while until it's the right time to give it back to the client in a form that they can integrate rather than feel overwhelmed by or feel that they have to deny and dissociate. So some of the work is done in the couch transference. So it's an opportunity as well as a discomfort is what I'm trying to say here, I think. Or it can be.
Stephanie Winn: Let me just say there's so many more things I would like to discuss with this group that are relevant to this topic. I mean, I have notes sitting here in front of me and things I wanted to raise with you or circle back to, but I'm aware of the time. And since we only have five more minutes, I want to use that time to just allow each person to share your whatever your last burning thoughts are that you'd like to get out of your system. So whatever is on your mind, whatever you want to say, let's go ahead and say it now before we close out and talk about where where people can find you.
Layton: We'll start with Layton. I feel like there were so many good things that were said in this conversation. And I just think the importance of letting someone be where they are, that's something that would have been really helpful in my own life and in my own recovery. Recognizing that if you are in a place of recovery, you only have to move as quickly as the slowest part of yourself. And if you are in a place of guiding someone else through their own recovery, that they may be moving as quickly as they have the capacity to move. And kind of maintaining that awareness, I feel like is really important and has been pretty foundational in my own life. What about you guys?
Nicolas Blooms: I would say what's important is if there are detransitioners that feel like they can't trust, you know, the therapy world, the doctor world, I feel like the best next option is someone like us, like Layton and I, I feel like having a mentorship experience with a detransitioner, we know the ins and outs and experiences of someone that is a detransitioner. Like we, I've dealt with internalized homophobia, homophobia that has push me to transition. I know the anger, the suffering that goes with hating gender ideology and disassociating with your body and becoming rooted into your body. I feel like I can offer a person to really believe in themselves that they can start healing again and start seeing life in a better way. So I feel like that would be such an important step for people is if you feel like you can't trust anybody else, well first trust yourself and then also trust these transitioners because we want to help. We understand you.
Bob Withers: Nicolas, you were saying before we started the recording that you're interested in the role of hope, which unfortunately has come down right to the last comment. But it gives me great hope to see you young people mentoring each other and offering each other the support that I think will get you, help you get through this extremely traumatic experience that you've had and that we haven't protected you from. And that's a terrible shame, I think, for our generation that we've actually encouraged you to go into some experimental treatment without proper protection, and then we've deserted you and we haven't given you the tools to handle it and to get through it. And we've let you down, and I don't blame you for not trusting us, but I am hopeful that you are managing to help yourselves and to organize to help others who've been through the sorts of experiences that you've been through. So it's been a real pleasure. to meet you and to have some of that encouraged. And my other hope, of course, is in a more general sense that as a culture we'll begin to collectively undo some of this quite damaging mind-body dissociation that I think has been the theme throughout our discussion tonight. And we are moving in that kind of direction, but it's against a lot of resistance and I'm sure there's a long way to go with that culturally and collectively, but it must give some hope to us to see that beginning to happen. So good luck going forward.
Stephanie Winn: Well, I thank you all so much for being here. I feel like a bittersweetness as we're wrapping up because I feel like in some ways this was just the beginning and there's so much more to explore with regard to this topic. And I know everyone's leaving with more to share, whether it's regarding hope or so many other things. So that being said, we'll wrap up and go around and just let people know where they can find you if you want people to find you.
Layton: You can find me on PsychicSomatic.com if you are interested in mentorship or working with me as a Somatic Coach. I also have free resources such as a Somatic Shadow Work Journal that you can download. I am on Twitter as Original Angel, but the L's are the number one instead.
Nicolas Blooms: So if you guys want to find me, you can find me on Linktree slash NicolasBlooms or on Instagram, NicholasBlooms. Feel free to DM me or send me an email, a message, anything like that at any time. I regularly respond to those messages because I am willing to help and guide. I've guided a bunch of de-transitioners to help them realize that de-transition is the right step for them. And if it's not, that's okay too. I just want to help. any way, shape, or form.
Bob Withers: Yeah, I'm on Twitter, or X as we have to call it now, and I think my handle is at bobwithers52. And if you wanted to contact me, I don't have a website, but you can contact me through the clinic that I work at in Brighton, which is a sort of community psychotherapy clinic and charity called The Rock Clinic. So you can get me at bob.withers at rockclinic.org.uk.
Layton: I also forgot to mention that I am also on YouTube as PsychicSomatics.
Stephanie Winn: Okay, great. Well, thank you all again so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure. I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit sometherapist.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at sometherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.