So the big question I'd have to ask here is which country you're in, because the waiting times for the specialists in trans healthcare to contact you varies a lot depending on the country. The coping strategies you'll need if the wait is a couple of months are going to be very different to the ones needed for a wait of 5+ years.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Canada. In an area where there are no informed consent clinics too.
I imagine someone from Canada can give you a better idea of how long waiting times are there - I'm not in Canada myself so I can help you there.
If it turns out to be a longer wait, of more than a few months, I'd highly recommend looking into some talking therapy. Most trans people will say you need a specialist in trans therapy in order to benefit from it, but I disagree. A therapist doesn't need to be an expert in trans stuff to be capable of empathy - you don't need someone to affirm the fact that you're trans, because you know who you are. Find someone who will listen to you and help you explore your emotions in your own way, wherever they take you, which may well branch out into other aspects of your life. When I was waiting to get HRT (which turned out to be about 6 months for me), having a therapist to talk to - just talk to, not to prescribe medication or try to "fix" me - was hugely helpful when it came to coping with the fact that all I could do was wait.
Knowing the current state of our healthcare (the conservative party in charge of our province have been underfunding and passively sabotaging it for years in favour of replacing it with private practices), the wait times for many therapists are going to be similar if not longer. But I’ll keep it in mind. My family is supportive, and my cousin is a transwoman, so maybe I can talk with her.
Call you GP and make sure they actually sent the referral and get the specialist's information. It would in no way shock me if the referral was never sent, not out of malice, but out of incompetence or overwork.
Depending on your province, there may be one or two clinics seeing all the trans people, and there's nothing stopping you from phoning them and trying to self-refer--the worst that can happen is they'll say no, and even if they do, you can go back to your GP and say "refer me to these people please".
These are good ideas, thank you 💜
I'm so sorry you're going through that. I wish informed consent was a thing everywhere for that reason.
I'm FTM so my experiences are a little different, but sometimes when I get dysphoric, I try to do things that normally give me euphoria. For me, that's cutting my nails, listening to dad-rock, or trying to fix something. Typical man things. I don't know what might give you euphoria, but maybe try to think about stuff that reinforces your gender to yourself, and try to do those things when you feel the dysphoria coming along.
To add onto this, I found fragrance to be a powerful distractor for my brain on the dysphoria train.
i don't know a whole lot about your situation, but it seems like you don't feel like you have a pulse on the process. so you might push your gp about it, ask when to check back, what to do if the specialist doesn't get back to them, etc
for managing your dysphoria otherwise, i've always felt like the worst of it tends to come from the lack of belief that you are your true gender. so i would recommend some affirmations and reading feminist literature. things like internalizing that your femininity isn't defined by "looking like a woman" and similar things
if you feel the wait time gets really bad, you could look into DIYing it. i would recommend taking quite a bit of time to learn and get comfortable with the terms, dosages, testing, etc. it's a lot of boring, clinical reading. and not something i would recommend as a first step, either. if you do, you're obviously taking your health into your own hands
Checking in with the GP had crossed my mind too, so it might be worth a shot to at least put some pressure on the situation, or possibly get the contact info I need to follow up with the specialist. There’s nothing preventing my GP from prescribing HRT beyond her own discomfort and ignorance with trans healthcare. But given GPs already prescribe hormones to cis folks, you’d think they’d be able to figure it out. It’s not like we’re a different species. I just want to make sure I have some sort of medical expert in my corner to avoid potential unwanted health complications.