lostandconfused

Thank you all for the well thought out responses! I admit I was a little bit nervous posting about my experience but you have all been very kind and helpful. It makes me wish I had this sort of validation through my teen years as opposed to being validated into the completely incorrect identity.

And yes, you are exactly right when you say that people essentially gaslight you into believing these things...acting like you're lying to yourself or are just hiding in the closet about gender identity. It's extremely harmful to one's mental health and I hope that my experience can lead me to stop others from going down the same path. It's just impossible to talk about in this current age without being called out as hateful. I've picked up that maybe a lot of people on this forum are from EU so I don't know how bad it's gotten there, but in the USA people my age are extremely dogmatic about these things and speaking out on it can basically destroy your social life.

I will try to take your advice and be more careful about the circles I let myself enter and hopefully I can meet more LGB members who are on the same page. The idea of searching for a therapist makes me very nervous, as I already feel fragile as I am and worry that most of them will try to convince me of the same things I've been trying to break away from, but I will do my best to seek out one that definitely won't as I think professional help would do me good. Thank you all again.