Regular Therapy Sessions as a Prerequisite for Puberty Blockers

Getting the medical certificate for the school so that they would use my transgender son’s new name and pronouns was only the first of many milestones on a long and bumpy road. Finn also wanted to take testosterone later. The usual process was to take puberty blockers before testosterone. But to get puberty blockers, Finn had to take more psychotherapy sessions.

But to whom should we go? Ms. White who had given him the medical certificate for the school was fully booked. And she was a bit far away. Wasn’t there another therapist here who was willing to accept Finn?

We called Ms. Rose (*not her real name). She was in a nearby town where Finn could go by bike on his own. While she had initially refused to carry the responsibility of giving Finn the medical certificate for the school because she had no experience with trans clients, she was willing to have therapy sessions with him and deal with more general questions like how to deal with bullying or resistance by society. So, Finn had seventeen sessions with her. Five initial probatory sessions plus twelve regular ones. One session every other week.

She would also write a certificate or statement at the end that Finn had completed the seventeen sessions and that he constantly stated that he was a boy. It was important to have this certificate for the next psychiatrist who would then be able to prescribe puberty blockers.

We were grateful that Ms. Rose was willing to accept Finn. However, for Finn, the sessions were a burden. Even though I had told Ms. Rose that she should not try to dissuade or “cure” Finn from being trans, she kept asking him questions that suggested that he should reconsider being trans. He liked ballet, singing, drawing, and baking. But Ms. Rose said usually, boys liked soccer and technical stuff. So, maybe he wasn’t really a boy because he had the wrong hobbies. He should think again. And she must be right. She had studied psychology. And her books at university said boys had different interests than girls. Her authority was beyond question, and she must be right. Period.

After every session with Ms. Rose, I recall that Finn came home and needed to vent. I felt sorry for him, but what could we do about it? Later, we would need the record of these seventeen therapy sessions to get the puberty blockers. And after the experience with the other therapist Ms. Brown who had canceled the therapy because Finn appeared uncooperative, he knew that he should better play along and express his upset not too bluntly this time. He didn’t want to risk another aborted therapy.

I got the impression that—at least in Finn’s case–the issue with being trans was not bullying by peers but rather burnout and upset from too many mandatory therapy sessions with uninformed and opinionated therapists. It was a burden for Finn having to constantly justify and defend why he felt he was a boy. And having to shut up and suppress his upset about this situation was an additional burden.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.