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aspergers and gender dysmorphia

markjulips

Hi - I have a 31year old son whom I think may have a mild form Aspergers but has never been diagnosed as it never entered our heads before my neice started having "problems" with her young son and he was diagnosed with autism (which made us do a lot of reading and research with her).  My son has an extremely high IQ and always been good at mathematics and computer programming and has always had obsessions in the past which have always fizzled out when he finds another.  He finds it extremely difficult to make friends, keep a job and has always had relationships with girls but when they end he gets depressed and suicidal.

Last year he revealed he has gender dysmorphia since having counselling sessions after when a psychologist suggested his failed relationships could be because he feels uncomfortable in his male role and I am concerned that this may be yet another obsession which will be irreversible if he does become a woman.  He has now been gioven the go-ahead to take hormones after 4 hours of specialist couselling and 1 seesion with a specialist psychiatrist.

Have any other parents been through this sort of thing or do they think I am just clutching at straws and just watch him go ahead?

Parents
  • Former Member
    Former Member

    It's a difficult thing to explain really: I've always seen them as two entirely separate things, and fixing one of those things has fixed it, and the thing that I didn't fix remains unfixed.  Although there seems to be a significant overlap between people with gender dysphoria and those with ASD, I think there's always a bit of a risk of assuming a cause and effect between them; both may be effects of third external cause, a currently favoured one for transsexualism being fluctuating hormone levels during foetal development.

    What I can say is that I knew my gender issues were a definite problem in themselves, and weren't a random attempt to fix my underlying dysphoria: it's possible to have multiple, er, dysphoriae(?) and still be able to recognise them as distinct things.

    As for how one knows, that's a difficult one to explain: it's like trying to describe a colour or a smell to someone who's never experienced either.  Ultimately, it just is.  It was broken, now it's fixed.

    I'm not sure about the suicide risk being possibly related to ASD: I don't know what the rates of ASD are amongst transsexual people, only that it's "significant", but I suspect not enough to account for the attempted suicide rate of ~45% amongst untreated transsexuals.  AFAIK it's simply a case of profound misery caused by living in the "wrong body".

    Edit: I'm having to fill in a lot of Captchas all of a sudden.  It's getting quite annoying. :/

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  • Former Member
    Former Member

    It's a difficult thing to explain really: I've always seen them as two entirely separate things, and fixing one of those things has fixed it, and the thing that I didn't fix remains unfixed.  Although there seems to be a significant overlap between people with gender dysphoria and those with ASD, I think there's always a bit of a risk of assuming a cause and effect between them; both may be effects of third external cause, a currently favoured one for transsexualism being fluctuating hormone levels during foetal development.

    What I can say is that I knew my gender issues were a definite problem in themselves, and weren't a random attempt to fix my underlying dysphoria: it's possible to have multiple, er, dysphoriae(?) and still be able to recognise them as distinct things.

    As for how one knows, that's a difficult one to explain: it's like trying to describe a colour or a smell to someone who's never experienced either.  Ultimately, it just is.  It was broken, now it's fixed.

    I'm not sure about the suicide risk being possibly related to ASD: I don't know what the rates of ASD are amongst transsexual people, only that it's "significant", but I suspect not enough to account for the attempted suicide rate of ~45% amongst untreated transsexuals.  AFAIK it's simply a case of profound misery caused by living in the "wrong body".

    Edit: I'm having to fill in a lot of Captchas all of a sudden.  It's getting quite annoying. :/

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