Jay

I think I was 19 when I first started taking antidepressants. And I was put on them after just one appointment with my GP. I think, at the time, I just wanted a quick fix, which it wasn’t that. But I wasn’t even offered counselling or anything which really, I should have been. I then, years later, my parents paid for me to see a private counsellor and so that was because the waiting list for the NHS was at least six months at the time. And I’d been on about five different medications that weren’t working for me whatsoever. And then, this year was when I did the group therapy that was through the NHS. I was only on the waiting list for about two or three months, I think and that was an eight-week course. And I mentioned that I came off my antidepressants didn’t I. That was because I went to see my doctor and I was saying to her that they weren’t working for me and that I was feeling really anxious and she just said to me, well, if I was you, I would feel anxious too, if you can understand [Laughs]. And I was a bit like, well, that was rude. But at the same time, it made sense, because I’m like, a pill isn’t gonna fix my social anxiety when it is situational. I think that’s a big thing. A lot of time your kind of rushed through the system. Especially when it comes to medication when for me it definitely wasn’t the right thing.

I went to group therapy for social anxiety actually and that has helped quite a bit. It just, it’s helped me realise that I’m like my own biggest bully all the time and that it’s something that I really need to work on. That’s why I say, it’s not really other people that have given me any cause for concern, it’s just me.

I mean, group therapy for social anxiety is like that’s a scary thing to do. I think most people didn’t even turn up [Laughs]. I don’t know how much the content of the course itself helped. It was CBT. A lot of the stuff like, I didn’t really find that helpful. I probably won’t use. But it was more just going there, every day put me in the position that I was able to think things through for myself, I guess. And realise what was going wrong, I suppose.

I think it was in September that I first went to see the GP and to be honest she was very supportive and understanding. Straight away she filled out the referral form for me to go to the gender clinic. didn’t really ask many questions or anything. It was me that said to her, I know how long the wait is there anything we can do about bridging hormones and she actually said, yeah, let’s do that. She sent me away for tests. I had a blood test and I had an ultrasound and then later my next appointment with her was when she told me about their new policy and everything that they’d made. So, she just said, there’s nothing really that I can do. And I’m not in the position to see a private doctor or anything. Basically, I knew that I would just have to do it myself, I guess because of the way that it was affecting my mental health, I just couldn’t really face it, the wait. it’s a long time. it’s a really long time, especially when it effects, for me I felt like it was affecting every aspect of my life. But after I got the hormones, I went back to the GP and I told her that I was self-medicating and she was really good about that. She had a look at what I was taking and I’m now getting blood tests every six months with them so they can keep an eye on it.

A lot of it was just me reading through whatever medical journals I could find, online. The most useful stuff that I found was other people’s first hand experiences. More so than anything on the NHS website or anything that I heard from a doctor was just, you know, reading what other people had to say and what it’s like to be on hormones, physically and mentally, that sort of thing. That was helpful for me because, you know, no doctor has really known a lot about it that I’ve ever seen. Yeah, I think that the biggest and best resource out there is just other people at the moment.

I think it kind of just gives you a window in rather than reading something that is a medical journal and its very sort of scientific and impersonal. If you can actually read what other people have to say, it really helps you understand and know what to expect, really. Yeah, I think a lot of the actual medical stuff is just very vague and impersonal. it’s quite often hard to use as a resource.