What saved me was not affirmation of untruth but affirmation of reality.
Today, I spend my time taking my children ice skating, walking them through the park, and making art — painting, embroidery, anything that feels grounded and real. But a decade ago, I could not have imagined this life. Sexually assaulted at a young age and growing up in an alcoholic home, my childhood was anything but stable. In that vulnerable state, as a pubescent girl, I was conned into believing that altering my body would fix my trauma.
Searching for any sort of relief, I found a community online among people who called themselves transgender. They were hurting too; it appeared obvious as I scrolled through chat rooms and posts about their traumatic backgrounds. It made me feel seen, heard, and validated. In that shared suffering, I felt understood for the first time.
That virtual reality slowly seeped into my everyday life. I started to believe my distress was not the result of trauma or chaos in my life, but that I had been born in the wrong body. I believed I was a man trapped in a female body. I believed surgery and hormones were not options; they were necessities.
When I brought these convictions to trusted adults, I expected questions. But instead of being given rational guidance from the doctors, I was affirmed in my delusions and, at just 17 years old, prescribed high doses of testosterone.
These hormonal injections only made my actions more erratic, intensifying the feelings I had prior to any medical transition. My emotions became more volatile. My self-harm escalated. My father would have me chop wood outside to burn off some of the aggression that seemed to be flooding my system. Despite the worsening symptoms, no one paused the cocktail of drugs they prescribed me. No one slowed it down. The recommendation moved forward: surgery. I had my healthy breasts removed because I believed I was broken and that more medical procedures could fix me.
Today, I live with the permanent consequences of those decisions. My endocrine system no longer regulates itself naturally. I am missing parts of my body that once functioned exactly as they were designed to. And what I have had to confront is not only the physical loss but the psychological reckoning.
Affirming a delusional belief does not make that belief true. If someone suffers from schizophrenia or hallucinations, confirming what they’re “seeing” or “hearing” doesn’t help them find reality. Similarly, when someone is suffering from trauma, reinforcing a narrative that their body is the problem can lock them into that story and prevent deeper healing. For me, affirmation did not resolve my pain; affirmation only intensified it by adding layers of trauma that I now have to work through for the rest of my life.
The uncomfortable reality is that when someone realizes they have permanently altered their body based on a belief that no longer appears true, the psychological fallout can be devastating. The shame, the grief, and the sense of betrayal from institutions meant to protect vulnerable individuals can feel unbearable. Most people — let alone people with severe mental health issues — can’t handle something so world-shattering, hence the staggering trans suicide rates and violence.
During President Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, the nation was introduced to Sage, a detransitioner from Virginia whose school counselors and teachers concealed her gender identity from her grandmother, who was her legal guardian. Like many other children struggling with their identity, she had been hospitalized for severe depression, hearing voices, and self-harm.
While she was socially transitioned at school, her counselors allowed her to use the boys’ restroom. She began to get bullied and was threatened with sexual assault by the boys in her school. The adults entrusted with her care continued to keep this bullying a secret from her guardians. Eventually, Sage ended up on the same sites that many depressed and confused teens find themselves. After struggling for so long, she ultimately had a psychotic break and decided to run away, where she was allegedly trafficked across multiple states and repeatedly raped. Her experience is a heartbreaking yet familiar storyline in the detransitioner world.
I say this with compassion: I know what it is like to build your entire identity around an idea that begins to crumble. I know how destabilizing that feels. Trans-identifying individuals are not my enemies. Many are deeply hurting. Many have trauma histories like mine. Many have been promised that medical transition would resolve suffering. When violence happens, it is not born from nowhere. It grows in a culture that has told vulnerable people that their survival depends on an identity being affirmed at all costs.
We should be asking better questions. We should be slowing down. We should be treating trauma with trauma-informed care — not with scalpels and cross-sex hormones.
When I realized I had been harmed, I was still suicidal. Accepting that I had never truly changed sexes and had instead damaged my perfectly healthy body was crushing. But what saved me was not affirmation of untruth but affirmation of reality. It was honest, ethical, evidence-based mental health care that addressed the root of my pain.
If we truly care about preventing violence, both against oneself and others, we must build systems that ground people in reality rather than isolating them inside identity narratives that cannot withstand scrutiny. Compassion requires courage, and healing requires acceptance of the truth. Vulnerable people deserve both.
