I'm new here, but I know that many have been down this road before. I'm fairly young, a college student, and so I've had therapists dismiss my claims. Suggest that there obviously must be other factors at work. I would like there to be, because I'll admit it. I'm scared. I won't claim yet to know, but I see and hear about how you have to deal with people every day, and I don't know if my anxiety will let me transition. I've lived my first two decades of life as a woman, but not really, as I think of it. Ever since I was a kid, I would do anything in my power to wear clothes from the boys' section. My dad was really supportive, but if my stepmom at the time ever made me wear a dress, I would leave for school early and ride my skateboard over to my friend's house to ask him to borrow clothes. Recently, I had it brought to my attention that I could be trans. I kind of dismissed it, but I let it rattle around in my head for a while. I did some research, and it felt good. I felt like for once in my life, I could physically picture myself, without wanting to suffer an anxiety attack. When I look in the mirror now, I feel...disconnected. I don't hate my body. As a body, I think it's a swell one. I just don't feel as though it belongs to me. I always feel like I'm intruding on somebody else's privacy. Usually, I present pretty androgynously — I have a large chest, and I have never felt comfortable wearing anything but a bra that would bind them closer. I primarily only own men's tee shirts, and have rather large feet for a woman, and so no one batted an eye when I wanted to buy men's shoes. If I let my hair grow out, I would start to have regular anxiety attacks, and I always thought that it was so silly to let something like hair cause me to have a meltdown. I tried to present as a woman yesterday when I went out music and art supply shopping for the day, and the choruses of "miss" nearly sent me off the edge. I was at store that I frequent all the time, and a worker who I always talk to seemed very surprised to see me dressed in such a way. But even before that, I felt like random patrons who had no idea who I was thought that I looked so silly. I felt like a little kid playing dress-up. I introduced myself to someone online as male for the first time the other day, and it was exhilarating. I finally felt as though things made sense. But part of me feels like this is the way I was meant to be, or something. My boyfriend of the past 5 years has expressed his support; he's pansexual and said that he would never do anything that he thought would impede my happiness. But he grew up in rural Wisconsin, and unsurprisingly, his family aren't the most accepting people about these sorts of things. He says that he could deal with it, that his parents and brother could make the decision to never talk to him again, and he'd be fine. I don't know...I am just so afraid of people not accepting me. People who have started their transitions or reached acceptance in any way, please — do you think that I'm trans? I feel like because I don't hate my body, perhaps I'm just trying to disassociate from myself, because I just...don't feel like I'm in my body. It's a weird thing to explain, and maybe it's linked to my other psychological issues, more than this.