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By Rebecca, October 22, 2009 5:43 pm

I just got back from speaking to a class at Loyola in Chicago, and wanted to share some thoughts. (Hello to any of the members of the class who are now stopping by my blog! Y’all were awesome.) (Also, in the interest of full disclosure, saying I “just got back” is a slight exaggeration. I did just get back, but between speaking at the class and getting home I also stopped at H&M and DSW and, between them, spent $110. Consider yourself disclosed.)

The class was on social work in LGBT communities, and was made up of masters students looking to become therapists/social workers/etc. I’ll admit my ignorance here, in that I don’t know the technical difference between all those categories. The class has been talking all semester about what treating the LGBT population means, and the professor said he tries to bring in representatives from those communities – both individuals and therapists working within LGBT communities – to talk about their experiences. I was there because I’d been put in contact with the professor by my therapist, who has worked with him before.

Continue reading 'I’m an edjumacator'»

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By Rebecca, October 21, 2009 1:52 pm

This is an excerpt from the script I’m working on for Trans Form, which is going up this December. Enjoy!

I’m fourteen, sitting on the chair in my therapist’s office.

I started going to therapy by choice, because the year before, at thirteen, I still couldn’t get past the panic attacks and separation anxiety that had kept me from sleepovers and overnight school trips and sleep-away summer camp for as long as I could remember. The pattern was always the same: I would get excited about staying at a friends’ house, at an overnight event at the Museum of Science and Industry, at whatever. I would go, convincing myself that this time would be different, that this time I’d be able to make it all night.

But as we started to get ready for bed, the panic would creep up. For those of you who have had a panic attack before, you know how it feels. To everyone else, it was a very physical sensation, a creeping along my arms and legs to my core, to my center. My blood would start to rush, tears would inevitably spring to my eyes, and if I didn’t go home, if I didn’t get away from whatever mundane childhood experience was driving me to a panic, I’d go into fullblown hysterics.

Finally, the summer after seventh grade, when I’d missed most of the seventh grade weekend trip to Wisconsin because of a panic attack, I decided  I would go to the eighth grade trip to Washington DC. So I started seeing a therapist. We worked for months on controlled breathing, biofeedback techniques, ways to divert my focus from panicking.

But the trip to DC is in the past. (I made it, by the way, and haven’t had problems being away from home since.) Now, I’m fourteen, sitting in the chair at my therapist’s office, across from my parents, about to come out to them.

Continue reading 'Coming Out'»

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By Rebecca, June 17, 2008 4:11 am

Obviously, it’s not a contest. But damn if it doesn’t seem that way when she’s right and I’m wrong…

So the first one is about clothing, the most mundane (and yet oh-so-important) of things. L was saying I needed to just go to Target, where no one would care what I was looking at or trying on, and get something. I was whining and backpedaling and letting fear of embarasment keep me from doing it. See, among other things, I really don’t like to feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. And buying women’s clothing? I don’t know what I’m doing.

But I finally got up my courage and went to Target. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write…) After putting off the women’s clothing section by looking at all the cool Lego Star Wars toys and the GPS systems and the make-your-own-ice-cream things, I finally meandered slowly past the clothing section. I felt like a bad spy in a satire, where if no one notices the spy before they try to ‘sneak,’ everyone damn sure will after.

Then I lost my nerve and went next door to Office Max, hating myself all the way. Continue reading 'Therapist: 2 – Me: 0'»