Transgender teenager suffered being ‘in the wrong body’

Transgender teenager Eli struggles to describe how it feels to be ‘in the wrong body’ because – despite commencing medical transition – he is yet to know how it feels to be in the right body.

Transgender teenager Eli struggles to describe how it feels to be “in the wrong body” because – despite commencing medical transition – he is yet to know how it feels to be in the right body.

The 15-year-old began his social transition from female to male about three years ago, now having attending 2½ years of regular appointments at the Queensland Children's Gender Clinic.

He describes his mental anguish before he came out – which his mum Dana said saw her bubbly and outgoing child become withdrawn and constantly in his room – as an “out-of-body” experience. He was engaging in anxious and minor self-harm behaviours like pulling out his hair and picking at his skin.

“It’s a really weird feeling to have someone call you something that you’re not. It’s like an out-of-body experience. It’s like you’re living someone else’s life, which can lead to a lot of mental health problems just because you lose your sense of identity. You never really knew who you were in the first place, and you’re … discovering who you actually are,” he said.

A teenager suffered mental anguish before coming out to his parents about the “out-of-body experience” from being a boy in a girl’s body. Picture: iStock

Eli is one of thousands of teenagers whose parents have supported their transition to the opposite sex, in line with the advice of psychologists and doctors who stress the importance of affirming a gender questioning child’s perceived gender.

Growing evidence from around the world, particularly in light of the shutdown of London’s Tavistock Clinic, is casting doubt on whether the affirmative approach has gone too far. But for Eli’s mother Dana, it seemed clear that her child was happier as a boy. One day when the pair were out together, he was mistaken for a boy, and he completely lit up.

When she asked him about it directly, he said “I think I would want to be a boy”.

In the background he had been doing research online. He read news articles, watched YouTube videos and visited online forums.

Dana was in little doubt, especially given Eli’s mental health decline, that transition was the right thing, and was quick to get an appointment at the gender clinic.

“A lot of parents say, ‘is it a phase?’ And I said, ‘well, if it’s not a phase, I’d rather have a living son than a dead daughter with the suicide rates you see with these children’. It’s still the same child … it’s just his body is different.”

Eli said once he came out as transgender, and people started to see him how he saw himself, it got a little easier.

“Having people that are willing to support you through that and kind of see you – it’s good.

“It was pretty rocky before in terms of my mental health … But I think it’s definitely better now”.

But as Eli has found, transition is not an instant fix. He feels in some ways, more dysphoric now in his chosen body.

“Before you come out, it’s sort of easier in a way because you’re dealing with being in a body that’s not yours but at the same time, you don’t have to worry about how other people see and treat you,” Eli says. “Because people treat you very differently when you’re transgender. They just do.

“I don’t know if it makes sense to say that you get more dysphoric presenting as masculine because at that point, it’s not people seeing you as a girl and you know you aren’t a girl … But when you’re presenting as masculine, and you’re a trans guy, people see you as ‘not a dude’. You always know people aren’t going to see you the way they do cis men.”

Dana explains: "When they transition socially, they then find their body doesn’t match up to how they’re presenting in public and they want their body to match and it doesn’t happen fast enough."

She says she still needs to manage Eli’s mental health issues as he fully comes into his body. But last week, when he had his first shot of testosterone, she said he was “the happiest he’s been”.