This is hugely important to me as I’m a therapist in an LGBT setting (have been for years) and I’m being requested to see younger and younger kids (as an example a 13yr old the other day) who are very confused and feeling like they’re ‘in the wrong body’ etc, 99% are gay.
The increase is not coincidental, and all of these kids (roughly 12/13 to around 17) are constantly online. They’ve been taught that if they feel it or suspect it, it just be so.
I have to be very careful not to lose my job and feel like I can do some good actually by keeping quiet and trying to develop a relationship with these younger clients and encourage them to really listen to their own voice. And if I can, to try to open them up to the idea that so much changes at this age and you just don’t know who the hell you are till you’re a bit older.
There’s no *way* this amount of young people can be trans, and the ones who I’ve either kept seeing past their 18th and 19th etc haven’t been, they’ve been gay in the majority of cases.
If they get steered to the wrong place/person in such a state of confusion and vulnerability, I dread to think if the possible long lasting consequences.
Psychotherapist, Ireland
The Gender Dissidents Survey 