Thread by @mamabea99351914

Many requests came in for a thread that describes what triggered Filia's desistance. Before I can write that, though, I have to set the stage with our experience of toxic friendship.
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https://twitter.com/SashaLPC/status/1219753551859109889

Filia was a VERY spirited and sensitive little girl.  As a toddler she was bold and physical.  Like me, her face telegraphed everything. Her words described a very precocious sense of her own autonomy.  She needed more intentional lessons in her preschool years on managing

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emotions and impulsivity than her brother had.  By the time she started school, though, she was really good at interacting harmoniously with teachers and with students.  The first several elementary teachers all had very praiseworthy descriptions of her as a good student

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and a great friend - someone who had an ability and willingness to be a "bridge builder;" Fi would notice who was being left out and she would successfully draw them in to the social circles of her classes.  All of this was, of course, delightful to hear.  Fifth grade and

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the onset of puberty was the first year her confidence and outspokenness began to morph.  Anxiety symptoms and emotional outbursts began.  Trichitillomania (which my mother also has) went from something I tried to help her manage to the reason we found her a therapist. 

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Middle school began, and some behavior and mood changes began to manifest. At the time, all of it appeared very developmentally typical and I would have summed everything (but the trich) up as "awkwardness."  Fi herself seemed very acutely aware of "awkwardness;"

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it was a word she used frequently to describe social situations among her friends. She was still very gregarious, with a healthy circle of old and new friends.  GSA was launched at her school in the middle of 6th grade, and participating in those meetings connected her with

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other kids who were drawn to it. She said she wanted to participate as an "ally" because it was important to her that if kids felt they didn't have friends they would be supported in GSA.  This matched every teacher description of her school personality we'd ever heard, so

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it wasn't remotely surprising or concerning. GSA took shape as something that generated awareness campaigns and action plans that seemed to support the school's wider anti-bullying initiatives.  It seems discussing LGBTQ topics and GSA activities became part lunch period,

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and by the begining of 7th grade, two new friends had been added into the group that sat together for lunch.  When Fi first described them both to me, it was by their identifiers within the SOGI umbrella.  One girl was "pansexual," the other was "questioning...

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not sure but not straight." It may seem a bit reductive, but for simplicity and privacy I'm going to refer to them from here on out as P and Q.  Over the course of 7th grade, we had several opportunities to meet and interact with both new friends, they were very nice girls.
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P did show some signs of being anxious and negatively body conscious, and Q was impulsive and somewhat hyper in group settings.  P was preoccupied with performing femininity correctly and Q was notably GNC. But I didn't get any maternal "spidey senses"

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of particularly worrisome personality attributes from them or any of Fi's other friends. of particularly worrisome personality attributes from them or any of Fi's other friends. We hosted a slumber party for her 14th birthday and it seemed devoid of middle school drama.

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I didn't know that a few weeks prior to that party, Fi had initiated a secret social transition with her circle of lunch table friends. All of the party guests had switched (at school) to he/him/Felix.  All of them knew her family was in the dark.

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We learned, eventually (many weeks into therapy) that Q had "playfully" dubbed Fi with the masculine name back in 6th grade as part of an ongoing interaction where she'd notice and comment on Fi's mood.  Upbeat, good humored Fi, Fi exhibiting leadership was "Felix." 

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Upbeat, good humored Fi, Fi exhibiting leadership was "Felix."   This nickname game went on for the many months of GSA discussions and spending more and more time on her school laptop going down Youtube rabbit trails learning about gender dysphoria and transgenderism.

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Thus the idea coalesced that all negative emotional states were "Felia" - even in memories. All positive emotional states were (and surely had always been) "Felix." Felix was the non-dysphoric identity, the true masculine transgender self.

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Everyone in the friend group affirmed the trans ID except for one girl, a close friend of 5 years.  Fi described deterioration in their friendship, but did not disclose what had actually created the rift.  There were other aspects to her school life that Fi handled this way:
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telling part of an anecdote but either leaving out key information or fictionalizing her part in the narrative as another person.  After Fi came out and the phase I think of as "discovery" began, lots of journal entries and text conversations revealed that Fi and her friends
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(especially Q) thought we were extraordinarily dense not to pick up on the many signs she was trans, and Fi obviously didn't disclose that the fabricated quite a lot of what she told us about her inner and social life.  By the very end of 7th grade, Fi and Q became a couple.
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It was impossible to spend much time alone together at this age, so the change in status mainly played out in text conversations.  More text message evidence of co-dependency in the romantic relationship began to accrue as 8th grade began. The social circle was supportive of Fi,

but Q was intensely interested in every aspect of how Fi's life at home was unfolding.  Q would send links articles about how to get binders, Canadian laws to limit parental rights to support trans kids without affirming their trans identity, etc. Q would want descriptions
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of therapy sessions and remark "your parents are driving you to suicide."  They would exchange LGBTQ dysphoria artwork they collected from Pinterest.  Each month of that fall semester, it became clear that Q was using Fi as a trial balloon for how to express her own
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gender dysphoria. Q didn't tell her parents that Fi was her "boyfriend" or that she believed she was trans. Q took on an androgynous name in the social circle.  Q's haircut went to high & tight fade not long after Fi's pixie cut. At every stage of adjusting her self ID,
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we tracked conversations where Q planted seeds and encouraged action for Fi to carry out, then she'd study the fallout and adjust her own course to avoid pitfalls with her parents. We also observed many interactions where Fi would be drawn away from activities

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with family and friends to respond via text to Q having an emotional crisis.  All the while, we just watched.  We'd finally settled into the process with the new psychologist and we didn't want to alienate Fi.  We never objected to her romantic attachment to Q, and

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we didn't probe too much into the episodes of her getting bogged down in her role as emotional support companion.  We described everything to the professional and let her guide Fi through it. Therapy began to produce doubts in Fi about the Felix persona, and when she'd

express uncertainty to Q, she'd respond with effusive assurances that Fi was absolutely, definitely a boy. Clearly Fi relied on Q for explicit identity affirmation, and it seemed to us Q needed Fi to be male so she could avoid identifying as a lesbian. We didn't want to

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alienate our child, so there wasn't much else to be done... the "rules" of affirmation prescribed that we could not out Q to her parents, or Fi to her friends' parents, or anyone really.  Q's effect on Fi at school was not going unnoticed by the rest of Fi's friends, though,
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and Fi couldn't control her peers' response to being increasingly distressed by what they saw unfolding.  Three of them told their mothers.  Those mothers, my friends, each eventually broached Fi's trans ID with me.  That set in motion the swift unraveling

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of the net of ideology that had held Fi's critical thinking captive for over a year.  (a series of events that will be its own thread)

A year has passed now, and Fi is only very recently ready/willing/able to talk reflectively on what was going on with Q. 

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She is still her platonic friend, and has compassion for what Q is going through.  Fi believes that Q's dysphoria and manipulative behavior was triggered by traumatic family dynamics.  Someone else's story seems beyond the scope of what is appropriate for me to share here...
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but I did want to end this thread noting that Fi has grown in acceptance of what is good and what is hard about being female, and her core personality remains intact.  So far, it seems congruence between that personality and her female body is also intact as well.

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Her ability to empathize is a sharper than average double-edged sword.  She can see now that learning how best to wield it is going to be the work of a lifetime.

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Blerg. There are some major cut&paste mistakes around # 16.
Where it repeats it should say:

Whenever she seemed anxious, stressed, irritable - those were states Q attributed to Fi's given name.

@exitsign_