Gender Affirming Care

What is Gender Affirming Care?

Gender affirming care (GAC) is an umbrella term to describe any kind of approach that helps someone feel affirmed in their gender identity. I like to think GAC is for everyone, not just trans people. Even people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth do things every day to feel affirmed in their gender, it just goes unnoticed because it fits in with social norms. For example, women shaving their legs to be perceived as different from men. It’s perfectly natural to have body hair as a woman, no matter your sex, and yet in our culture to have body hair is more often seen as masculine.

GAC is also completely subjective from person to person because, for example, someone may be assigned male at birth (AMAB), but identify as a woman, and yet for her, being affirmed in her gender, may not mean keeping up with present day gender norms. For this example, this person may like punk, queer expressions of feminitiy for how she wants to express her gender identity, and that may include hairy legs.

So, gender affirming care is really about accessing and acting on self expression of your gender identity. It’s subjective to what that means for each person. The most involved interventions are medical options like surgery to change sex organs or hormone therapy. And again, people who aren’t trans also do this.

This is why I love working with people of all gender identities and experiences, trans or cis. Whether you’re someone going through a mastectomy because of breast cancer or a trans person firuguring out who you want to be versus how other people perceive you —we are all going through a life time of gender exploration of what it means to be a woman or man, some more than others.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with GAC

I like using ACT for folks exploring their gender because of it’s focus on values based living. By defining what it is we value in being a woman or man, or neither, we can better move towards how it is we want to be. Values based living is also great because it’s very focused on the journey versus the outcome. We can live by our values without having to get to our end goal. It’s what makes the imbetween stages of life meaningful, when most of our life is spent in a state of inbetween our goals.

When it comes to enjoying our bodies, it’s important we start to practise some relationship that isn’t just critical before we get to our outcome goals. Otherwise, we run the risk of never feeling at home within ourselves. If we don’t know what it’s like to appreciate our bodies because our outside doesn’t feel like home, our inside experience can start to feel unfamiliar and not welcoming either. Sometimes, we make a lot of changes to their exterior, but struggle to appreciate or find familiarity afterwards because we’ve spent so much time in the habit of seeing what we don’t like.

I’m not suggesting the pursuit of body transformations is futile. Many people that I know who go through body transformations find it to bring down gender dysphoria, and statistically this is the case with less than 1% of people detransitioning. More so, what I tend to explore with folks is appreciation for neutral body parts like our lungs that help us breath. Or, strating to reframe and notice one’s self within the gender identity that they wish they saw more on the outside, with inspiration from people within the gender identity that they hold. Such as, who are figures you appreciate not for what they look like but who they are, and how do they explify how you want to be in your own gender identity. I also explore with folks what experiences within their body can be still experienced as aligned with their gender identity. I’m someone who identifies as bi-gender and over time different parts of myself that would be seen as feminine to others, feels more masculine to me and vice versa. There is playfulness in exploring what is masculine versus feminine or androgynous or neutral.

Overall, what I use as a guide with folks is not so much an emphasis on gender dysphoria but gender euphoria, and where we can build out more and more of that to be our northern start we’re moving towards, with consideration for your wants, needs, and safety.

If you’re looking to explore gender identity further or have gone through a major transition in your life that has reshared how you see yourself in your gender identity, please feel free to reach out for a free consultation here.