Alexander Stefanini, a counselor, discusses coming out as transgender. He advises matching disclosure to your level of intimacy with someone, explains how hiding your identity creates isolation, and describes how secrecy can delay transition. Safety matters in deciding who to tell.
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Secondly, it's different for everybody, right? Like, so what I would say is if the amount of outness, in my opinion, in a healthy way, should correspond with the degree of intimacy with that person, right? Like, I'm not going to come out to my neighbor necessarily who I speak with once a month and know nothing about them. Why would I tell them that I'm trans, right? Uh, now in my case, I have some neighbors that found out because I, I did a, a local news like thing and said, now they know. And they came by and told me that they saw my interview. So I was like, okay, well, I guess now you know. But only I would never come out to them because I'm not friends with them. I really don't have a relationship with them. Whereas my, especially as a therapist walking with people on this journey a lot, I feel like when people really hide that from friends or even coworkers, maybe that they're close to or certain family members, I've noticed two things. One, it keeps you like isolated. At the end of the day, it does seem to isolate people and it makes it tough to just feel like you're really openly yourself. And there's something for human beings about honestly and authentically living as who they are. That's sort of just like an existential thing. I don't know that dogs feel that way, but we have this sort of need internally to be seen, right? We have these like mirror neurons. We really want to be seen. That's part of evolutionary, like being part of community.
Right?
So if you have a friend that you're getting to know and you feel like you're getting closer to them, like, can begin to consider coming out to them, right? But if it's somebody that you're just not ever going to have a close friendship with, then like, don't come out to them if you don't want to, right? Because it, it almost like doesn't make sense for the level of the relationship. The other thing I've noticed is that when people really don't come out and there's big areas of their life where they don't come, I've just noticed as a therapist that it seems to sort of stall, stall, or stymate their transitions. It's almost like they can't fully embrace who they are. There's part of them that is just like stuck. And obviously sometimes it's not safe to come out in certain places, so they have to do that. But it's just something I've noticed that I feel like it keeps people from really, really moving into the fullness of who they are.
That makes so much sense. The safety thing obviously is a
