I can’t say I’ve ever thought that way, but it’s probably mostly harmless if it helps in difficult times.

That said, reincarnation is not a guarantee, so in my opinion, try to learn to make the most of what you do have or can have now, it’s the only life you know you’ve got for sure, don’t lose sight of that on a dream that it might be better next time.

Or, as a bad analogy, don’t spend all your savings on lotto tickets, hoping you’ll win big one day, since it will probably never happen.

Also, hugs, and sorry to hear you’re struggling a bit right now, this stuff can be really hard, for sure.

Our therapist said that in general coping mechanisms are unhelpful in the long term and it is more useful to have coping strategies.

However, we understand, it’s hard being trans. We recommend seeking community and listening to some of their strategies, or merely just offloading emotions in places designed for that.

We do hope you will be okay and that you can find some solace that it does get easier, if not better.

Thank you for sharing this with us! You are amazingly brave and a hero to yourself! 🩷

It makes perfect sense to me, and I don’t even think it’s a trans specific phenomenon. Dreaming about becoming something that you otherwise know to be unachievable is normal for all humanity, if you ask me.

Now, to be trans specific: you are not at all alone in this. I’ve lost count of how many times I dreamt of being born a cis girl, with all that it entails. Sometimes, I don’t want to wake up from those dreams, because I know what awaits when I go back to reality. I keep dreaming about being reborn into the prettiest girl in the world, wearing the princessiest dresses, free from the toxic masculinity that is violence, rudeness, loudness, whathaveyou (this is what I was subjected to, sorry for the generalization).

I don’t know if I believe in anything after death. I don’t dare to believe. What if I’m wrong. But I do hope. Hope is everything, sometimes.

Regardless of what you can or cannot achieve, you are valid. Always. You are pretty. Always. Hug yourself. Goodnight. 🩷🩵🤍

I think that if you use this belief to be kind to yourself and others in order to score points for any potential do-over it could be relatively harmless. For what it’s worth in my experience life got a lot better once I hit my stride in my late 20s.

Much love I hope you feel better soon.

Ok. I’m going to post a link to something here. It’s from the old Trans Girl Diaries webcomic. Warning, it’s extremely triggering. I post this only as an example of how these thoughts you are having are not unique. Warning, depictions of suicide. This was made back in 2011.

https://imgur.com/a/c8MvnVR

(Sorry for the imgur link. Couldn’t figure out how to post an image with a spoiler tag.)

It’s definitely not stupid. It’s a nice hope to have. And no one knows what comes after so why not hold onto that if it’s something that helps you navigate this life in a positive manner. It’s literally not hurting anyone.

Personally, I don’t believe that anything comes after this life and that our consciousness is nothing more than an evolutionary trait that hominids developed to gain an advantage for survival. Therefore I have to keep my momentum going to make this life and whatever time so have left in it something that is worth enduring and enjoying. Grieving the life we didnt get to have when its appropriate, but recognizing that no one gets to have exactly the life that they want. At the same time, transitioning gives us an incredible opportunity to right some of those wrongs, perhaps more so than most cis-people get. In that way, I view transitioning, with all of its peaks and pitfalls, as an incredible gift. But I’ve also had an incredibly priveledged transition so I understand if other folks don’t view it that way.

I had a delusional dream of cloning a female version of me using my father’s X chromosome essentially just literally the female me. I was then going to use an array of gold nanowires implanted into both our brains from birth to allow our brains to act as one. Then when my body died I’d carry on in the body I was meant to have.

Realising that I’d never be able to fund such a project and that i would have to take the life of a newborn was difficult for me. Because im 90% sure it can be done. These thoughts were pretty frequent and occured when I was still an egg. I’ve since given up on that, but now I have a masters in a biomedical field.

I do not believe in another life or reincarnation, but to some extent (it is not a belief, nor a religion) I think we possibly live in a multi-verse, where all the potential outcomes exist, and our universe is just one of them.

While in the egg, i was telling myself that a cis (woman) of myself existed in such a universe, and I wished I could trade place…

In retrospect, I find hard to believe that I used all those small coping mechanisms but only realised later that I was a trans-woman… the mourning that took place later when I realised I was really a woman, just in the wrong body, was HARD.

I believe that one does not know what is in the great thereafter. But if there is something, I’ve always taken to liking reincarnation, and that I have been there as a cis gal multiple times as well. I know that whichever way fate leads, ours is now to make.

Personally, I’ve definitely grieved on this. I’ve wept many times at the fact that I can’t give my husband children. I think if I had been born cis, and we had somehow still met, we would probably be on kid 3 or 4 by now. I probably would have ended up going down the stay-at-home mom route.

Part of me wants to believe that it’s OK. I want to believe we’ve met each other in countless lifetimes and have had many families together, and will do so again in the future. We truly are soulmates. We’re that close. So it’s not hard to imagine. It makes the limitations of this life a bit more bearable if they’re merely a blip in a long history spanning across countless lifetimes. It’s not “we don’t get to have kids.” It’s “we don’t get to have kids this go around.”

I don’t know if I even believe in reincarnation, but the thought does help me sometimes.

my opinion is that at the very least, in your next life you’ll be able to start HRT earlier, so that’s probably just-as-good.

You’re not alone. I do this too, in a slightly different way. I’m too skeptical to be religious or believe in reincarnation, but if any religion were real, I’m drawn to Norse paganism, because some of the ordinary people who don’t die fighting or meet the conditions of other afterlives get to become spirits of the land they live on. The body and soul are separate things in that religion, so it’s said that your soul leaves and you take on a new form after death. And for me, that could be something like a cis body.

I don’t actually believe it, but I do hope I’m wrong about the nothingness of death. When things get really bad, I think a lot about haunting a forest I live near when I die, just existing invisibly, peacefully alone there and sometimes helping people who get lost. Life can be really awful sometimes and I’ve found myself thinking more about what comes next. It’s hard not to these days, with the absolute cosmic unfairness of our circumstances.

I don’t know if that’s healthy either, and my interest in Norse mythology definitely might be an outcropping of really, this is the only life I get? The one where no one understands my womanhood and I’m always under threat for it? I think right now it’s a fun hobby and comforting thoughts during hard times. I don’t see myself ever getting lost in those thoughts or, like, joining some sort of cult that tells me what I want to hear.

So I’m just trying to live my life while I have it. Most people won’t understand me, and peace isn’t something I’ll ever fully get in my lifetime. But I make my own peace in nature hiking in forests, spending time with my wife, living authentically, and anything else that helps me find happiness before I die.

Does anyone else tell themselves that they’ll be born cis in the “next life”?