Penny Sterling

“Protect my mental health? My mental health protects ME…Telling my story in a way that helps others understand what life is like for a transgender person is very helpful in my self-care.”

NAMI: Have you ever had any mental health struggles? Do you live with a diagnosis? What has your experience been?

PS: Hoo boy. Asking a trans person if they have mental health struggles is like asking a cis person if they have socks. The answer is the same: Yes, and for as long as I can remember, why would you think otherwise? And in addition to being a deeply-hidden trans, I was an abused & isolated child. According to my shrink's notes, I have a recurrent major depressive disorder, along with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder). Actually I should say "former shrink" since I no longer see her because my insurance has been maxxed out. My experience is that I am depressed and anxious. But, seeing as how I am an incredibly underemployed 62-year-old transgender woman, if I wasn't depressed and anxious, I'd be delusional, since being 62 and transgender makes me pretty much unhirable, which sucks, and makes me wonder how I'm gonna pay the bills a lot. I'm now seeing jobs get posted that I've applied to more than once in the past. I'm lapping unemployment.

NAMI: How have you healed and grown from your experiences? If you consider yourself in recovery from something, what does recovery mean to you?

PS: I'm not sure "healing" is a word I would use. Actually, I'm hella uncomfortable with it. It implies there's something to be healed from, or that there's something wrong with me. Everything that fits under the "struggles" umbrella is due to factors beyond my control: Abuse and bias especially. I had struggles because I needed to struggle to survive, and it took me decades of work on myself (not to HEAL, but to systemically reject the stories about me created by other people) before I could finally admit who I was. I'm still working on it, and don't see that ending. Does this mean I will never be healed? I don't like that thought. As far as recovery, I'm in recovery from pretending to be a man, in the worst, most toxic sense possible, because that's how I lived for the first two decades of my adult life. I lived that way because I believed that if I started to allow gentleness and emotion into my life, I would eventually transition, and that's what I absolutely did not want to do. By the way, that's what absolutely did happen. When I started eliminating the "toxic" in toxic masculinity, the facade of maleness crumbled.

NAMI: How do you protect your mental health? What forms of self-care do you practice? What keeps you balanced?

PS: Easy questions. Here's my answers: 

• I don't.

• Nothing.

• I'm not. 

Or maybe I am and just don't know it. I've been staring at this question for two days now and I'm flummoxed as to how to answer it. Maybe the question is framed in an unfamiliar way Or maybe it's just that I've internalized the therapy & program work I've done enough that I take care of myself more or less instinctively.

Naah. Protect my mental health? My mental health protects ME. As for self-care: after transitioning, I wrote a show (Spy in the House of Men) about my life, as a response to all of the questions I was asked by friends & family who had known me for decades and were completely caught off guard by what, for them, was a sudden, inexplicable change. So I explicted, and the result of the explicking was my first show. I thought it was gonna be a "one and done" thing, but I keep performing it and people keep telling me to perform it more. I just got back from Columbus, where I did my show, for a national association of psychotherapists' convention. Telling my story in a way that helps others understand what life is like for a transgender person is very helpful in my self-care.  

NAMI: What forms of mental health-related stigma have you observed or run into personally? How do you combat stigma?

PS: I've done enough therapy and recovery work that I've pretty much eliminated or at least drastically minimized my contact with toxic people in my sphere. And the few people who remain I know not to talk much about real things with, specifically to preserve my mental health. Also, the people who would try to stigmatize me for my mental-health advocacy are usually too busy being transmisic, so. And I combat stigma by talking about mental health issues.

NAMI: Do you feel like you have enough support or is it challenging to find accessible and affordable treatment/therapy, etc.?

PS: I did while I was in Columbus! Sitting around having a cocktail and a nosh with a roomful of shrinks is a great way to feel supported. It was also cool when I had an issue with a family member not respecting boundaries that I could hash out my feelings with someone who knew how to listen (and we both made sure that we both knew this was just two new friends talking over a difficult subject, and not a therapy session). That's where I get my support now. My health insurance has very limited support for mental health therapy, and I wrang every dollar out of it that I could. But it ended, and even using a sliding scale, I can no longer afford therapy. So yes, it is currently impossible for me to find affordable treatment, which will be an issue when I go to get gender-confirming facial feminization surgery next year, because there will most likely be a gatekeeping element to it that will require me to have a therapist write a letter that states I'm an adult who is perfectly capable of making decisions about my body. Did that last sentence come off as sarcastic and maybe a little bit bitter? Good. I meant to do that.