A Phenomenological Study of the Experience of Gender Detransitioning

Abstract

This study has served to share the story of detransitioners, an underserved population, in their own words in order to bring understanding and awareness to their experience and to provide a basis for clinical protocols to serve their unique problems and needs. This study highlighted themes of the participants’ experience regarding the factors, motivations, and influences around their decisions to transition and detransition, the impact of the use or absence of medical intervention in transition, and the population’s problems and needs at the time of the interview. Particularly salient themes in the data centered around the participants’ reflection upon factors that precipitated their decision to transition which were not thoroughly explored by professionals as motivating factors with alternative possible treatment methods. Loneliness and alienation was another common theme, both prior to the transition and following the participants’ experience of detransition. The experience of participants in this study points to the need for an exploratory psychotherapy approach around issues or questions of gender and provides a basis for establishing protocols in providing therapeutic care to this unique population.