A friend once noted the importance of making affirmations in order to overcome crossdressing. His point was to make declarations about yourself and to yourself. I don’t believe we can change reality only by our thoughts. I would not tell myself an affirmation about myself that I know is false, just because I think the affirmation will start making it become true. So I would not say to myself, “you don’t desire crossdressing” if I did in fact desire it. But I think he still has a good point which is that true affirmations or reminders about what we want for our lives are very powerful in our struggle with crossdressing addiction.
Speaking truth to yourself is biblical. For example I think of Psalm 42:5 –
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
I believe we have to be careful with our thoughts so we don’t make stupid rationalizations and do things we will regret later. But we also don’t want to repress our thoughts or we just make them more powerful. So the first step is to be honest to yourself about what you are feeling. “Yes, I do have some desire to crossdress right now.” “I really have a strong desire to put on high heels.” “I’d really love to see my face beautifully made up like a woman today.” “I really want to read that story about the boy who has to wear girls’ clothes because he lost his luggage.” Don’t dwell long in these thoughts or you will get more enticed. Just acknowledge them very briefly and then quickly move to the more important affirmations or declarations. Tell yourself the truth about what you believe and what you want in your life.
For example:
- “Whenever you crossdress, you disobey God.”
- “Whenever you crossdress, you start to feel sick.”
- “Whenever you crossdress, you feel so depressed afterward.”
- “You think that this crossdressing will make you less stressed, and it will for a moment, but then you’ll be even more stressed and anxious afterward.”
- “Whenever you give in to these crossdressing desires you end up wasting so much time.”
- “I don’t want all that fear and anxiety from trying to hide the clothing.”
- “I don’t really want to do this because I love my wife.”
- “Crossdressing is a cheap imitation of marriage.”
- “Let me wait and have sex with my wife which will be so much better.“
- “I am a man and I want to be the man God made me to be.”
- “I don’t want to do this and jeopardize my job.”
- “You tell yourself you want to wear a skirt just to see how comfortable it is, but you know you really want to wear it for the sexual pleasure.”
- “I always feel so much better about myself and life in general, and enjoy life more, when I don’t crossdress.”
- “I never actually look like a girl when crossdressed. I look stupid if I’m honest with myself.”
- “I don’t want to be controlled by this addiction, I want to be free.”
- “God has been so good to me, and loved me even though I don’t deserve it, I should really resist this urge to show my gratitude and submission to him.”
By making all of these affirmations and declarations, it accomplishes a few things.
1. You don’t avoid or deny or bury the crossdressing feelings and desires you have. You don’t suppress them. Instead you bring them out into the open and deal with them.
2. You remember and remind yourself the important reasons why you don’t want to crossdress. It’s not a battle between what you want versus what someone else wants for you. It’s a battle between your wants and your other wants, between you and sin living within you (Romans 7).
3. You easily conclude that the reasons you don’t want to give in far outweigh the reasons that you want to give in. And therefore it will be easy for you to not give in.
4. Rather than some of the times where you feel frustrated and deprived after resisting a temptation, you will feel good and settled after resisting the temptation because you reasoned it through and it made good sense to not give in.
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