Well I don't think "the demons" are the reason for the doctrine you're devoted to. That seems a bit TV show esque like a cartoon.
Sorry for the long delay in responding! I got really sick in the middle of a really hectic week...but I'm feeling a bit better now.
Thankfully those who once told me that it was a demon attached to me that caused my gender dysphoria are few in number. The only one that truly mattered was when my father had worried about that being the case.
My father is an exceptionally strong and kind man and one of the best examples of living in Christian faith I've ever known. As I was never raised by my parents as anything other than a boy, and never sexually abused or gone through anything else that could have caused psychological damage resulting in me questioning my sense of gender...he could not understand what would have caused me to become transgender. I even once worried about that myself...as I do believe 'bad spirits' or 'demons' that can attach themselves to people and lead them to self-abusive behavior. Even though I had become a born-again Christian at age 12, the gender dysphoria I was dealing with continued to grow stronger and stronger into my early teenage years regardless. I just could not understand why I was suffering those feelings, and why I couldn't just be normal.
It wasn't until just two years ago that my mother and I learned through research online about how a great majority of the health issues my family has suffered through were caused by the now-banned drug
Diethylstilbestrol, which was originally intended to aid against miscarriage. It turns out that this drug caused my Mom's chronic health issues, several of my sisters' health issues...and my own genital abnormalities, gender dysphoria, and my infertility and lack of interest in sex. It took much longer than I had anticipated...but God answered my lifelong prayers for peace and understanding for what had caused me to be the way I was.
I cannot express just how much peace this knowledge brought to me and my family. Even though my own issues finally had an explanation, I still worry that there are people out there that have come to have issues with gender identity due to some form of abuse...causing them great spiritual pain, or 'demons.' Sexual abuse has been known to cause similar issues, and there are sadly more and more ways children these days are being exposed to things that will hurt them psychologically. All of that is integrated into a world that has increasingly been exposed to thousands of endocrine-disrupting chemicals to the point that the global fertility rate is 40% what it was only a few decades ago.
My heart breaks for our children and for the world they are inheriting.
You've been on Gaf for awhile, maybe something else in life is bothering you making you put your guard up? There's no one threatening you with violence here, so I don't think you have much to worry about. (unless they are messaging you, but then there's the report button to deal with that.)
That has
absolutely been the case. I don't want to get into it publically, but I've been dealing with a very stressful living situation for the past two years...one that has caused me and my best friend increased anxiety to the point of hardly ever being able to leave the house, and a worry that violence can come in an instant even when things are seemingly calm. I believe she and I are now recently freed of that possibility, but it is going to take us some time to recover.
This is just another reason that the kindness I have been shown here at NeoGAF has meant a great deal to me these past two years.