Mastectomy

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Have any women here had a mastectomy just because their breasts felt wrong ever since puberty and not because of cancer?
Did you have any trouble with your GP taking you seriously?
What type of specialist did you talk to about it?
Was it covered on a health scheme?
Any regrets?

Uh-oh. There's a name for how you feel, thought I can't think what it is called right now. You are not alone in your, um, body dismorphia thinking (?). I think you might be better off seeing a psychiatrist than a surgeon. I have no idea what the treatment for that is. In town, a few years back, a young gal who was actually fairly good-looking became so obsessed with her ugliness that she scarred her face with acid (hoping that would earn her plastic surgery) and said someone had attacked her. So the police and public had to search for someone with acid attacking random people. Did not work out well for her. Please get help. It's an awful thing to be so uncomfortable with your own body that you want to cut off parts of it. I'm sorry you are having such a hard time.

I have issues like that but have not yet come out about it to any health authorities.
I think I will need to go privately for a mastectomy anyway.
I'm willing to wait until a better time for that though, There are a lot of other, more pressing things that need sorting in my life currently. I just have to keep reminding myself to be patient.

If I was told that I could never have one it would have dire consequences for my mental health, though. I don't think I could cope having them for my entire life.

I can definitely relate... boobs are just useless bags of fat, and look unattractive and are burdeningly heavy. Bras are annoying too since they're tight and get in the way of things like hugs.

Oh my gosh... I've come to the right place. That is exactly how I feel about my breasts... but since I'm married to a man, he wants me to have them. It's hard. And I've mentioned it to a counselor before only to get the question, "So, you want to be a man, then?" Ugh. No. That's not what it means. It means I'm hovering somewhere between masculine and feminine.

There is something called a prophylactic mastectomy to prevent cancer in high risk people.

Would a reduction be an option?

Same. I have never wanted to be male but female feels wrong. I'm gender neutral.
Since being female became inevitable at 15yo I have been in denial most of the time but living in a female body has been torture for 26 years and I'm fed up with it. Thankfully I didn't have these annoying lumps of fat and glands on my chest until my mid 20s. I have tried binding but it hurts. Weight loss and building up my pectoral muscles hasn't helped either.

I wish doctors respected our wishes to be who we were meant to be instead of making us wait until we're threatened by a terminal illness or chronic pain to remove the parts we don't want. 26 years isn't a whim

I have been mentioning it to my psychologist but it is low on the list of things we're working through. Her feedback, are we all a bit androgynous, was not helpful. She has helped me with a lot of stuff already though.

The more I work through stuff the more I realise that being stuck with female bits is one of the main causes of my mental health challenges.

I am a firm believer that a lot but not everything can be cured by changing the way you think. If I was born with a gender neutral mind but in a female body it would be simpler to fix the body.

I definitely feel this way. I am also gender neutral, possibly a little bit more male than female. I am fortunate, though, that my boobs are relatively small... in fact, half of the time you can't really even tell that I have them because of the clothes that I'm wearing. They still annoy me, though.

I wish I had the type of body to get a mastectomy. Since I'm curvy, it'd look really weird if I was flat. :/

I can't relate to this. When I was a kid I was so excited to develop breasts.

I've often wished that such a surgery was a realistic option for me.

When I was a child and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I typically replied, "A boy." I called myself by a male name, wore camouflage and kept my hair short. This was in elementary school. My mother didn't appreciate it very much; she always pictured her daughter as a frilly little thing with long, flowing hair.

As I've gotten older, I have decided that I don't necessarily WANT to be male to the extent of feeling trans. I may have been happier if I were born male, but being a trans-male is not for me. (Note: I have nothing but love for the trans community, so I am not saying I'm against it all-together, just for me personally.) Gender neutrality is where my identity lies. I don't like my biological bits any more than I would like surgically-altered ones. My state of mind will never match with my physical form, but I am learning to be okay with that. I'm pretty tall, lanky, and thin with small breasts, so depending on what I'm wearing, it is nearly impossible to see that I have them.

The thought of a mastectomy has crossed my mind before, but this is for more than simply body dysmorphic reasons. My family has a strong history of breast cancer, and I am not excited to be equipped with ability to have it myself.

That's my story.

Earth, you may want to look into neutrois. I am neutrois myself.

I think this is quite a good definition of it here: http://neutrois.tumblr.com/post/8229655 ... -about-the

I know this is an old thread, but if you have chronic backache there might be a connection between that and excess boob-weight - up here in Canada a reduction is covered by Medicare in that case. The backache would be in the lumbar area. Just sayin'.