Psychologists are less aware of the confusion of roles than we are. Many transgender people have but one goal: treatments. Psychologists have lots of goals: they want to provide care, examine what is the matter with you, assess whether you are capable to deal with the changes hormones will cause for you (both physical and emotional), and maybe they also want to investigate certain aspects of being transgender or they want to confirm or disprove investigation results from colleagues.

There are components of this confusion of roles you cannot influence, because you may not even be aware that they exist (for instance the combination of assessment and research, or it fact that many psychologists are being used as PR for the "meticulousness" of their team). What you can influence is the confusion between asking for help and getting a diagnosis for treatments. We strongly advise: avoid confusion of roles wherever you can. The psychologist who decides on your treatment won’t object to helping you during the diagnostic phase, but you can be sure this will slow down the process of getting the medical treatments you need.

Example: during someone’s diagnostic phase the psychologist said: "I am going to improve the relationship between you and your parents." The transgender responded: "No, you’re not, because that is not the help I requested. What I need is hormones. And to get those I need piece of paper with your signature on it. That is the only reason I come here. As far as I am concerned there is no problem in the relation between me and my parents. If I would want to improve the relationship I know at least five people (one of them another care provider), whom I would rather ask for it than you." The psychologist has tried this two more times, but the transgender stood his ground and in the end the psychologist admitted that it wasn’t her role to improve that relationship.

If you do need help, get it from a different psychologist or find another solution and tell the psychologist who is to decide on your treatments that getting this help is in your opinion not a prerequisite for starting hormones or operations.