Transitioning: Lasers and Therapy

I had my first laser hair removal treatment for my facial hair recently.

A lot of people claim that laser hair removal is “almost painless”, or “it hurts a little, but it’s just like being pinched”. These people are liars.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. Each burst felt like someone was firing about a dozen needles at high speed into a small region of my skin. There were… well, I wasn’t counting, but it had to be at least 100 bursts. It felt like thousands, of course. It was easily the most physically painful non-kink-related experience I’ve ever had (although in fairness, I’ve lived a very fortunate life in that regard).

The problem does not lie with an inexperienced laser therapist, either. Several accounts have vouched for this being one of the best places in the area for laser treatments, and the laser therapist I am working with has extensive experience. I can only imagine what one of these things in the hands of an inexperienced user might feel like.

So, it is probable that I just have a really low pain tolerance. But even so, most of the pain was gone within 5-15 minutes of the end of the treatment. The skin was tender for a couple days afterward.

It’s been a little over a week now, and my hair is already noticeably lighter, grows back more slowly, and is easier to shave. Whenever my hand happens to brush my face, it feels completely different than it used to, and a LOT less dissonant.

I have also recently started therapy. I’ve chosen a therapist who specializes in working with gender variant folks, and the focus of my therapy is, naturally, related to transitioning. For obvious reasons, I won’t go into detail about my therapy sessions. My therapist seems to really Get It in a number of important ways, though. He expressed what sounded like disdain for the larger psychiatric community; at least, he seemed critical of the identity policing implicit in the classical handling of transsexuality by the psychiatric community.

So, anyway, these are some good things happening in my life, to contrast all of the shit.