Teddy Geiger says ‘eliminating shame’ helped to embrace being trans

Musician Teddy Geiger revealed in an interview that coming out as trans helped eliminate her anxieties and OCD tendencies.

The interview, which took place with CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers on the CBS This Morning podcast, also saw Geiger discuss working with Shawn Mendes and being nominated for a Grammy Award.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t know of anybody who was trans,” the musician said in a discussion about the initial shame she had when she realised she was transgender.

“There was always this like shame, anxiety thing around all of that, even if I wasn’t actively like expressing it,” Geiger said.

(Rich Polk/Getty Images for BMI)

The singer-songwriter said that getting treatment for her reliance on cigarettes and marijuana and obsessive-compulsive tendencies, helped her to realise she was transgender.

“I learned in one of the groups about shame and guilt… and how shame thrives on secrecy,” she said of her time in treatment.

“As soon as I let go of it, it became so much easier to just look at the whole thing clearly and be like okay: ‘I am trans'”

— Teddy Geiger

“So I told a couple friends about it,” she said. “I was like ‘hey, might be trans, might want to look at doing hormone therapy, just letting you know’ … and they were like ‘Yeah cool. Who cares? Like whatever, awesome.'”

“The shame made it so much harder to accept,” she added.

“I didn’t want to accept that was actually going on with me… but as soon as I let go of it, it became so much easier to just look at the whole thing clearly and be like okay ‘I am trans’. That’s what’s real for me… how do I move forward now.”