I am not deliberately projecting negative emotions but I never saw any short guy can get rid of 'height neurosis', at least completely and I myself cannot exempt from it. What's worse my height neurosis is getting more and more horrible after I broke up with my first love(but the reason why we broke up is not my height) and cannot repress extreme thoughts, some of which I have expressed on this forum to achieve bad looks from angry guys with my words. So I don't think except LL anything else including psychiatric therapies(I have tried them for already 5 times) can triumph over height neurosis but all you said impress me with your tremendous well-meaningnesses and declamations. Salute!
I can conjecture that you are a highly educated gentleman but screwed up in the appearance by height if I guess it right, furthermore, I can figure out why you are still overwhelmed in height neurosis even after having tapped 3 girls taller than you, which can also corroborate my argument at the beginning of my statements.
But I have learned from you that your height is 152cm/153cm. So what's the point you not planning on Paley's Option 3?
You guessed well, I'm screwed and sometimes ashamed of myself and ashamed for being ashamed...because all my education goes against being worried about appearance and because it goes also against doing a surgery that has obvious risks (and plus costs a lot of money and time). And I hardly have money for just one segment, time is limited and probability of complications higher due to age.
At the same time, that same education also prevented me from falling from neurosis, from depression (even when turned chronic), from a "pharmacy at home" intoxicating my liver, from psychiatrists and psychologists (I though the depression was still curable despite the neurosis which now seems pathetic), to drugs, alcoholism, heavier insanity or to other even more dramatic or tragic ways.
However, my professional, social and financial life still got screwed, as well as an undescriptible chronic sadness. But because of that same education, agsin, I didn't seek LL seriously while I was younger (well, CLL was unheard of here but I still went to two surgeons consultations: one only did surgery in crippled people and with the other, he was opened to the idea, and at FREE cost, with nails in femurs, but I hesitated because I was scared and he eventually died!). The fact that the surgery was maybe riskier than today is no consolation, altough I may have been previously "saved" from being crippled by the first generation of GH injections, which I didn't took due to fammily hesitation, because at that time, GH was often severely contaminated (thousands of people got crippled and were still in courts in France a few yesrs years ago). So, GH was an example that being cautious with growing taller sometimes, also paid.
Now, I am obviously aware that height neurosis was the root cause of all depression in a vicious cycle of social isolation, less success at work, suffering, etc. And I am now fighting for maybe not even a third of my "joy years" of life. There are two consolations only: the fact that apparently in most cases of successful LL people get really happier and the fact that for me it is a certainty that achieving no more than 1,62/1,65m (last one probably impossible without going beyond reasonable lenghtening) will be more than enough for me (which is still 13/10 cm below average in my country and surely is very strange to most of you). But there is when my "educative culture" enters again in action :-) . I will probably also use elevator shoes...
Finally, I don’t go for Paley not only because it's too expensive but also because I want to stay in Europe or look for safe options on the Eastern "side", and altough he is surely one of the best, there are many things I personally don't appreciate in him and thus don't feel enough empathy and trust as his future patient. Also because there are alternatives and I personally decided (not price related), but that's another story, to go for tibias and externals (which I know will also surprise many of you). And in that field I can pay the best which luckyly are not greedy and are very ethical. I also prefer to let my body fully "resolve" tibias before going for femurs (with nails) although I still don't have a cent to do femurs without selling my house, which I will avoid at all costs....well, maybe not at all costs...
Please don't get maybe too "touched" by such a sad story, just use it as one more little piece of information to evaluate all your options.