This post is inspired by a conversation that opened up in another thread, where the topic quickly turned to gender dysphoria—and an important point was made, I think, about how gender dysphoria is integral to that "feeling" or "experience" of being transgender. I agree that there is something rather dubious about a total lack of dysphoria. But all the same, I'd like to point out that it can also be pretty tough to ascertain whether someone's "legitimately" dysphoric unless the anxiety, stress, and depression appears to be affecting them in a severe way. For example, there's a certain mentality I adopted as a 'boy' in my family that made me determined to avoid being a burden to those around me. In a lot of ways I was the epitome of discipline and stoicism. Three things I deliberately avoided for as long as I could: asking for help, complaining, or showing non-verbal signs of distress. When it's come to addressing how dysphoric I am, it's been a difficult subject for me. To a large extent there's a part of my character which is pretty much hardwired to just "grin and bear it" and do my best to approach things with as much levity as I can muster, ignoring any sensations that make the process painful. So when I read accounts of people who have felt the effects of dysphoria through severe stress, anxiety, depression, etc. my mindset can't fully relate. Am I depressed? Mildly. Am I anxious and stressed? A bit, but 90% of that stress and anxiety comes from fearing the way other people would perceive me, not my self-doubt. I know I'm happier being perceived and treated as a girl rather than a boy. It's not because I have lived a life of persistent unhappiness and dissatisfaction, either. It's mostly because I've learned to be more honest about my desires, and open about my desires with other people. Whether or not I'm "legitimately" dysphoric, I guess I'd have to leave it up to you to decide. More importantly, what I've read very often is that "people experience dysphoria in different ways." That's what this thread is about—it would be helpful for you to share your experience of dysphoria that way questioning and curious people can get an idea of what it's like.
Personally, I was similar in a "never let them see you lose it" kind of way. I experienced it by looking down at my body and hating what I saw. I'd cry silently at night when nobody could see or hear me. I'd also get wicked angry spells. Most of this anger was directed at myself, or at the world in general. I did this until I finally accepted myself, and since then I have felt much better. I still dislike what I see, but I am no longer depressed, or nearly as angry. Don't know if that's quite what you wanted to know.
I recognize a lot of myself in your story. i was raised to keep my problems for myself and deal with it, act normal or be bullied and hurt.. That's one of the reasons i kept hiding for so long.. I have no real dysphoria against my gender although i do hate some manly things of my body, like body hair and figure.. I have a feeling i would be much happier if my body was female or at least more feminin. I don't like the way i am now but for now i know i dont want to have surgery and hrt. I think that most people are a little dysphoric about their body but in my case it's just not enough to change it all.
I experience dysphoria as anxiety, anger, depression, and frustration, specifically about my body and how people perceive me.
I never experienced dysphoria until I started expressing my gender, even though I've known that my gender is different since I was about 5. For me I think it comes out of understanding social perceptions and wanting to change them but not being fully able to do that as I want. So I don't think I really have a body dysphoria moreso than a social dysphoria. I want to change my voice, my face, or my chest, but only when I'm exposing other people to those things. In those circumstances I do get frustrated and anxious, and I can get depressed sometimes too.
Like many others, I was raised to just grin and bear it. Always felt like there was something wrong with me having dangly bits, but never to the point of trying to cut them off. Bigger issue for me is stubble. I hate the shadow I have even when freshly shaven, and I can feel it well before anyone would notice a 5:00 shadow. It's definitely a more social thing, but it bothers me how flat my chest is.
I guess all started when the nuns separated me from my friends at school, and forced me to be with girls, and also try to act like them. They even had the nerve to call my parents, I remember the scene very well. I got a physical punishment for being fresh and send everybody around to hell. I was never a very good diplomat... But at least I was being honest back then, even if it was useless under the circumstances. Nowadays... Same story as when puberty started, nothing has changed much : Body dysphoria is constant, and social dysphoria strikes everywhere. Since I've made a few changes on my gender expression (finally), it seems much better, but not good enough to feel like what I am presenting to the world is the real me, starting by this name I'm forced to handle on my ID, when I make a contract or any other kind of paperwork. Trying to change this body with food and workouts, but it's not enough, and there is stuff you can't change on your own anyways. I can't stand looking down there, it's way too disturbing. It's not the thing itself, it's the thing in me, as a part of me. Last time I tried to look, I ended up completly disgusted for almost a week, that vision wouldn't leave my mind, just awful... The voice... Has improved, but still has nothing to do with me. I feel detached often when I hear myself speaking. I try to deal with it, but after 20 years the way I feel about body dysphoria hasn't changed much. The social part comes with it. At least I know where the problem is now, and are able to look for a solution.
I've felt uncomfortable with my body since puberty. I've often been pretty self-destructive about my body, which has manifested itself in different ways over the years, and I've always disliked looking in the mirror, having photos taken, or hearing my recorded voice. I also prefer to wear baggy clothes that hide my shape as much as possible. I never really connected it with gender issues until recently because I was completely ignorant about what being trans really meant until I came here. I don't know if I ever thought explicitly that I should be a boy. That would have been something my parents would have discouraged purely out of a feminist mindset, that girls are just as good as boys and so there should be no reason for me to want to be a boy (I'm not blaming them, they were pretty progressive for their time). However, when I think of people I want to look like or emulate, I usually think of men, and when I look in the mirror that person doesn't look like the "me" that I see in my head.
Here is a day for me with dysphoria: Morning: - Wakes up, realizing I am still in this body. Probably cry a bit. Probably curses. Probably just lie there a bit calming myself and telling things will be ok one day and get up for another day until I get to that day. - Go to bathroom. Avoid mirror. Wash face, brush teeth, enjoy a little time brushing my hair. Then, take a razor, and begin to shave. Without mirror. Sometimes when I feel particularly bad, I will have to use a tweezer (so I don't cut myself with the razor when I feel like scraping my face off) and a small mirror that doesn't show my whole face, then pull the hair out of my face. - Get ready for class. Look at all the boring clothes I got because none of them are what I really want to wear and I just pick them so that I have something to put on. Take some at random and wears them, pack the bag, and get some breakfast before going. - At university. Grin and bears. Grin and bears. All the time. Every time someone refer me as male. Every time I am called by my male name. Every time I am forced to use my male name and male pronoun. Avoid all social interaction with people trying to connect with me as a male. Dodge and lie through all personal questions that may have a hint toward my personal life. Redirect topics to class work. Being a social pariah it is a small price to pay for sanity. - Break time between class. Have to go to bathroom. Walk Run all the way to a non-gendered bathroom 3 buildings away and back. Or just hold it. Or deliberately drink less water so no bathroom trips are needed. - Back to class. Be all enthusiastic about class things and studying, leaving less time for idle chatter that might be peppered with casual transphobic/homophobic comments. Put on the persona of the day, trying to fit in with everyone, while at the same time be invisible. No one will remember who I am, and it is a good thing. I don't want to be remembered as who I am now. - Go home. Back to my room. Lock the door behind me. Take off all my clothes as soon as possible and take a shower. Take a loong shower, enjoying every minute of it, using two kind of shampoo (one for washing, one for caring) and two kind of shower cream (one for cleaning, one for the scent - chocolate!). Then jump on my bed, naked, because I can't stand wearing any of the guys clothes for another minute. Snuggling with my cute stuffed animals while browsing the internet like this. Then have dinner. Then play games. Do work. Push myself until the verge of falling off asleep right on my laptop, so that thoughts I don't want to think comes to me as I lay in the dark waiting for sleep to come. Then I let myself embraced by the sweet oblivion of slumber.
My general personality and disposition is to brush things off, and ignore and suppress uncomfortable things. So much so, I've spent a lot of my life not feeling much of anything. I'm pretty numb. I do have feelings and emotions, they just tend to be pretty shallow because when you block out the bad, you also block out the good. I'm a huge book reader and movie watcher because those things tend to let me feel deeply, when in my own life I don't know how to feel like that. It is changing though... I'm getting better at it. I always knew something was off. I've never felt comfortable in my skin, and always felt like one of the guys. I definitely identified with them, but never knew it was an option. Over the years I suppressed it all and accepted that I was a girl and that was that. In that acceptance, I just dealt. But I've been depressed, and a lot of other things without putting my finger on WHY for years. Many years. I just turned 30 and only a couple months ago is when I finally broke that wall down and let myself realize who I was and why I was never right. Yes, I hate being in a female body, but I'm just so used to it that it's not agony. I never struggled with it constantly, every day. Not in that way. Because of that ^^^^ I do worry about others questioning the validity of my being trans. But there was struggle and pain and f'ed-upedness, it was just a different journey than most.
My personal experience with dysphoria is mostly rooted in social and emotional dysphoria, but I also experience some physical dysphoria. Overall my dysphoria manifests in a general sense of unhappiness, and a heavy sadness, that I carry with me every where I go. People frequently comment on how closed off and somber I am. I'm never really able to be the real me. My physical dysphoria isn't too bad, its a lot of little things but I'm able to ignore them for the most part, okay fine I can only ignore them sometimes. But here's a list if you want to read it, of things that are physical dysphoria for me: Spoiler Its mostly my haircut, my face, my baby cheeks, my lips, the way my face gets rounder when I smile - so I don't smile often. My small hands, my small feet, my overall petit-ness. I wear gloves (in winter) and converse all the time because they are the only shoes that make my feet look bigger, gloves hide my small hands. My height, especially during puberty I remember wishing that I could just keep growing taller, while 5"5' average for a female, thats not what I want to look like. My voice seems too high, and I don't often speak, especially if I become aware of the high range of my voice, and sometimes my chest bother's me, especially if I'm wearing a normal bra, and I get a aching longing feeling when I see other guy's flat chests, and the way that a shirt rests perfectly smoothly like a lithe board. My hips, even though they are basically non existent, I just want guy's legs, I want that square'ish muscular leg shape. I get that strange feeling of longing when I see other guy's beards too; I've got beard envy real bad. Shark week, is no fun, using the bathroom when bottom dysphoria is bad makes me want to just give up, undressing to get into the shower, the way I walk, the feminine gestures that I can't seem to break the habit of. Having to go to the doctors, having to have my breasts touched at the doctors, having to talk about menstrual cycles, reminding me I have a uterus. My female clothing, my girly looking underwear, bra's, my purse, and of course, what would my physical dysphoria post be with out mentioning walking past a mirror and wanting to burst into tears on bad days because I look like a girl and on good days because I realize I that people don't see the guy I see reflected back. Social dysphoria is the current monster overlord. Its the people who lovingly misgender me, most of the times without even knowing what they're doing; the more hurtful times are when its someone I'm out to. Social dysphoria makes me feel invisible, it makes me believe that my identity will never be respected, and it makes me grow resentful of everyone and everything. I never realized until recently where this deep disdain came from for certain people, especially my mother, but now I'm beginning to see that its those who constantly remind me that I'm female that I like the least. Emotional dysphoria is one that I've always known, but I never realized it was dysphoria until recently, I just thought I was bad with emotions. I hate showing emotion in front of other people, and sometimes even myself because then I reinforce the misconceived idea that I'm a female, and a stereotypical female at that. That is the hardest for me because after a long day of social dysphoria, then a little physical dysphoria, I just want to be able to cry on someone's shoulder, and be told that things will be okay. But I can't cry in front of other's because I don't want people to see me as any more of a female than they already do. And on really bad days I can't even cry in front of myself.
It is interesting for me as very rarley do I ever dislike my body and when I do it usually revolves around it being too weak. I did have up until recently these "episodes" where I would become unmotivated and not focus on class work, these episodes where usually followed by another one however this one had me acting more childish and happy but equally unproductive. The episodes started happening when I began thinking of how I would express my self as female and when I came to the conclusion of crossdressing I realised how hard it would to express myself without ridicule and how hard it would be to gain access to female clothes. When my best friend started using my prefered pronoun and name and began to me treat like a girl the episodes stopped. So yeah I don't if what I have said up there counts as dysphoria of any type but thought I might as well share my experience.
I try to keep myself busy, anything to distract my mind because if I leave myself to long to think my dysphoria pops up and it's the reason I hate going to bed every night. It started out around puberty where it was more of thing where I could never figure out what was wrong. I have always been pretty much self conscious and my body just never seemed to feel right. I've gone through depression and I have felt it creeping on me constantly throughout high school. My fear that it would escalate back into what it was in middle school unfortunately seems to be coming true because of my dysphoria that I am now aware of. If I end up looking in the mirror I just feel this general disconnect with the fact that body is mine and I hate the fact that many people would want my body and I really wish I could just give it away. I am getting really tired of having to avoid looking down, have to avoid looking in the mirror, and being careful when I go to the bathroom or shower. But the alternative of accidentally slipping a look and realizing I am trapped in this body that I really wish I could change even if it meant harming myself but I have to remind myself that I won't get anywhere if I tried. And if I feel down I begin to fantasize about one day having that body that feels right and I begin researching more about transitioning even though at this point I have struggled to find any more useful information. Unfortunately I have always been an impatient person when it comes to solving problems, when I have an issue I feel like I have to solve it now even though that is often not feasible. As for social dysphoria, it's really mild. The "not passing" bothers me in the fact that it is a reminder that I look too female. The only way I can pass is over the phone.
Harming yourself will only leave you with a broken body that you will still dislike, it won't get you anywhere.
I'm too curvy and that just feels wrong. I sometimes forget that they're refering to me when they use 'she' and I really hate gendered places.
I would liken the dysphoria I had in the past to a snake trying to shed its skin, but for whatever reason the skin won't come off! It's permanently stuck. I'd cry about it and I always felt uncomfortable in my body. I was so depressed. My dysphoria is nowhere near as bad now. I guess part of it because I try not to think about it too deeply. I spend a lot of time looking at time mirror, obsessively critiquing myself and questioning how surgery could effect certain career options. I have been very stressed out and sad, but I don't really think it has that much to do with my gender. It does disappoint me when my body doesn't fit into my clothes the way I imagined and the wind does get knocked out of me, whenever I get referred to as a female. It's a constant struggle when I think about it, but it's something that I try to ignore. :icon_sad: I keep telling people be them friends or myself, that I'm very happy with myself. I must not be if I keep having to deal with this.
