How do you experience dysphoria?

[LordKAT]

For me it's mostly a physical sensation. Almost entirely, I would say. A dissociation from my body, like wearing a shoe two sizes too large, feeling like you're actually wearing something on top of yourself and can feel it moving around but don't feel integrated with it. It's a very odd feeling. Although that's normally only a mild sensation for me. When it's bad, is usually after I wake up or as I'm about to sleep. When the barrier between conscious and subconscious are thinnest, the hypnogogic and hypnopompic phases of sleep. Then I feel phantom limb sensations, insomuch as I feel like I actually have a different bodyshape, with anatomy that's where it should be. I guess it's my sense of self bleeding though. And sometimes being jolted back into the physical is very, VERY jarring, disconcerting and mentally traumatic. Moreso if I've woken from a dream and for a few moments am slightly confused about what I'm seeing, or feeling, before the crushing realisation dawns.

Almost exactly how it happens for me. That half awake state is both awesome and awful. the really bad part is when you suddenly realize, it isn't real. Someone messed it up. I used to think I'd get thrown in an asylum or something if I told anyone.

I'd feel so alien to what my  body actually looked like. I think that is the thing with mirrors.

For a long time I used to wonder why people couldn't see me and who was this person they were talking to and about. It wasn't me but it was. Hard to explain really, but what you wrote comes as close to it as I have ever seen written.

[ErinS]

N/a

[Jess42]

Right now it is actually the say I am feeling. A real bitch. It hurts. It is painful in a way that isn't a physical pain, but a deep, deep emotional pain that is way more painful than anything physical.

[StirfriedKraut]

It varies for me. but typically it starts as my mind is in one place and my body is seemingly not there then I notice whats wrong and I just lose touch with reality for a bit.

Mine's usually rage infested. I can feel the man inside of me raging against everything that it sees, feels, all of it. Every time I get depressed the man in me just gets pissed off at myself for letting my emotions run so wild. It's a constant battle between who i really am and this thing that I drag around day to day that doesnt resemble or feel like me. When I have a full fit It's not unlikely for me to beat myself up physically as well as mentally. I'd bashed myself into things, ripped at my skin after flipping out on a binder. I've wanted to stab myself in the groin so i had a real reason to bleed. I get a bit psychotic because I'm completely detached. It's like I'm watching some kind of psychological horror movie and I'm the victim of a sick possession.

The sad part is i wish these fits weren't common. I wish these fits could be controlled better.

I get body displacement a lot too, or did. If I look at myself in the mirror for too long I start to question who the hell I'm looking at. That's started to fade though ever since I started going full time male. When i used to pretend though... I was two separate people. The real me and this weird fake bimbo that i saw in the mirror. Now it's mostly just rage fits that can occasionally come with suicidal tendencies. Thank god I have enough self control not to do anything stupid. It's weird. Whenever I used to voice chat while I used my deepened voice more it was sounding completely authentic. So I'd have these long calls with my one friend then go to the bathroom and suddenly realize I need to sit to take a piss (thank god not anymore) or I'd look in the mirror and go "I don't sound or act in a way that would go with what I'm looking at."

[Laurenza]

for me it started as a sort of jealousy towards women. i would see them at the shops and in the streets and feel sad, upset and envious that they were born that way and i was not.

the more i supressed those feelings the more they struggled to pop up (like trying to hold a volley ball under water).

these days its grown to the point where i often cry myself to sleep for feeling lost and disassociated with my body.
as well as raging against family and friends for no reason what so ever. just being moody and angry.

[Klaus]

I get body displacement a lot too, or did. If I look at myself in the mirror for too long I start to question who the hell I'm looking at. That's started to fade though ever since I started going full time male. When i used to pretend though... I was two separate people.

Man, I can relate to that. The displacement thing happened to me a lot when I was younger, but I never connected it to dysphoria until recently. This thread has opened my eyes in that department.

For me, the disconnection between brain and body tends to come as a complete surprise at the worst time. I'll catch a glimpse in the mirror and literally jolt from the shock of expecting to see someone else there. When I look at photographs of me trying to "make the best of it" by dressing up, it genuinely takes me a minute to recognize that person as fake me. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way she looks either, she just isn't me and never has been. It's like looking at a stranger I have absolutely no feelings toward either way.

So there's that sort of contemplative dysphoria, and then there's the dysphoria that happens when I'm interacting with other people and forced to keep up the charade of the person they think they're talking to, when the truth is we're barely more than strangers. It's just this gross, gnarly, vulnerable feeling, and it's never triggered by what I expect, always some minute stupid thing. I would compare it to the lowest bipolar low I ever experienced before getting treated, and wouldn't wish it on anyone.

[Felix]

I mostly feel bad when I'm rejected (or expect to be) by potential partners specifically because my anatomy isn't what is expected or desired. I assume that as I get older, this problem will fade and will be replaced by fears about healthcare and what will happen when I'm 80 or whatever and end up in an old folks' home.

I also feel wrong when I notice a cisguy without a shirt or when I hear people discuss erections or needing a cup for sports or anything else that is an obvious reminder of what I'm lacking. My experience of dysphoria is at times a desperate sense of unfairness, and other times more of a dissociative experience, like watching something weird happen and being sure only that it's not real, can't be real.

[Jess42]

I also feel wrong when I notice a cisguy without a shirt or when I hear people discuss erections or needing a cup for sports or anything else that is an obvious reminder of what I'm lacking. My experience of dysphoria is at times a desperate sense of unfairness, and other times more of a dissociative experience, like watching something weird happen and being sure only that it's not real, can't be real.

I never really understood why guys can go shirtless and girls can't. I mean it's basically the same body part just usually on guys they are smaller. On me not so much so but If I wanted to I could still get away with being shirtless, I would just have to explain why. But I never go shirtless though just because. Unless it's in my own backyard laying out in the sun. BTW we all get turned on by someone but it is a really embarrasing moment and that is one thing that I definately would not miss. I won't even go into how embarrasing it can be when you have to do a physical when you are bi and think the doctor is goodlooking and have to do the freakin' hernia check .

Yeah it sux because it feels so unfair.

[Cassandra Hyacinth]

When we see a bruise or a cut on our bodies, there's usually a sense of alarm i.e. 'that's not supposed to be there', even when there isn't necessarily any purely physical pain related to it.

That's how my body's sex strikes me.

[Moimoinen]

I don't know if this is the same for anyone else, but I experience it in a similar way as my brain being certain I am a male, and therefore sees something wrong with my biological body and assumes I'm ill. So, it gives a strange kind of 'feeling sick without being physically sick' kind of thing. Like it doesn't know what to do with itself, it sees the chest and lack of penis and thinks something isn't right, so assumes I'm sick. It is very uncomfortable, and upsetting, and can make me feel physically sickly.

I think that's the only way I can describe it.


~Elliott

[OreSama]

For me it feels like something's missing.  I feel like I'm supposed to have all of these things that I don't and it bugs the heck out of me.

[mm]

For me it is three items.
1. Shark week - No guy has uncontrolled bleeding for several days every month and cramps too; I use tampons and they help me not see or feel it once the cramps are done. 
2. My chest mounds - They are there all the time, my binder does help them not to show as much, but they are still there.  Now in the summer I am hot and sweat all the time with it on.
3. My lower parts - Every time I have to pee I am reminded of not having a penis.  I am still trying to master a STP so I can pee at an urinal.

Hopefully in few years I will be on t and can afford the surgery to help all these.

[YinYanga]

My voice is a good way to make me feel dysphoric ..as if I am some sort of freak of nature. I am just so afraid of ending up sounding like an effiminate/gay male with a women's body. I need to consult a logopedian in the next few months because I barely dare to speak in public without shame

My bodily dysphoria has been getting better since I started HRT, I can see visible/feel changes and I enjoy touching myself again

I have won a battle, but not the war

[Felix]

I still wish I could get more sizable erections, but it's true that I would probably not enjoy them at the doctor's office. There are so many hot doctors out there.

YinYanga I want to thank you endlessly for the word "logopedian." It sounds so cool compared to "speech therapist" and I'm glad it's out there.

[Evienne]

I get similar feelings. Especially the "it's not fair" one. Get that a lot. How do I cope with it though? Friends. Coming online and talking to people like this one who understand. It helps me a lot, and helps me to really get passed the long hard wait when I can get to that day where it will no longer be unfair.

[YinYanga]

I still wish I could get more sizable erections, but it's true that I would probably not enjoy them at the doctor's office. There are so many hot doctors out there.

YinYanga I want to thank you endlessly for the word "logopedian." It sounds so cool compared to "speech therapist" and I'm glad it's out there.

Always love to help you Felix. Too bad I am not a hot male doctor 

[solexander]

Ergh... I get really, really, REALLY jealous of cis men and really far along in transition trans men. I start picking apart my appearance and mannerisms, trying to find exactly everything that's wrong with me, decide that it's unfixable, and then want to kill my body (more specifically, I get these really strange fantasies about being someone else and being able to kill and destroy my body without actually dying). Dysphoria is so much fun

[Blue Senpai]

I experience dysphoria when my monthly gift comes in, I hear female pronouns and when I have to go out in public looking like a tomboy because that's as far as I can go for now since I'm not on HRT yet. Getting on T sometime in October should help out a bit.

[StevieAK]

When I'm shunned and ignored. I went to a wedding last weekend and no one talked to me. I stood alone for an hour during the  reception. I feel so inadequate.
When I see pics of myself. I feel good being me but then so disappointed to see what I look like.
When people walk up to my wife and say how sorry they are for her and tell me how lucky I am she stayed with me.
Etc etc etc

[Felix]

When people walk up to my wife and say how sorry they are for her and tell me how lucky I am she stayed with me.

This is deeply wrong and insulting to both of you, and I'm sorry it's happening. I know some people don't know how else to conceptualize it, but they could at least stick to basic essentials of politeness.