Dysphoria and body image

[MessyBrain]

Is it common to believe you look extremely different/out of place compared to everyone else (male or female) while living with gender dysphoria?

I keep getting this thing where it's more than just feeling ugly, but rather feeling like I'm physically deformed and just stick out a lot compared to everyone else - for the wrong reasons. I know that medically there's nothing "wrong" with my face, but when I catch my reflection in things passing I feel like I have some kind of deformity in the way my face looks and the shape of it.

Is this a common thing when you're going through dypshoria, or does it sound like BDD? Do the two go hand in hand?

[Rachel]

Welcome to Susan's

GD can have a lot of forms face, body image, hair, voice, cloths, genitals, anxiety, hyper vigilance, stress, dreams and envy of visual images.

A gender therapist is a great way to find out and help you to understand yourself better.

[Gothic Dandy]

I don't know how common that is, and I admit to not knowing a whole lot about dysphoria and related issues, but I can say I've felt something similar in the past. It wasn't that strong, but...yeah. Maybe it's part of the reason why I was terrified of my reflection as a small child. *shrug*

[Edge]

I'm a guy with tits, wide hips, and other things like that. Yeah, I feel deformed in a way that makes me feel very uncomfortable.

[Allyda]

I've come a very long way in this transition so far,and am very happy with my results that continue to amaze me on a daily basis despite less than desirable estrogen levels which, hopefully the injections my Endo put me on that I'll start today will correct my low E levels. And I also feel it necessary to say how happy, full of energy, and content in my own well being I am these days compared to days past. In fact so much so that I can't even remember ever being this happy. I live full time as the girl/woman I've always been and have done so for a few years now............

.........However, despite all of my newfound happiness and well being I'm so desperately lonely even tho up until 3 months ago I was involved with a woman I truly loved with all my heart. We were together for nearly 4 and a half years and though she did have her faults, and we had some financial issues hell, we all do. We could have easily overcome these difficulties because they pale in comparison to a very much more serious problem. Despite our closeness I still felt alone. I have a need for intimacy I will never be able to satisfy due to severe almost crippling genital dysphoria I've suffered from all my life, but more so now because for the most part when I look in the mirror I'm very happy with the girl I see staring back at me. Because what I was born with in my nether regions is abnormal for either gender I couldn't get past my genital dysphoria not even with the woman I love, to allow her to be fully intimate with me. When I think about why we aren't together anymore I just want to cry.

Oh sure we could kiss and cuddle, and caress each other up top, but my nether regions were strictly off limits. I couldn't even let her touch me there through my clothes. It is so severe I keep a towel by my toilet to throw over my crotch when I sit down to pee so I won't accidentally see the abomination that's down there. Several times I've driven to our local hospitals emergency room parking area with my fillet knife wanting so badly to cut it off, or use rubber bands like you do with cattle and horses or just blast it away with my trusty 1911. I still have these urges now more than ever especially when I think about what it has cost me. How it has condemned me to a life alone. Up until we finally broke up a little over 3 months ago I always had my ex to calm me assuring me they needed the tissue to make my vagina -all they can get especially in my case..........

.........Well, thanks to it I don't have her with me to remind me of that anymore. And tho I'm cleared for my SRS, with the difficulty I'm having just finding an SRS surgeon that takes insurance of any kind let alone mine within a reasonable distance from me I only pray I can be strong enough to resist doing surgery on myself. I was supposed to be having my surgery this December, and for a couple of months I felt relieved and so happy at what a wonderful Christmas gift I would be having this year. But alas as has happened so many times prior I am again let down. While I have found a surgeon who'll take my insurance, he's all the way down in Miami 5 hours away, and worse, I'm told it will be at least 6 months from my first appointment/consult before I can have the surgery making it now February/March next year. Though I do plan to move forward with Miami, the realist in me knows traveling this distance one way will not only create a financial burden over me I may not be able to afford for it isn't just the fuel expense, it's overnight lodging as well plus expenses.

So while I have found a surgeon I'm feeling he's just out of my reach condemning me to suffer with this abomination and the remainder of my life alone. I'm a strong woman who's suffered many hardships and abuse to make it to the place in my life I now find myself, but I don't think I'm strong enough to live with the abomination that is my genitals very much longer. Something needs to break and work out for me soon concerning this, for no matter how far I've come no matter how feminine I look and no matter how good a front I put on for the people around me, inside I'm really hurting and I fear I'm not strong enough to make it much further without my surgery. I fear myself, and what I may do in a fit of despair for not being whole. And I so so so much fear a life alone.

Oh I'm very happy with my body, my hair, my booby's, and even now my voice. But this is the dysphoria I suffer multiple times daily. I can't stop my tears anymore.

I apologize for the length.
Be well everyone.
Ally

[ImagineKate]

As a (mostly) pre everything person I don't like how my shoulders and arms are a bit more muscular than cis women's. But strangely enough my torso, hips, pelvis and legs are just fine. When I dress up in dresses or girl jeans I actually have a nice derrière and my waist is curved as a woman's should be.

It's just above my chest that's a problem. And my hands. But longer fingernails are helping, as is moisturizer. HRT will help with skin texture as well. Shaving my arms should help too, but that would out me real quick at work. Going to wait until winter when I'm mostly covered up anyway to give it a go. 

[Luana]

I think that its very common honey, even with people that don't suffer gender dystrophy like me (I think that you too). If you look with attention, everybody has something that they don't like. If you ask the person that you think to be perfect in beauty, that one certainly would say something that doesn't like and would change. Also, the beauty standards are there, most of people don't fit them, I don't fit ether.

I personally don't my shoulders (they are a bit larger than I want to), my facial hair (that I hate it so much) and my very slim hip. I would love to have more girly curves like cis girls do. I also feel extremely deformed when I look at the mirror almost all the times, sometimes they show something ok, other times they show an ugly aberration with pink clothes. I'm very slim, so my face shape is also slim with almost no fat, and I don't like it. Just like you, I keep comparing every girl with me, what she has that is better than I, in what I'm prettier, and these stuff.

I am talking to a therapist and it's helping, also I'm learning to accept in me the things that I can't change and looking to change what I can. I think that you can find out what you like in you, try to work around it, and make it shine, there must to be something . Me, for example, I like to be slim, because I have little masculine muscular mass, to have a very slim waist,, I hope that a can achieve someday a hour glass figure, also I like my legs that are longer than the usual born men.

hey, if you are a mtf girl, try to shave you body, it gives a very huge boost in you confidence, I LOVE my soft and clean skin.