Do you think gender issues (i wouldn't call it dysphoria) can go away if you try

[perrystephens]

I've never really had dysphoria. Just the feeling that I shouldn't look like this and I would be more comfortable as a guy. The only time it really bothers me is when I'm showering or peeing or something and ive gotten to a point where I can ignore the way my body looks and distract myself with other thoughts. maybe if i do that enough, i'll eventually just get over it? does that ever happen?

[FTMax]

Perhaps we have different definitions of dysphoria, but I think what you've described counts.

Personally, I tried to do exactly what you've described. I spent years distracting myself with school and work and dating - whatever it took to stay busy. But I was never able to shake the feeling that something was off with me, and that I needed to transition to fix it.

I wasn't miserable the entire time, but I wasn't really living either.

[LordKAT]

Personal opinion, no. Many have tried.

[HoneyStrums]

If, you never look up, because you focus on the ground, does that mean there is no sky?

From MY exsperience it is somthing that stayed with me.

If you want to and can egnore it, then do so.  And besides even if you accept them as part of you, you dont necesserily need to act upon them, unless YOU need to act upon them.

[Tysilio]

Based on my experience, no; I tried to do that for four decades and never really lived. Now I'm who I'm supposed to be, and I can't begin to describe the difference.

[Tessa James]

I've never really had dysphoria. Just the feeling that I shouldn't look like this and I would be more comfortable as a guy. The only time it really bothers me is when I'm showering or peeing or something and ive gotten to a point where I can ignore the way my body looks and distract myself with other thoughts. maybe if i do that enough, i'll eventually just get over it? does that ever happen?

Hey Perry,

I agree with ftmax that what you describe sounds like it fits dysphoria but maybe it is a matter of degree or intensity or frequency?  As a kid I just assumed I was really a girl and would somehow magically turn into a female until puberty wrecked that dream.  Then I settled in to a lifetime of denial, coping, shame and distraction.  There is always something or someone more important.  I tried mightily to be the man people seemed to expect of me but my feminine shadow never went away.  Maybe a bit like you I tried to ignore my body and often would cross my legs making my junk disappear and feeling like that just looked better.  Feelings about gender just would not stay away and would haunt my days and my dreams at night.  Whatever you call these feelings about gender they are persistent and for me at 60+ they have never gone away.  We can cope with any thing we have to to survive but wouldn't you rather thrive and feel like your most true self??

[AnonyMs]

I don't think it goes away either. On the contrary its just keeps getting worse. But one thing to bear in mind is that if it did go away for anyone then they probably won't be on this site replying to your post. I'm not sure if it happens or not.

[Mado G]

This is the story of the last year of my life.

For a while, I was able to legitimately convince myself that I'd succeeded. I started and then discontinued HRT, leaving me effectively hormone-deprived and, by extension, free from dysphoria. My T took a long time to rebound, but when it did, the rub was off and the dysphoria kicked back in in full.

[Dena]

I've never really had dysphoria. Just the feeling that I shouldn't look like this and I would be more comfortable as a guy. The only time it really bothers me is when I'm showering or peeing or something and ive gotten to a point where I can ignore the way my body looks and distract myself with other thoughts. maybe if i do that enough, i'll eventually just get over it? does that ever happen?

Perry, I have only been here less than three month and it has been a real education for me. We had the term gender dysphoria and it was pretty new at the time but the idea parts of the body causing strong emotions wasn't something we often heard about. I think if you were were to apply modern terms to what I was, you might say I was dysphoric about my life. It wasn't anyone thing that was wrong but it was everything. I was like the square peg in a round hole. It is possible I had it worst that you because the discomfort was pretty much every day. I could contain the feeling somewhat so I had a limited social life and computer programming took so much though that I could become almost machine like for hours. This is why in some ways I almost felt kinship to Spock on Star Trek. This went on between ages 13 and 30 and continued to grow harder to contain until it forced me to seek treatment.

My roommate didn't transition until she was 50. As she was born in 1934, treatment wasn't possible for her when she was young so she lived the best she could in a male life until pushing her feelings in to the background was no longer possible. I meet her early in her transition and the biggest indicator that this was the only treatment and solution was I saw the reduction in her alcohol consumption. She also became a happier person but that's not as easy to measure as the level of fluid in a bottle.

The answer to your question is sadly no, you can't make it go away and your are stuck with it for life. Some people to find ways to reduce the discomfort to a livable level and once that was our only option but it will always be with you.

[Mariah]

Definitely what LordKAT said. I tried to bury and cover it which didn't work at all. It just got worse in the end. Hugs
Mariah

Personal opinion, no. Many have tried.

[Jill F]

If your brain comes hard-wired to run on hormones that it's not getting, that cannot be changed.  The only thing you can do to relieve that is to take away the wrong ones and give it the right ones.

[jessilynn]

I've never really had dysphoria. Just the feeling that I shouldn't look like this and I would be more comfortable as a guy. The only time it really bothers me is when I'm showering or peeing or something and ive gotten to a point where I can ignore the way my body looks and distract myself with other thoughts. maybe if i do that enough, i'll eventually just get over it? does that ever happen?

Honestly no... it does not. I am the same way still. I don't like looking at myself in the mirror to even brush my hair.

I've felt like I was in the wrong body since I was about 9 years old personally. And so many years later, it has not gone away. I've tried to suppress it, I've tried to hide it, and it has blown up in my face. So My advice to you is to keep your chin up, and talk to someone you can trust.

Definitely talk to your parents, my mother is actually my support system, as is my best friend who I gladly call my sister. Get things out in the open, and explore your options.

[JoanneB]

For about 50 years I relied on the 3D's of Distractions, Diversions, and some Denial to get by. I wouldn't recommend it. Especially in this day and age where help and acceptance is light years better then it was in the 60's-70's

[Sammy]

By ignoring GD or trying to get rid Yourself of it, You can shove it deeper into some level of Your consciousness - or subconsciousness. But it will remain there and wait for years and decades. Something, which made me to consider the final step was that You can keep running away but You cannot run away from Yourself, from something that has been ingrained into You since Your birth (or even before that) - as soon as I realised it, to keep running away lost its sense.
I tried to ignore or outplay it, but my life never seemed real - it was always like somebody else was living my life instead of me, and whenever I looked into mirror, I could not recognise that person - my brain kept telling me that this handsome young guy was me, but deep inside I knew that something somewhere went deeply wrong - and his dead eyes were another proof of that. I consciously tried to ignore it for two decades, to live up to expectations of masculinity, but once I realised that it all has been a "role playing game" that shell crumbled into dust. Oh, and pro-painting countless Warhammer and W40K miniatures again and again did not really help either

[Carrie Liz]

I do think that it's very important for every person to answer this question for themselves, because you need to know you.

With that said, I had the same kind of thought process that you're describing for many years...

Maybe if I just try to stop feeling it... maybe if I try to pray it away and focus on God instead of the dysphoria... maybe if I just found a nice girl and had someone to love me for who I am... maybe if I graduate school and get a job and finally feel like my life is settled and has purpose... maybe if just try being an effeminate guy, free to express myself as I wish without changing my body...

None of them solved the core problem that I hated the way I looked and constantly felt like I should be the opposite sex. No matter how much I tried to ignore it, no matter how much I tried to distract myself, no matter how I tried to rationalize that it wasn't dysphoria, that surely I could fix it by just looking at it a different way, surely there was some way that I didn't have to change my body, it never went away.

All that I succeeded in doing was wasting 10 years of my life feeling detached from my own existence, having no self-esteem about my body whatsoever, constantly staring longingly at members of the opposite sex who were living the life that I knew I should be living, and watching helplessly as my body continue to age in the wrong way, becoming less and less like my identity gender with each passing year.