How do you explain dysphoria to a non-dysphoric person?

[DebbieA]

Please help!! I have known I was different from my earliest memories but have lived the life everyone expects of me. I am biologically male but have never felt that way.  I come from a highly conservative and religious background and I have never had the courage to transition. I just did everything a normal male in my culture is supposed to do.  Got married, have kids, etc..  The funny thing is, I have a really great life. I have a fulfilling career, great kids, a wife that loves me for 26 years now, so I keep asking, why am I so miserable. 6 years ago I came out to my wife but promised her I would not act on my feelings.  However, I did take a very low dose of estrogen to help with the dysphoria and for a long time it worked pretty good.  Lately, I am not sure if the dysphoria is getting worse or if I am just losing the strength to fight it.  My wife thinks that it is a "choice".  My response was eating is a choice too.  A week ago my daughter commented "Dad, your boobs are getting huge!".  This has sent me into an emotional tail spin.  Because I have taken such a low dose of hormones I really didn't notice the changes.  But I now realize that it is going to start to get really hard to hide real soon.  I feel like I am about to loose everything.  I thought that if I could get my wife to understand and have at least a small amount of empathy I could deal with it better.  I did take her to therapy with me several times but that did nothing.  She is fine as long as we all pretend that it isn't happening.  Does anyone know of any resources that effectively explain how cruel and unrelenting dysphoria can be?  How to you get someone to understand that it can be so severe it can drive some to kill themselves or cut their own testicles off?  The dysphoria is getting worse and I am no longer able to cope.  If I can't figure this out soon I am giving up.  Life should not be this hard.

[Dena]

Explaining this to somebody who hasn't felt it is nearly impossible. One argument you can use is we are born with this and it's only a question of when we feel it. For some it can be as early as age 3. For others like me, it happens when we enter puberty. Still others may reach 50 or 60 before they need to deal with it.

As you know, the depression can be crushing. There are indications that 2 out of 5 of us reach the point of suicide and the rest of us reach a point where we are constantly living with depression. I am post surgical 33 years and in the post surgical years, I have not felt the constant depression I lived with for years. One argument often used is would your wife rather have you around or visit your grave.

Treatment greatly improves our outlook on life and we become better, happier people to be around. There will be a good deal of adjustment but you can tell her it's not going to make you into a different person, just a better one. You shouldn't be attracted to anyone else so you can tell your wife you will stay with her as long as she will have you.

I understand how hard this can be and while I avoided emotional entanglement, I had to wait for some treatment to become available and then find it. You have a different set of problems to deal with and I wish you luck. Feel free to ask me any questions that you think I can answer.

[Futurist]

Please help!! I have known I was different from my earliest memories but have lived the life everyone expects of me. I am biologically male but have never felt that way.  I come from a highly conservative and religious background and I have never had the courage to transition. I just did everything a normal male in my culture is supposed to do.  Got married, have kids, etc..  The funny thing is, I have a really great life. I have a fulfilling career, great kids, a wife that loves me for 26 years now, so I keep asking, why am I so miserable. 6 years ago I came out to my wife but promised her I would not act on my feelings.  However, I did take a very low dose of estrogen to help with the dysphoria and for a long time it worked pretty good.  Lately, I am not sure if the dysphoria is getting worse or if I am just losing the strength to fight it.  My wife thinks that it is a "choice".  My response was eating is a choice too.  A week ago my daughter commented "Dad, your boobs are getting huge!".  This has sent me into an emotional tail spin.  Because I have taken such a low dose of hormones I really didn't notice the changes.  But I now realize that it is going to start to get really hard to hide real soon.  I feel like I am about to loose everything.  I thought that if I could get my wife to understand and have at least a small amount of empathy I could deal with it better.  I did take her to therapy with me several times but that did nothing.  She is fine as long as we all pretend that it isn't happening.  Does anyone know of any resources that effectively explain how cruel and unrelenting dysphoria can be?  How to you get someone to understand that it can be so severe it can drive some to kill themselves or cut their own testicles off?  The dysphoria is getting worse and I am no longer able to cope.  If I can't figure this out soon I am giving up.  Life should not be this hard.

Frankly, I would tell a non-dysphoric person that he or she should imagine himself or herself having the body and hormones of the opposite sex for his or her entire life. At least that is how I visualize gender dysphoria; of course, my own imagination can certainly be extremely vivid.

Anyway, if you have to choose between your wife and your life, then you must choose your life! Indeed, this isn't even much of a choice--after all, by your own admission, you could lose your will to live if you don't transition! Thus, in my own, honest opinion, I would strongly advise you to extremely extensively look into ways which will allow you to begin transitioning immediately or at least as soon as possible.

Indeed, I hope that my advice here helps you at least somewhat.

[DebbieA]

There is certainly no easy answer.  When I first started taking hormones 6 years ago I thought I knew what I was doing.  I had extensively research everything I could get my hands on.  i certainly knew what higher doses would do to my body.  What I was completely unprepared for was HOW GOOD they would make me feel emotionally and mentally.  For the first time in my life I felt "normal".  My ADD symptoms, insomnia, lack of concentration, depression, all disappeared.  I could stop taking hormones but I don't want the "old me" to ever come back.  What my wife will never admit is she likes me much better mentally and emotionally on hormones.  But she will never accept what they are doing to my body.  I have really painted myself into a corner.

[Dena]

Nature put you in the corner. You did what society expected you to do and now you have to find a way out. One of the things I feel is not having a family of my own. I love children but because I am taller than normal, children are very uncomfortable around me. There are trade offs and both of us took a different path in life with each of us envying some of what the other has and forgetting the problems the other faces.

[Rachel]

I am in the process of divorce. I love my wife but she is embarrassed to be married to a transsexual. My wife told me she would divorce me if I came out fully at work, expressed at work and changed my ID at work to Rachel. I thought I would be able to address my GD with hormones ( I did not do low dose) and it did for a short while but I had to transition. I fought it but then realized the only way to survive was to transition.

I realized three weeks after going on HRT I would never go off it. GD is horrible and the more I do to become myself the better I feel. I believe when I fully am corrected and fully transition I will, hopefully, have no GD.

You can not make someone learn or have compassion especially if it is not what they want. There are many sources that are authorities that can explain GD far better than me but having her read the information and then changing how she feels about it is another matter.

It may well come down to not having a choice about transitioning.

[MelissaAnn]

I would like to start out by saying that everyone is very unique in their experiences. Everyone's dysphoria is different so I will talk about mine. And just to be clear I'm not talking about body dysphoria but gender dysphoria. I'm sure most have felt a big disconnect between your body and brain. When cisgender people ask me what this feels like I tell them it's hard to explain so with that in mind I ask them to do a few things. First I'll ask them to switch their shoes so the right one is on the left foot and the left one on the right. Then I ask them to walk around for a few minutes. They will usually tell me that it feels strange and I'll ask if it's uncomfortable. Then I'll have them right a sentence using the opposite hand than the one they usually use. They will tell me that it's hard. I'll ask if they feel in control like when they use their dominate hand. They will usually say no. The last thing I will I ask is have you ever watch a movie where the sound and the picture aren't in sync with each other. Kind of like watching those old Kung Foo movies with the voice dubbing. Well that's what my dysphoria is like when talking about my mind and body disconnect.
To further explain I tell them that I never recognized the person I saw in the mirror every day. It's like someone took away my mirror and replaced it with a pane of glass and there was a mime on the other side mimicking my every move. All of this never went away. Day after day, year after year and there seemed to be no way to fix it. I felt like I was in a bubble all the time and could move through reality but I couldn't interact with it.
This left me uncomfortable, scared, anxious, nervous, angry, depressed and stressed.  Every day was an effort to do even the smallest everyday mundane things. Every little thing I was asked to do... always felt like too much. Even though there was no situational cause for this stress, nothing would ever came easily to me. I was always mentally fatigued and everything was a constant burden and a struggle. It's like there was a constant quarrel between my mind and body. I was emotionally dead. I couldn't feel anything because all my time was consumed with this disconnection. I thought everybody felt this way and I had no idea that the rest of the world didn't feel the same way I did.
My mind was constantly thinking and talking to itself without any interruption, I was over-analyzing everything around me. There always seemed to be a second, parallel universe that seemed to be running alongside my direct experience of consciousness: an inner monologue of sorts, and it was extremely toxic and detrimental to me. There was this loud voice in my head that kept me from simply existing in the moment.

[ChasingAlice]

I have explained it as living in your underwear,  doing everything in your life in your underwear,  and hating your body the entire time. Yes, this includes going to school, work,  and everything in-between.

[DebbieA]

Wow Mellisa!  That was perfect.  I felt like you were describing my own experience perfectly.  Thank you so much!

[Tristyn]

I would like to start out by saying that everyone is very unique in their experiences. Everyone's dysphoria is different so I will talk about mine. And just to be clear I'm not talking about body dysphoria but gender dysphoria. I'm sure most have felt a big disconnect between your body and brain. When cisgender people ask me what this feels like I tell them it's hard to explain so with that in mind I ask them to do a few things. First I'll ask them to switch their shoes so the right one is on the left foot and the left one on the right. Then I ask them to walk around for a few minutes. They will usually tell me that it feels strange and I'll ask if it's uncomfortable. Then I'll have them right a sentence using the opposite hand than the one they usually use. They will tell me that it's hard. I'll ask if they feel in control like when they use their dominate hand. They will usually say no. The last thing I will I ask is have you ever watch a movie where the sound and the picture aren't in sync with each other. Kind of like watching those old Kung Foo movies with the voice dubbing. Well that's what my dysphoria is like when talking about my mind and body disconnect.
To further explain I tell them that I never recognized the person I saw in the mirror every day. It's like someone took away my mirror and replaced it with a pane of glass and there was a mime on the other side mimicking my every move. All of this never went away. Day after day, year after year and there seemed to be no way to fix it. I felt like I was in a bubble all the time and could move through reality but I couldn't interact with it.
This left me uncomfortable, scared, anxious, nervous, angry, depressed and stressed.  Every day was an effort to do even the smallest everyday mundane things. Every little thing I was asked to do... always felt like too much. Even though there was no situational cause for this stress, nothing would ever came easily to me. I was always mentally fatigued and everything was a constant burden and a struggle. It's like there was a constant quarrel between my mind and body. I was emotionally dead. I couldn't feel anything because all my time was consumed with this disconnection. I thought everybody felt this way and I had no idea that the rest of the world didn't feel the same way I did.
My mind was constantly thinking and talking to itself without any interruption, I was over-analyzing everything around me. There always seemed to be a second, parallel universe that seemed to be running alongside my direct experience of consciousness: an inner monologue of sorts, and it was extremely toxic and detrimental to me. There was this loud voice in my head that kept me from simply existing in the moment.

Oh my God, Melissa. I feel just like you and Debbie. I feel so moved by this that I can feel tears welling up in my eyes.

Your experiences with gender dysphoria are so uncannily similar to my own and nearly everyone else's on Susan's that I see no turning back to the "fake" me before realizing that this is not "normal," I mean the dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is painful as hell. It is my philosophy that gender dysphoria unknowingly develops from the daily societal pressures and expectations of being a certain way based solely off of what is between our legs and our assigned gender at birth.

I don't think we can make anyone understand anything anymore. We can only explain the best we know how and leave it there for them to decide what to make of it for themselves. Sadly, I think its best to disassociate from some people, even loved ones, if they are getting in the way to your right to peace and fulfillment. I would hope that one day, your wife, Debbie, at least tries to understand what you are going through with gender dysphoria and finally accept you for the real you.

[WorkingOnThomas]

I think of it as feeling like an alien. No one sees *me*, but everyone is (I always think) always looking, always judging, and no matter how hard I try to fit in, I just can't. When I was pretending to be a girl it was actually more bearable in some ways, because I was doing what was expected and kind of/sort of pulling it off (although, not really as it turns out from having talked to some people). Now I stopped with the act, and I'm even more of an alien. Before, I could mostly ignore my body and get on with the act. But since I stopped the act, it's like a costume I can't take off. I hate it. For me, it's like I had gender dysphoria, and now I have body dysphoria. The GD flares up every now and then (read: usually for about half an hour/hour a day) when I get read as female, but the BD is there constantly. I don't know, it's hard to explain.

[Megan.]

Also agree strongly with Melissa, this is completely how I felt, like having a glass wall between me and the world where everybody else lived. I was just a disembodied brain driving some fleshy body around, but it wasn't me.

[Tristyn]

I think of it as feeling like an alien. No one sees *me*, but everyone is (I always think) always looking, always judging, and no matter how hard I try to fit in, I just can't. When I was pretending to be a girl it was actually more bearable in some ways, because I was doing what was expected and kind of/sort of pulling it off (although, not really as it turns out from having talked to some people). Now I stopped with the act, and I'm even more of an alien. Before, I could mostly ignore my body and get on with the act. But since I stopped the act, it's like a costume I can't take off. I hate it. For me, it's like I had gender dysphoria, and now I have body dysphoria. The GD flares up every now and then (read: usually for about half an hour/hour a day) when I get read as female, but the BD is there constantly. I don't know, it's hard to explain.

I hope you don't mind me saying so, but looking at your profile pic on here I would never see you as a woman. You really do look like a good-looking young man to me. You honestly look alot like my therapist.^^

When I think of gender dysphoria, this picture from the What Separates Me From You album by heavy metal band, A Day To Remember really comes to mind:


how to do a screen shot



Phoenix

[WorkingOnThomas]

Thanks, King. But for whatever reason, other people don't see me that way. And that pic isn't a recent one - I've got a freekin' beard for pete's sake and I'm *still* getting ma'm'd. It drives me up the wall. Like I'm standing outside and looking up at the sky, and it's blue, and I *know* it's blue, but everyone else seems to think it's purple with great big green dots - yeah, like an alien.

[Adena]

I have explained it as living in your underwear,  doing everything in your life in your underwear,  and hating your body the entire time. Yes, this includes going to school, work,  and everything in-between.

You have reminded me that I actually had dreams that often turned into nightmares about this - in the dreams I was going out naked everywhere and then would come to a sudden realization of how out of place I looked.

[Adena]

Thanks, King. But for whatever reason, other people don't see me that way. And that pic isn't a recent one - I've got a freekin' beard for pete's sake and I'm *still* getting ma'm'd. It drives me up the wall. Like I'm standing outside and looking up at the sky, and it's blue, and I *know* it's blue, but everyone else seems to think it's purple with great big green dots - yeah, like an alien.

Having lived as a male for so many years it seems to me that confidence in presenting yourself as a male may be the key here. I am not the best person to guide you through how to properly present yourself as confident in your male skin though - I was never a very confident male.. Hopefully, you can find someone in your life that can work with you on this.

Love,
Denali

[Tristyn]

I don't even bother explaining....they won't get it anyway. Just a waste...

[Sebby Michelango]

It's really hard to explain it, because every people experience the feeling and the world difference. But you can tell about your experience. How do it feel? Is it painful? Any picture you can compare with? Is it similar to something people are known with? Do it feel like a torture advice?

For me gender dysphoria is a great pain and struggle. It feels like it would be there forever and the days go very slow. One year can feel like much more...maybe 3 years or even more. I can't recognize myself and neither accept it. I really hates my body and I wouldn't wish it upon people I dislike. Not even terrorist groups, dictators and other violent people. People don't see me in the whole pieces, many of them can just see what I was assigned at birth and some talks about genitals. It's very stressing and a torture for my health general. My soul never get peace and never get over it. I discovered I was transgender for real about 2 years ago, but it feels like 6 years ago. It's the first thing at your mind and the last one when you wake up and go to bed. It also feels like I can't continue the life I'm supposed to live, stuck in time and stuck in the chromosomes. Sometime I have a disgusting feeling in the stomach, I want to continue the life; that I'm supposed to live, not live in this hell. After my look changed, I got even more disconnected to my body. That "puberty" is a disaster. A real disaster. If I worked as a person who torture prisoners, I don't know which methods I would use. But I know what I wouldn't use, that's opposite hormones against a cisperson or changing a cisperson's genitals. That's permanent and do much more damage that people would believe.


Picture credit: LeoRiq - Deviantart

[Missy D]

Here's an odd way of thinking about it  Not correct but just a little story.....

Imagine that the world is completely normal, and as we know it, but you've somehow been given a full on Elvis Presley dress up costume. It's the best one ever!!! It's got rhinestones and a huge belt and wiggling hips, thick black hair and gold sunglasses, the works... It even, somehow, has the magical power to change your voice to his.

Sadly the price for putting it on is that you can't take it off. You aren't Elvis, but the costume is so convincing, so real, that the rest of the world thinks that you are. Everywhere you go people are like: "Oh my God it's Elvis" and "Over here Elvis, sign this autograph"

They think that, because you've got the costume, you have Elvis's personality. And that you like what Elvis likes. Your friends buy you cheeseburgers and put you on first in the Karaoke. To please them, to try and get over the experience, you see if it works for you. You look like Elvis, so why not be Elvis? You go to Memphis and record a few albums, you trade your car for a pink Cadillac and you start calling your BBF Colonel Tom Parker.

But you don't have Elvis's personality. You aren't Elvis. Elvis was Elvis and you are you. There was only one king, he was THE King. You aren't. Sad and lonely little person trapped inside this stupid costume. It gets to you, this being unable to walk down the street without people, even friends and family, calling you Elvis.

When all you want to do is curl up in the corner, shed a few tears, and take off that disgusting, heavy, stifling, ill-fitting, wrong, not true to you costume and emerge from it a normal person. One of them, to be accepted as such. Never to be thought of as Elvis Aaron Presley ever again for as long as you live.

But you're The King. Or they think you're The King. You reach out to undo the costume zip. Then you realise that doing so will kill The King. Thousands will weep bitter tears... You let go. You leave the house and it's back to "Hi Elvis." and "Where's the follow up to Jailhouse Rock?"

And you can't stand it any more. You go for the zip again that night and you finally manage to tug it down just a crack. You go out the next day and someone vicious shouts at you from across the street: "You aren't really Elvis. You're just pretending."

And finally it's over. His words are, somehow, kindness veiled with cruelty. You know that it is possible to stop this. Somehow.

What a flight of fancy lol!!!    xx