Dysphoria Q's

[Sephirah]

For me it's like toothache. But in the soul. So, I guess, soulache, lol.

Entirely body focused. I could care less about social. I don't much care if people saw me as a bucket of fish. It isn't about that, for me. What am I dysphoric about? Not seeing the person I see in my head, all the time. That's as simply as I can put it. It's not just one thing. It's... all the things. It's opening your eyes and being brought back to reality with a bump, when your dreams let you be free, and be yourself.

Could I live without transition? I have to. Don't have a choice. And some nights it makes me want to tear my heart out through my chest. With a rusty spoon. But some days it's a dull ache. Those are the tolerable days.

But it never stops aching. Sometimes, something else hurts more, like breaking your leg kind of takes your concentration away from it. But it never goes away. Ever. And it hurts. But I have to deal with it.

[Sophia Sage]

Yes: there is a HUGE hole in your questions.  You CANNOT get a good picture of this by asking about Dysphoria but ignoring EUPHORIA, where people in their preferred gender feel a buzz of joy.  I don't have strong dysphoria, but I want to be a female because I LIKE being a girl, not because I hate being a male so strongly.

Yeah, the Euphoria's a great source of bliss.  Still riding that wave.

Interestingly, my dysphoria skyrocketed after tasting that bliss, and then having it taken away.  But for me, the euphoria/dysphoria started socially, and then bled through to become a bodily dysphoria, as that was crippling my ability to be gendered female socially.

Given the choice of facial surgery or bottom surgery, I always said I'd take the facial surgery -- in a heartbeat.  I still stand by that, though I'm lucky enough to have had both now.

[November Fox]

For your research 

I have extreme dysphoria. Dysphoria often causes my brain to "lock" certain physical functions of my body, such as not being able to urinate anymore (happens quite frequently, had acute urinary retention for a while) and not being able to sleep. I have anxiety over this in the sense that when I go out, I´m always scared of what´s my body going to do next (is it going to create any fluids or am I going to notice it and not be able to do something about it).

I don´t have social dysphoria in the sense of passing, because people read me correctly, but the body dysphoria does create social anxiety (I do not want to be near people when my body triggers me).

Dysphoria tends to cause an urge to self-harm for me. I´m trying to disable the urge, but as with all mental health problems this is very challenging.

I do not have any gender euphoria atm. I imagine maybe I would have that after surgery.

[Tossu-sama]

I voted "low" since I don't really have dysphoria anymore. I've gotten everything I wanted out of my transition so it's not a huge bother anymore.

That being said, I'd say my dysphoria used to be kinda 50/50 with social vs body. As long as I didn't open my mouth, I passed pretty easily with my appearance but I was still very much aware that my body wasn't how I wanted and needed it to look.

I think the main source of my dysphoria was my chest. I had always hated it and wanted it to be flat. Getting a binder was one of the best things that had happened in my life so far but in the end, the novelty of it wore off and it was more like a crummy band-aid instead of a proper bandage on a severe wound. Top surgery was a dream of over a decade come true.

My dysphoria was constantly present somewhere in the back of my mind. I tried to keep doing stuff in order to not think about it. I played a lot of video games because of it and also tried the bad solution called alcohol, too. Obviously, didn't work.
I didn't really get these huge crippling dysphoric moments but my functionality and willingness to go out was suffering. I suppose it kinda... paralyzed me, in a way. The only social interraction was pretty much getting groceries couple times a week and even that was sometimes a huge pain to do.

Surprisingly, I didn't develop any mental health problems. Well, nothing was diagnosed at least but considering my family background, I think I'm prone to have anxiety/panic attacks and depression but I've only had a very mild case of panic attacks in the past.
However, if I hadn't gone through with my transition, I'm pretty sure I would eventually be riddled with mental health issues. Considering I was already on the path of becoming a shut-in and developing anxiety over social situations. I have even said that I would've eventually ended up doing something to myself. Transition intervened just at the right time for me.

[TransAm]

Before I started transitioning, it was 50/50 most days. I'd forced myself to get as used to hearing 'she' as much as possible over the years to preserve my sanity but I'd lose my **** when someone would go out of their way to use female pronouns (IE: HEY LADIES, YOU GO GUUURRLLL, GOO JOB SISTAH, etc.). The internal rage was stifling.
My body didn't help much, either. I had a very obnoxious hourglass figure. If I wore bigger clothes to try and offset my small waist, I looked sixty pounds heavier. If I wore tighter clothes to try and combat that, I looked... well, undeniably female.
Once I had the stop surgery and a couple months of HRT, I started passing constantly. The social dysphoria died off entirely. The body dysphoria still lingers and comes up from time to time but I attempt to combat it by going to the gym 5 days a week. My shoulders, waist and hips have all settled into a very male pattern.

I don't think I could've lived without transitioning. I was eating excessively to distract myself and the depressive episodes were becoming increasingly frequent/dire by the time I sought intervention.