Dysphoria (Is this normal?)

[findingreason]

I keep getting this and I think it isn't real, but I just wanted to see if this is normal or not. But occasionally, I will suddenly get a horrible feeling like there is this ghost image in my mind that I feel around my body of what it should be, and then the current signals I receive, known as my current body mismatch, and then it is like short-circuiting a battery, and I suddenly am ready to go insane trying to suppress and say those "ghost" images aren't real. During the time I just want it to go away, but it doesn't. Is that normal?

[Kaitlyn]

Are you saying you sometimes feel like you've got a female body, and the male one you can see is kind of... in the way?  Like it really, physically, doesn't belong?  Like you've got a suit or some kind of coat or padding on?  I get like that sometimes.

EDIT: It's really bad (good?) at night or in the morning, when I'm trying to sleep and there's not a lot of sensory input.  If I have to get up, it's a complete "WTF?" when my body doesn't jive.  It's like waking up in someone else's skin, and it's really upsetting.

[pennyjane]

hi findingreason.  my guess is that it's about as normal as it can be, for people with a mind and body out of congruence.  the symptoms you describe sound exactly like dysphoria to me...the truth is, i don't know what person could live this turmoil without developing a dysphoia.  the good news is, the dysphoria is treatable and often curable...or at least brought into long term remission.

you aren't crazy...in fact one might see your dysphoria as a sign of your sanity.   sounds like you're acting pretty normally under some pretty wierd circumstances.  move forward, deal with it openly and honestly.  God bless with...

[Seshatneferw]

Someone else has that too? Cool.

I don't mean the dysphoric part of it (the truly awful feeling of having a wrong body, which luckily hasn't been too frequent for me),  but rather the ability to feel both a male and a female body more or less at the same time. That ability has been a major factor in keeping me sane over the years (well, for my definition of 'sanity', anyway ). I can also sort of concentrate on either of them and mostly phase out the other, even while knowing that only one of them is 'real' in the physical sense. I think it's mostly a matter of re-mapping the sensations, although there may well be some sort of connection to the phantom limb phenomenon. But it seems to be somewhere on the border of consciousness, since practice over the years has made it easier to 'select' the primary set of sensations.

  Nfr

[Northern Jane]

For my whole life I have known what my body was supposed to feel like and how it varied from what it was supposed to be. I never told anyone that back in the 60's or 70's for fear they would lock me in a padded cell!

Even after SRS (1974) I could still feel the differences and where things were still a bit out of place. It was a whole lot better but still didn't quite match the 'hardwired' arrangement.

It is only in the last few years that a few (very  few!) medical researchers have begun to uncover the differences between physical brain-mapping and physical reality. It is understandable how an amputee can experience phantom sensations in a limb that no longer exist but only recently that they have acknowledged that some people experience sensations in body parts that have NEVER existed.

[Wendy]

Well I can move 180 degrees within minutes.  It gets real bad many nights.  I lay there awake wandering how will I resolve this.  I frequently just cry silently.  Some days I feel I can just be a fence walker and survive.  Society allows little expression for genetic males so that I already draw suspicion towards myself.  How insane I do feel.  I have had trouble functioning in society for about 5 years.  I just want to be alone and get this stuff resolved. I have developed paranoia.  Do people know?  Why did they say that to me?

Well the girl inside me seems very real to me even though no one else sees her. I continue to suppress her because it just does not make any sense.  Around and around my mind goes arguing with itself.

It does help to talk to people that understand.

K

[pennyjane]

hi wendy.  you sound pretty "normal" to me as well...normal for a person of unsure gender that is.  i know, people get tired of hearing it...but i sure do hope you've engaged the services of a therapist experienced with gender issues.  if you haven't i hope you do...soon.  if your dysphoria has reached the point of causing you to be functionally impaired in your everyday life it's definately time to take some affirmitive action to deal with it.  friends are great, as i said earlier, but most of us aren't blessed with loving friends who also know alot about transness...especially when that transness is yet undefined in your own mind.

it's not right that you cry yourself to sleep at night...and it's not necessary!  there are answers inside of you and you can get at them.  you just have to work at it and be able to take advice from others...and especially from yourself.  turn that advice into action.  you deserve to become yourself, whatever that may be...it's your birthright and yours to claim.  God bless with...

[findingreason]

Well I can move 180 degrees within minutes.  It gets real bad many nights.  I lay there awake wandering how will I resolve this.  I frequently just cry silently.  Some days I feel I can just be a fence walker and survive.  Society allows little expression for genetic males so that I already draw suspicion towards myself.  How insane I do feel.  I have had trouble functioning in society for about 5 years.  I just want to be alone and get this stuff resolved. I have developed paranoia.  Do people know?  Why did they say that to me?

Well the girl inside me seems very real to me even though no one else sees her. I continue to suppress her because it just does not make any sense.  Around and around my mind goes arguing with itself.

It does help to talk to people that understand.

I remember I was like that a year and a half ago or something, I would just cry every night almost in bed, just wishing I would die in my sleep, because I already figured out that there was no hope of waking up the opposite gender.

If you are having trouble like that in society, and haven't seen a gender therapist, please do so. I can understand you're position in society right now, it definitely isn't easy.

We're always here for you .

[Nicky]

I get similar feelings to you findingreason.

For some reason it tends to hit me in the shower. I'm cleaning myself and feeling the water run over me and I have this split thing where I am expecting to feel curves or it feels like the water is running over my curves but they are not there.

It is not nice.

[findingreason]

The funny thing is I don't even know right now if there is a girl; I've found almost every reason to believe there isn't....it just feels like she isn't even there, and I feel hollow for it, like I get along in groups of guys, but I can't ever accept the idea that I may even be a guy....it's disgusting to me. I'm just not, but I don't know if I'm a girl either.

I realize that my lack of confidence came partially from when my mother took her fury out on me in her way of denying everything, and coming up with everything to say I am a guy....I think it's possible that her words are still affecting me. I thought this summer I had a
better grip of my self away from her, but she went and ruined it.....gosh I hate her.

As far as society for me, I don't have problems per se.....like I get along with everyone, and make plenty of friends....but I am always on myself mentally in public, wondering how the heck I should act, since I don't even know who I am. I am usually quiet, and difficult to get into groups where people are just letting go having a good time (even in GLBT groups I have problems), but I am doing it more in recent days.

[Seshatneferw]

For some reason it tends to hit me in the shower. I'm cleaning myself and feeling the water run over me and I have this split thing where I am expecting to feel curves or it feels like the water is running over my curves but they are not there.

Thanks for the flashback to, well, this morning. 
Moments like that are definitely 'not nice', but at the same time being able to feel the body the way 'it should be' makes it so much easier to deal with all this.

The funny thing is I don't even know right now if there is a girl; I've found almost every reason to believe there isn't....it just feels like she isn't even there, and I feel hollow for it, like I get along in groups of guys, but I can't ever accept the idea that I may even be a guy....it's disgusting to me. I'm just not, but I don't know if I'm a girl either.

So try not to worry about it. Give yourself time, try to be you instead of what others expect you to be, and see where it goes.

  Nfr

[sd]

Mark me down as another who is going through this.
Sometimes it is a blessing, other times, hell.

[Sephirah]

I keep getting this and I think it isn't real, but I just wanted to see if this is normal or not. But occasionally, I will suddenly get a horrible feeling like there is this ghost image in my mind that I feel around my body of what it should be, and then the current signals I receive, known as my current body mismatch, and then it is like short-circuiting a battery, and I suddenly am ready to go insane trying to suppress and say those "ghost" images aren't real. During the time I just want it to go away, but it doesn't. Is that normal?

This happens to me an awful lot when I wake up, or when I'm semi-conscious after a dream. I guess it's a little like amputees who have phantom limb sensation. Occasionally, it feels so real that I can feel physical sensations that... are currently physically impossible (breast weight etc).

Going to the bathroom first thing after waking, or in the middle of the night, and catching sight of my reflection in the bathroom mirror... half the time I have to do a double take and think for a few minutes who the reflection is, and why I'm not there.

Then I remember and it's like... *groan* "Oh yeah... damn it."