How does gender dysphoria feel?

[Soapyshoe]

Of course, it's going to be difficult to describe it in words, but I'd like to know more about what gender dysphoria specifically feels like (if you indeed consider yourself to suffer or have suffered from it).

Does it make you panicky? 
Is it just a general, subtle, long-term depression?  Or perhaps a deeper, more gripping depression? 
Can you ever make it go away or feel it less by doing fun things? 
Would you ever describe it as a long-term feeling of unhappiness/nagging feeling, or do you think gender dysphoria has to be something far more severe and painful than that?

Any specific examples would help.

[Nero]

I don't know. I don't know what it is to be without it, so I don't know how it would feel to a 'normal', non-gender dysphoric person.

I guess if I could sum it up - it would be like being born in a small prison cell and not knowing if there's a way out and feeling stuck there for life. You feel trapped and even everyday ordinary things you do inside the cell feel like you're dragging chains around while doing them.
And people see you, but the walls around you are invisible, so they can't see you're trapped and so you just seem really weird to them.

Basically, the main thought present in your head at all times is that you just want out and you see your life passing by and the grains of your time slipping right through your fingers. People are living. You watch them living and you want to run after them and catch up and live too. You just want to smash every clock you see and say 'wait. stop going! let me out. i want to live too. please don't run out of time before i get to live too.'

that's some of what I feel anyway.

[Alyx.]

Wow...

It's what Nero said.

[Alyssa M.]

Like culture shock.

If you've ever been in a foreign country where you don't know the customs and little particulars of life (how to get a ticket for the bus; that you need to slap a bar code on produce before you bring it to the register; that Friday is a national holiday and everything is closed), feel alone and just want to go home, and you're afraid to open your mouth and speak, because you're afraid you'll just make a fool of yourself and be immediately pegged as a pathetic clueless foreigner, and it's just not worth it, so you just shut up, and you just wish you could be as comfortable and at ease as that woman on the bus with the groceries and the fashionable scarf chatting with her friends ...

well, that's as close as anything else in my life has ever felt to gender dysphoria.

[Ms.Behavin]

Hum,  Well it feels normal as there was no other baseline to judge it from.  But it was more a discomfort because things that came naturally to me, well everyone else thought was weird.  Oh I ran like a girl, threw a ball like a girl,  never quite got what it was guys were interested in.  Being punished for playing with girl toys.  I became very very shy because of it.  Gee a 1000 different things where who I was did not fit with who everyone else saw.  Actually quite hard growing up. 

Now of course the exterior appearance matches the internal identification and well Life, is just so much easier now.  no Culture Shock now, which is actually a pretty means to discribe what it seems like.

Beni

[Dante]

I agree with Nero. BTW, that was very deep and truthful.

In addition to Nero's statement:

I always feel very deeply depressed, and feel like nothing is worth it while I'm trapped in this invisible prison. Why should I try so hard to live in a world that doesn't care about me? All it does is lock me up, again and again. Although, somehow I manage to get up every morning and go to school. Maybe that's just because of the sheer monotony of it; I've been doing that my whole life, so I just keep my vicious cycle going.

Doing fun things makes it a little better, but I can never shake that depression that lurks just beyond my reach. I cry a lot, and get really angry a lot, too. I listen to music to get rid of that excess emotion. I listen to a LOT of music, and I always have. It saves me just a little bit, even if sometimes the theme of a song can make me feel worse.

Anyway, I think I'm done describing my emo life. One thing that really annoys me, though, is that my friends all know I'm depressed and 'emo', but none of them ever bother to ask why.

[Janet_Girl]

Loneliness and isolation.  Swelling rage at everything that is opposite of how you feel about yourself.  Being forced into a mold that isn't right.

I still fight against things that a male-oriented.  But sometimes you are the only one to do what is required, so you become the Handywoman.

Janet

[Soapyshoe]

I always feel very deeply depressed, and feel like nothing is worth it while I'm trapped in this invisible prison. Why should I try so hard to live in a world that doesn't care about me? All it does is lock me up, again and again. Although, somehow I manage to get up every morning and go to school. Maybe that's just because of the sheer monotony of it; I've been doing that my whole life, so I just keep my vicious cycle going.

Were you confused about your depression?  If so, for how long?  At any point did you attribute your depression to not being able to act on your desire to be a different gender? 

Assuming the answer to the above is "yes", what specific behaviors/thoughts/feelings rid you of the dysphoria, and how would you describe the sensation you feel/felt when the dysphoria lifts?

Hum,  Well it feels normal as there was no other baseline to judge it from.  But it was more a discomfort because things that came naturally to me, well everyone else thought was weird.  Oh I ran like a girl, threw a ball like a girl,  never quite got what it was guys were interested in.  Being punished for playing with girl toys.  I became very very shy because of it.  Gee a 1000 different things where who I was did not fit with who everyone else saw.  Actually quite hard growing up. 

I'm seeing this pattern come up a lot: the inability to understand what is was that the other boys were feeling, and a strong identification with other girls due to feeling very similar to them.  This then leads a person to be in a sort of "limbo" where they don't fit in, which supports with the "culture shock" metaphor (you could literally call it "gender shock").

Was there ever a point where you tried to be male, internalized any masculine values, and felt horrible as a person as a result?  Did the feeling that you female ever leave you? 

And how would you describe your long-term emotional response to the world?  Was it mild depression?  Dissociation?  Anger?

How did you cope with the feelings you always had?

[V M]

I'm not sure who to blame. God? Mother nature? Myself? In any case I feel totally F***ED over.
Nero gave a good description of how I feel often times. The depression, loneliness and isolation described by Janet and others rings true for me also.
I just try to find something to be happy about most of the time and stay busy.
 

[Birdie]

It's a black-and-white musical romantic comedy in which the ghost of Marilyn Monroe gets trapped in the body of Fred Astaire due to an ancient voodoo curse. The only way for Marilyn to escape is to seek out the help of a team of wise old witchdoctors who have the super secret spell to bring inner beauty to the outside.

There is lots of singing and dancing and fabulous costumes!

And they all live happily ever after. YAY!

-Birdie

[Soapyshoe]

I'm not sure who to blame. God? Mother nature? Myself? In any case I feel totally F***ED over.
Nero gave a good description of how I feel often times. The depression, loneliness and isolation described by Janet and others rings true for me also.
I just try to find something to be happy about most of the time and stay busy.

I feel like acceptance is better than blame, primarily because you cannot profit from blaming anything, but you can emotionally advance from acceptance.  By acceptance, I mean that you cannot change the past, but in the moment you can simply accept the world as it is and strive to make a better future. 

I've often felt screwed over, but I realize that, as an adult, it's up to me to gain the courage and skills necessary to shape my future into the way I want it to be.

Empowering my beliefs in this way help me to lift my dysphoric feelings a lot, as if where I am now doesn't matter, but rather, where I'm heading matters.

[Sephirah]

Hmm... well, for me, I guess the best analogy is like the rejection an organ after transplant surgery. Only it's my mind rejecting my body.

Most times it feels like I'm wearing a costume. A permanent costume that I can't take off. It's like... being in a play and playing the wrong part, having the wrong script and being unable to memorise the lines because they just don't make sense.

Depression... not so much, largely because I know that eventually I'm going to fix what's wrong. But sometimes it is frustrating... mostly that comes from the rest of the world's interaction, because they only see the role, not the person forced to play it. And when I step out of character inadvertantly, the results are... less than pleasant.

There's a fundamental dissociation, sometimes to the point where I look in the mirror and it takes several seconds before I recognise the reflection. Particularly after using introspection to explore my true identity. That can be very unnerving and confusing, and when accompanied by physical sensations that current anatomy dictates shouldn't actually be there (Phantom Female Syndrome, if you like)... that dissociation is reinforced to the point where I wonder if I'm losing my mind.

I don't hate my body. I just don't feel like it's mine. I dislike the fact that I'm stuck with it for the moment, but mostly I just don't feel the sense of integration... it's like I'm one of those Russian dolls, with me being stuck inside someone else, someone I don't recognise.

[Tina2]

I Ashling, very good questions and thought behind your reasoning.
"but I'd like to know more about what gender dysphoria specifically feels like"

everyone has mentioned all accurate things about how it feels, I would add that for me I am tense all the time, I either grind or bite down on my teeth to the point that my teeth and jaw hurt, I think this is because I can not do anything about my dysphoria right now.
I do find like that by keeping busy in productive things I can calm down a bit, I keep so into things that I have become very good at many things, I have my own business and website and it does very well, I have license for shiatsu massage since 1986, I am an expert in several forms of martial arts, I am an expert on local trees and plants and I play the piano and compose, totaly self tought, and the list goes on.  I am convinced if I did not have gender dysphoria then I would not have the mind to do all of these things the way I do, I am also married and I have 1 daughter and 1 grand daughter, my wife helps a lot with the way I feel sometimes, in what ever way she can.

"Does it make you panicky? 
Is it just a general, subtle, long-term depression?  Or perhaps a deeper, more gripping depression? "

I have had a few panic attacks but I can control that so far.  I do experience depression and it varries in degrees of severity but one thing that is always there is the feeling that I am different on the inside, the outside does not match the inside, I and every time I see in my case a natural girl, I think that is me, or I could have been like that if not for my birth defect, but no one can see it and that creates conflict inside for me, some times it gets so bat that I do not want to work or anything.

"Can you ever make it go away or feel it less by doing fun things? "

For the most part I can not make it go away but I did experience a time that I became so happy from some things that had happened to me that I was distracted by that for a few days but only distracted, for the most part if I keep busy I can keep distracted too but I always feel the tence feeling in my jaws and sholders.  I think it might get worst but I am trying to do things to keep it uder control, things like telling my wife last year and other things that allow me do have some feminine aspects in my life, I am also making arrangements to spend more time trying to relax and accept the fact that I am what I am and there is nothing wrong with that, it is infact a birth defect and nobodys fault.  The more I seem to open up and be myself and to make goals then it gives me some reasons to relax, my rambling is done, aloha.

Tina

[Cindy]

Hi
I like Nero's reply. In many ways he has hit the nail on the head. The isolation and the body prison. I hated the book and the movies of the 'Man in the Iron Mask', often felt it was for ime. The isolation, the lack of acceptance, the hate. All for ignorance.
And I don't identify as male so it is disrespect to identify me as one

As many of you know

[Northern Jane]

For me the feelings were simply confusion and desperation, desperation at being "left behind".

From earliest childhood I thought I was a girl and I was quite happy. By age 8 I realized I had a problem, that my body wasn't right and people (adults) were trying to push be to "be like other boys" which I TOTALLY did not understand - I thought my body would be okay when puberty started. That didn't happen and the nagging annoyance started to turn to panic. The girls were going in one direction, boys in the other, and I was left stuck in the middle and that is NOT where I wanted to be. Then I was angry and scared. I was angry because no one would help me (doctors didn't know bugger all in those days) and I was scared because some people thought I was nuts (for claiming to be/should have been a girl).

My teens were rough. Away from home I often lived as a girl and that was great but around home where I was "supposed to be a boy", people thought I was a ->-bleeped-<- or at least "strange". By my 20's everything had kind of faded into hopelessness and I was on the verge of offing myself until a surgeon came along who rescued me and gave me a new life in 1974. After that everything was great. My new life fit like a comfy old slipper and everything fell into place as totally normal. That was 35 years ago.

[Buffy]

I found Gender Dysphoria to a continuation of depressive episodes, which would last both longer and deeper everytime, until eventually it took over my life, my thoughts, my hopes and my dreams.

I thought about it during the day and cried about it during the night, every second, every minute of every hour of every day was like living a surreal existance. One in which I was trying to function live in a role that seemed alien to me, it was a times an existance trapped in a nightmare.

I was always depressed, shy, introverted and unable to make lasting relationships. My communication skills where poor, I could never understand boys, but afraid to talk to girls, simply because I was deeply jealous of them.

In truth it was simply a living nightmare, trapped in not only the wrong body, but the wrong life. As much as I tried to be happy and content, I knew I was lying to myself, family and friends and that denial hurt just as much as the GID that plauged me through out my life.

I once decsribed it to my best friend as waking up and being left handed, whereas I knew I was right handed, nothing feels right, things are awkard, you struggle on a daily basis to do the simple things and this leads to deep frustration.

8 years post op, all that pain and depression is a distant memory, no longer depressed, no longer introverted, confident, able to form relationships and communicate with people, no longer jealous and happy in my own body, living a life I can relate to.

Gender Dysphoria is a destroyer of souls, it eats away at the very being that you are not.

Rebecca

[Jeatyn]

Everything just feel wrong, all the time. I feel mostly frustration, I can't do the things I want to do or even something as simple as wearing the clothes I want to wear. I panic about things that normal people don't even think twice about. Getting on a bus and going shopping is a huge ordeal for me, as is using the phone.  I feel uncomfortable and awkward in this body and it projects onto everything else in my life.

[kae m]

For me it felt like I had all of these expectations I had to meet, but that I never truly could.  It's a lot of stress to constantly turn over in your head all the learned subtleties of being something other than yourself.  I would constantly be thinking about how I said things, what I said and when, how I sat, how I walked, what emotions I allowed through and when, what I wore, how I related to people, how people saw my body, and so on.  I tried so hard to just be a normal boy, I just didn't understand why I had to, other than "that's what I'm supposed to be".  The stress made me unstable, constantly panicked, depressed, and fearful.  Thinking everyone was staring at me, judging me, and knowing it is all just an act.

And then there's the physical dysphoria, which for me is a wholly separate thing.  I've learned to tune out a lot of that, but every day my body becomes less acceptable to me.  Like it literally feels like certain things "feel" in the wrong place (like the sensation of a touch), or shouldn't have feeling at all.  And I'm not sure if it's related, but I constantly bump into things, my theory is because my brain isn't wired to deal with how my body is actually structured.  I hit my shoulders into door frames or people in crowded spaces all the time, at least I'm getting better at avoiding that and it isn't as distressing as the "why am I feeling that there?" feeling.

[mtfbuckeye]

For me it's a mixture of free-floating anxiety, occasional panic attacks and frequent crying jags. I feel isolated, lonely, and misunderstood, and every day I think "maybe I should have been a girl" and/or "would I be happier as a woman?"

It never ends... It's a constant cacophony in my consciousness.   

[Beyond]

Wow, I don't think I've ever heard this question phrased this way on a forum before.

Everything just felt wrong, all the time. I feel mostly frustration, I can't do the things I want to do or even something as simple as wearing the clothes I want to wear. I panic about things that normal people don't even think twice about. Getting on a bus and going shopping is a huge ordeal for me, as is using the phone.  I feel uncomfortable and awkward in this body and it projects onto everything else in my life.

This is pretty close to what my life was like before transition. I can *really* relate to the overwhelming feeling of wrongness.  The social dysphoria more or less disappeared after going full-time.  And the major physical dysphoria was greatly lessened by 2 steps: 1.FFS-2005  2. SRS/BAS-2007.   I still have minor physical issues, but I try to equate them with the physical issues that all women have.

I have no complaints.  Life is good.