I would like to know if our dysphoria gets more intense as we get older.  I think mine has.  There are scary implications for me if it continues to do so.  The hormones seem to have it holding steady where it is, in a rather healthy way.

Progression anyone?  It sure hit a crisis point with me that drove me to the docs....

yes, for me it was brutally progressive

Quote from: stephaniec on March 26, 2014, 07:26:45 PM
yes, for me it was brutally progressive

Definitely this! To the point of damaging my health and will to live.

Oh, absolutely. I just got progressively worse from age 12 or so, and it really started to get bad from age 20. Finally couldn't deal with it anymore in August, last year, age 26, and started hormones.

I could keep it in check until I was 43, when it just blew up in my face.  It was always there, but that little voice in the back of my head became this sad, angry, desperate woman who started screaming all day long.  If I hadn't taken the HRT, I'd probably be crazy or dead by now.

My therapist told me that dysphoria definitely gets worse with age.

It hit me just as I turned 44 too.  Until then it came in waves, but they got stronger and stronger and in the in they swept me away.

I don't think I've ever heard from anyone who said that time made the dysphoria less bearable.

This means I live every moment with passion, knowing the life I have now is a great gift

I am scared of the progression.  It is an overpowering fear of losing my wife.  Right now, I can keep her, I can hold to her boundary comfort zones, for her peace.

Oh boy we sure got dealt a heck of a card hand to play in this world.

yes, quite challenging

Most definitely.  And the longer we ignore it or bury it inside the heavier the baggage becomes.  I could be wrong but I think there's a point where even if we believe it's under control, it's really isn't and our personal lives suffer.

Quote from: Satinjoy on March 26, 2014, 07:23:33 PM
Progression anyone?  It sure hit a crisis point with me that drove me to the docs....

Yes. Medically proven, over and over.

It was for me, because it went from something almost non-existant to something that I felt all the time...

When I was 8 I clearly didn't have a clue about it. With 14 I just felt the need to crossdress...I just started questioning myself seriously after 18...and it got each time worse until I seeked help with 26.

And even on HRT it seems to gets worse sometimes. Sure, when I can see female features in my body I get pretty less disphoric...but staying as a boy while on HRT is always tricking some disphoria...

So, in a way, HRT worsened my disphoria. I feel a big urge to transition, even knowing I can't do it right now, and this will only hopefully stop after I start going out full time and I will only be 100% )I hope  ) recovered of it if I can pass most of the time!

I don't know if my dysphoria was progressive. I hit a low point around twenty years old...which coincided with when I learned I was in fact TS(dysphoria was there but I hadn't self diagnosed as an eight year old.) I spent many years on self improvement, and trying hard to ignore what I knew, which of course didn't address my dysphoria. After taking care of many things it came to be that the dysphoria I have was the largest and indeed hardest thing to address(the elephant in my mind, so to speak.)
The rest is history.

most deffinitly yes. I was absolutly fine untill 31, then.... BOOM all in my face all at once. net that im over 4 months into HRT and i still have moments. mainly when my hormone levels drop......

Well I can't say from a medical point of view as I am not a doctor, however, I would almost bet that most everyone here will tell you "BIG YES". And I started feeling this way at age 11... I myself am just starting to come to terms with this at 56 year old. To a point where I am willing to throw everything stable in my life away to deal with it.  That said however, I'm a train wreck! Or I was four weeks ago, when I just said to myself I need to find help. And believe me I had this stuff buried deep. I never really crossed dressed. (Well, not much), I was so scared of getting caught I never did it much. I tried being straight, gay, and whatever. Somehow the pieces just were not falling into place. My depression was to a point I couldn't even get out of bed and my health was in the toilet. I would go days without a shower. It was bad to say the least.

Tomorrow is my forth therapy session and have to admit I look forward to them every week. While I know there is a long road ahead that is not going to be easy, I am glad I finally got help. Just knowing I am doing something about it has helped a lot. I'm back in the gym... Losing weight... I get up every morning and shower and have a new found attitude I haven't felt for many years.  Anyway, I'm rambling... But a big yes from me for sure...

Dysphoria is erosive.  Your ability to stand up against it gets worn away over time until eventually you have nothing left and you crumble to bits.   However, erosion only happens when one thing tries to stand firm against the flow of a moving force.  When you stop doing that and just go with the flow of who you are naturally, the erosion stops and healing begins.

If there is anything I wish, it is that child me was told this instead of being told all about how you can overcome anything if you set your mind to it.   You can't.  Well, I couldn't.  With dysphoria, I don't think anybody can tbh.

Yes, but it seems to correlate with how well my life is going. If nothing is going right, I feel like this is a huge problem that has been plaguing me for a long time and needs to be resolved. Otherwise it's sadly manageable enough to the point where I try to put off transitioning till a time when conditions are optimal.

Mine's been around since I was 5. It wasn't bad back then, just an occasional questioning. It got worse when I was a teenager and that's when I feel it became actual dysphoria. I ignored it hoping it would go away and decided to focus on career oriented goals since I felt ashamed and my exposure to trans anything was the end of every joke in our culture that wraps up with "Eww! Transsexual!" About a year ago my career kinda stagnated and I had nothing. That's when I finally came out.

I agree with Jen. My dysphoria has been there since I was a child and I think the the mechanism to supress it just gets weaker over time. It could be down to changes in my hormones as I get older, something psychological in the brain, or a mix of both.

My experience is that the dysphoria becomes more intense with age and with stress.  Low dose hrt is the only thing that works for me and even then there is a real temptation or hunger (addictive perhaps but my body craves hrt) to increase the dosage.

Adjusting the dosage to facilitate the path you wish to take is a challenge but it has enriched my life considerably and not destroyed my relationships.

Safe travels

Aisla

I have a theory that human brains developed an ability to ignore gender issues into middle age. Without this, few transgender people would have reproduced (since transition makes it much harder to have kids), and the possibility would have been bred out of our species.

Certainly was my experience. Gender didn't bother me much until I hit my 50s.

I have a trans friend who calls it the "transgender bell" that goes off in our heads after which our transgender becomes impossible to ignore.

Evolution takes a while.  More than however long our modern idea of transition has been an option.  What did people with this condition do in ancient times anyway?   Suicide I guess?  Probably other things?

Anyway, i imagine there are stages of life things that happen which really turn up the volume on dysphoria at older ages.  The 25-35 year olds it's probably marriage/kids/getting settled, 40-50 it may be feeling like life is half over/midlife crisis stuff.   I don't know.  I believe it is just erosive and some people have thicker shells than others and it takes a little longer to wear through for them.