it's kind of weird , but I use to have dreams  about bring locked in large department store and having all the clothes I could dream of. this was late grade school. they were intense dreams .

Like 85+% of the respondents, age 4-5 is when I first recall something was different about me and by age 12-13 the dark cloud of depression/dysphoria stayed like an unwelcome guest for the next 31-32 years. 

When I was 4-5, I remember vividly, putting on mom's black winter leater boots with the rabbit (?) fur lining...they felt sooooo good! Even better with her panythose on my legs!    I wore many of her garments and tried on her makeup many many many times when I was young.  She says she doesnt remember any of this.

Then puberty hit.  Da** T!  While I excelled in sports, I became an introvert into my music and a handful of friends.   My story is so very undifferent from many of your lives!

I guess I put on a good facade when I was younger.  Don't we all put up the false-fronts at any cost to keep anyone from finding out about who we really are on the inside?

Quote from: michelle1 on December 24, 2014, 02:05:17 PM
Like 85+% of the respondents, age 4-5 is when I first recall something was different about me and by age 12-13 the dark cloud of depression/dysphoria stayed like an unwelcome guest for the next 31-32 years. 

When I was 4-5, I remember vividly, putting on mom's black winter leater boots with the rabbit (?) fur lining...they felt sooooo good! Even better with her panythose on my legs!    I wore many of her garments and tried on her makeup many many many times when I was young.  She says she doesnt remember any of this.

Then puberty hit.  Da** T!  While I excelled in sports, I became an introvert into my music and a handful of friends.   My story is so very undifferent from many of your lives!

I guess I put on a good facade when I was younger.  Don't we all put up the false-fronts at any cost to keep anyone from finding out about who we really are on the inside?

yes, the imaginary male

I guess now that I sit down and think about it. I would have to say about 6 or 7.  I knew some girls on the local dance team and wish I could be with them dressed up all pretty.  But did not think much of it. Then in my teen years I can remember trying on clothes whenever I could whenever I was alone.  In my 20's I tried to push the feeling and thoughts deep back as I can remember saying this is not right I am a a guy I need to act like a man. The Mid 30's to early 30's they came back stronger then ever.  This was after I had married needed less to say I have been fighting it since then and here it is two months before I turn 40 I have come to the conclusions that these thought are ok.  I am normal just in the wrong body and that can be fixed.


Vicky

I always knew that i was different but never figured it out until I was about 43 and then it all began. By 50 it had gotten unbearable and I was transitioning.

Quote from: Vicky Mitchell on December 24, 2014, 03:04:02 PM
I guess now that I sit down and think about it. I would have to say about 6 or 7.  I knew some girls on the local dance team and wish I could be with them dressed up all pretty.  But did not think much of it. Then in my teen years I can remember trying on clothes whenever I could whenever I was alone.  In my 20's I tried to push the feeling and thoughts deep back as I can remember saying this is not right I am a a guy I need to act like a man. The Mid 30's to early 30's they came back stronger then ever.  This was after I had married needed less to say I have been fighting it since then and here it is two months before I turn 40 I have come to the conclusions that these thought are ok.  I am normal just in the wrong body and that can be fixed.


Vicky

yea, it never seems to want to go away

I remember being 3 or 4 and playing only with the girls. I knew I felt different. By age 6 my main friends were girls and I remember crushing on a boy for the first time and I knew I would grow up to like guys. I was 9 or 10 when I told my sister I felt like a girl whose body had been swapped...I knew nothing about transsexualism back then. When puberty hit, I told my brother penises were gross and that vaginas looked so much better and were less ugly. I pretended I was mommy in plays and even pregnant by stuffing my shirts when I was younger. By age 14 had major depressive disorder over my parents divorce, dysphoria, bullying because of my effeminacy both physically and emotionally. It has been really hard on me, it takes a toll. But out of all things, invalidation and neglect from my parents hurt the most. It destroyed me.

Quote from: michelle1 on December 24, 2014, 02:05:17 PM
Don't we all put up the false-fronts at any cost to keep anyone from finding out about who we really are on the inside?

Not necessarily. I basically deliberately feminized my behavior for years because being treated like a giant manly stoic dudebro bothered me so much. Even if I couldn't dress how I wanted, I flaunted my love of cute things, social "niceness," Disney, and boy bands / other cheesy teen girl pop for years, almost deliberately so that people would realize that I was not "normal." Being raised in a more gender-neutral environment where I was allowed to be friends with girls, and without either parent forcing masculinity on me, made a big difference. As social progress is made, I expect fewer and fewer people will have to go through that "acting" phase.

yeah going through and being forced to be in that acting phase is part of the reason why I almost took my own life a few times...

So I'm incredibly happy that one day future generations won't have to endure such pain, which is sort of happening now with this new generation 

I was still 3 almost 4 when my mom brought my new sister home... That was the first time I realized there was a difference at all... By the time I had to start school I knew I was different but I never really felt like I should have been with the girls yet I felt the same about the boys... I remember feeling extreme depression and confusion over it all very young... 

At 8-10 I realized I was "gay" I thought but not completely, I felt like I was attracted to both....

I also just had extreme envy and jealousy of the girls that never got better... I liked my cars and erector sets and mechanical things but I also had a secret envy of the way that the girls got along, lived and were treated... It got even worse around puberty when I began to really realize I was gonna have to be a man and I wasnt very happy about it... The girls just kept getting prettier and prettier and I just got more and more uncomfortable with my body... I matured very late and I was never very masculine until well into my 20's... That was a fraud though, despite an honest effort to try to be a man...

I was dressed up all the way by a girl friend of mine and her older sister at 13... They even did my longer hair... It was the best two hours of my life up till then... After that though the shame and guilt were so bad I never saw those girls again...  I was subjected to forced masculinity by the "normal" world...

It was around the early 80's in my early teens at the beginning of puberty that I first heard the word "Transsexual" and "sex change"... I knew then that this was something I wanted to do but it all just seemed so weird and impossible... The negative media coverage and just the way it was referred to at home and on the street was enough and it was even WORSE than the very bad "gayness" I knew I had...

No matter how I tried and I tried very hard I never felt right in the male role... Friends who were just A OK with it all picked up on this and the humiliation was so bad it drove me to totally overcompensate...

I tried the gay thing and I liked it but by then I knew what TS TG TV CD was all about and I never really thought I was "gay" as in a man that likes men.... I knew I wanted to be a woman but it just seemed impossible...

By 35 I had become VERY successful as a male financially anyway.... It was all a fraud though and I began to seriously CD for the first time ever... THAT was eye opening and I felt so much more real and comfortable in the feminine role... I was living a double life though and she wasnt compatible with my job that paid insanely well and also required insane effort mentally and physically... So I killed her for 9 more years and when she came back this time at 44 there was gonna be no stopping it this time even though it was so damn scary and unknown I had to do it or die... 

Eva,  "I had to do it or die..." 

Happened to me just before I turned 44. Money somehow fades in the distance while surviving takes center stage. 

What is dysphoria to a child who cannot clearly articulate what is so troubling about getting a haircut or any number of little triggers?  I simply "knew" i was going to be a mom with babies.  Socialization for many of us includes an endless supply of rules, dictums, and targeted remarks about gender.  Considered a boy, I heard plenty about how poorly we then viewed girls.  After that early misogynistic training things got worse.   My puberty featured even greater segregation but it is impossible for me to isolate what was related to gender and what was generalized teenage angst.  Other people often seem to have seen me more clearly than I saw myself and I began a long period of active repression and denial.  As an adult our lesbian friends considered me a wannabe.  What a colossal waste of time and energy to deny, sigh.   My shadow "she" won in the end!

As an adult I focused on being an activist with a family and a career.   I was an anesthetist so my sarcastic response to myself about the posted question:  When my dysphoria awakened I knew how to gently put it back to sleep. 

What happened for me was that each reawakening period seemed to be harder to handle until I finally came clean and gave up on the man act.

Stuff had been going on for me since I was 6, but it was verbally beaten out of me by my father. I had it all buried away for a long time.

Come age 32 though - look out. Cross-dressing is what brought it on. I had gone out dressed up with my ex, purely for a laugh.

But then the weather changed. It was like a tidal wave smashing through the stone carvings of who I was 'supposed to be' ... Now I am a babe among the rubble :~D

I think I always felt different as a child but had no idea why. I can't really remember if I experienced dysphoria as such.  I moved to London in the 80's and was part of the club scene there, wearing anything I wanted, including a wedding dress, lol. That certainly helped me figure a few things out Unfortunately my first attempt at transitioning aged 19 went horribly wrong and I buried it all with the mantra 'Yes, I wish I'd been born female, but I wasn't so get over it'

One thing is for sure, now aged 46, the dysphoria is terrible and undeniable.  You know what the really weird bit is though?  I know this will sound sooo dumb, but, although I have wished I was born female for as long as I can remember, I only recently figured out I actually AM female. I didn't even realize that was possible, does that make sense?

yes

I don't remember anything at all from when I was four years old... I really became aware of the incongruity when I was 12-13 -- which fueled an anti-religion crusade (being that I was raised extremely fundamentalist, literalist Christian), which lasted until I was about nineteen, when hate turned into guilt when my father began to have health issues, and I spent the next few years trying desperately to "fix" myself. I started studying and practicing Buddhism, in hopes of learning how to destroy my ego... even when I was told numerous times that I was misinterpreting it... I needed it to be about that. Through Hegel and Kierkegaard I found a new appreciation for Christianity -- and although I've given up on my attempts to cure the "evil within", and have come to accept myself and transition, I no longer hate religion like I did in my teens. 

Kierkegaard has been my mentor all my life

I don't know the exact age when it first cropped up, but I'd say probably about 9 years old. For me it has never been a strong negative feeling, but a persistent almost wistfulness about being stuck in the male body I'm in. It always seemed like everything would be better without the parts. From my present perspective, looking back, I think that it actually was a more negative feeling than I recognized, but since it had always been there, discomfort felt like "normal." It makes me a bit sad to think about that, but it's been a good life so far nonetheless. For various reasons (i.e., wife and 3 kids), I don't have even the slightest wish that I could change how anything played out.

It's been all the more confusing because I've never been felt even the slightest sexual attraction to a male. If one is not critically thinking about the range of gender/sexuality combinations, that makes it hard to understand the feelings I was having.

Looking back, though, I have had lots of anxieties about mannerisms that I thought might be too feminine to be "ok." I.e., I have always crossed my legs and held my hands in ways that I feel are somewhat feminine. I was never quite what sure what else to do with my hands. I don't think there's anything telling about the leg-crossing or hand positions, but I think my hypersensitivity about trying to maintain masculine appearances probably meant something.

Anyway, here I am about 28 years later finally realizing that I can be me, even if it's not going to be easy.

I've always been female in my mannerisms and social preferences.  I guess that I was first aware of this around age 5 or 6.  But it's always had to be squashed down due to a very conservative Christian family.  Only when I was 17 did I first begin to crossdress.  The feelings of calm and being right from those experiences led me to know that I was different from every other guy that I ever knew.

I knew when I started middle school and I noticed how different I was from the other boys. I would only talk to girls/women and still prefer that. (all my friends and doctors are female) When I was 16 I hit a breaking point with my depression, sexuality, and cross dressing that i told my mom that how I was born a woman.