I struggle with the question about whether I truly have gender dysphoria or something else. I'm trying to learn more about myself. However, I have no frame of reference to compare myself with. Please share anything you can or at least compare or contrast with what I'm about to write ...

What does/did gender dysphoria feel like for you?

Here's how I used to feel:
I was restricted (by ? don't know) in expressing my feelings through my own natural emotions of crying, laughing, talking, etc. I was also restricted (again ? - social pressure, maybe) in my ability to express my individuality through clothing, shoes, colors, etc. I found it very unfair to be excluded from everything that girls my age used to do. I did not like any of the men I saw in the world, never saw anyone as my role model or my hero, and never wanted to be one of them. I found that nobody understood me because they assumed my needs and wants and preferences and inclinations solely based on their label for me which was boy or man. As I grew older, I began to hate how I looked, particularly starting at puberty. I did not want anyone to look at me. I was very uncomfortable if anyone saw that I was losing hair on my head. When I lost most of my hair by age 25, I became extremely sad to the point of total despair. My life was of very little worth to society except as a workhorse, a protector, a provider, etc, which brought no joy to me. When women at work hung out with each other, talked about their nails, shoes, clothes, etc, my heart broke every second and I was constantly on the verge of crying and blowing up. My sorrow was painful enough to give me chest tightening, breathlessness and headaches.

Can you relate with any of these? What else did you feel?

That's pretty much it. For me it was a feeling of intense sadness thinking about the life I could not have. Life as male was dreary and flat. It felt like punishment and a complete waste. As I grew older I came to realize that there would be no next time to get it right. This was it, this is the one life. I was trying desperately to fix myself, basically be a man, but failed miserably.  Among other things I tried to have a relationship with a woman but it very quickly became clear that it did not and would not work. Being intimate with her was a totally depressing experience. That was the final straw. I told her it wasn't working, went home and started planning for my transition.

I would concur with you MariaMx.
I have found it difficult to connect. Relationships never worked and sex as a total failure, not due to kit.
I have always felt female and desperately tried to keep these feelings in check until a recent breaking point.
I look at beautiful women and want to be like them not with them.
I want to be myself and I know that is not how I look in the mirror.
I hate any thing male and what it does to my body.
I hate the anger and rage that I have to keep in check
I tried living the lie and it broke me
I read about the changes that E makes to others and I feel a conection with them

I know it might not be the answer I need, but to live the rest of my life without at least exploring these feelings would be a lie to me.

Anyway this is how  feel.

The thing about the sex was that it didn't appeal to me at all and all I could thing about was being her :/ I had tried for years to make my life work, but the harder I tried the more miserable I became. I was so sure I would snap out of the GD if I could only fall in love and get me some. As it turned out though it had the totally opposite effect. It became crystal clear to me that I couldn't be fixed.

Walking home the next morning I felt happy for the first time in a very very long time. I was still not sure exactly what giving up the fight and going with the flow would mean and where it would take me, but what ever or where ever it was it would sure beat killing myself which had been on my mind for a long time already.

I gave the girl the it's-not-you-it's-me speech, which for once was true I guess. We got along great so we stayed friends. She was one of the first I came out to less than a year later. Telling her felt really good because I felt horrible about the way I ended it without a real explanation. To this day we are still close friends.

 Gender dysphoria was different to me, I suspect, than most. By my nature, I am not very stressful - I rarely feel impacted by the pressures of life, handling most things with ease. The greatest resistance I usually face is finding the motivation to do something, or getting over how boring a task is.

Because of that, gender dysphoria catches me off-guard. It is the only factor that can truly stress me out - increased heart rate, stressed and sometimes forced breathing patterns, intense jealousy, and often anger or sorrow, depending on my mood. I could look at a girl displaying her cleavage, and immediately feel my chest tighten, my heart rate increase, and feelings of resentment and jealousy set in. Or it could be regret, or sadness. It's often resentment and jealousy for that particular piece, though.

... and it's worth noting that I still deal with that. It's actually the reason I dreamt about a witch, and a deal I made to get boobs, just this morning.

It's not just body-envy that contributed to dysphoria, though, of course. A very large factor was being excluded from being friends with girls - they just flat-out didn't want me around up until high-school, but by that time the damage was done. I was allowed to hang out with boys, but I was more physically present than mentally and emotionally there. I drifted through my days practically not existing: I interacted with people, sometimes unaware that I was even doing it, I got my grades, I went home, I slept.

By middle-school, I referred to myself formally as a "ghost" - a title I still carry around with false pride. I gave it to myself in honour of my ability to go completely unseen by hundreds of people, and to be very forgettable to the few that do acknowledge my existence.

Gender dysphoria came from every aspect of my life, causing different emotions and physical symptoms for each circumstance from which it came. It arose socially, jealously, introspectively, and pragmatically. I couldn't escape it, and I knew that it would only get worse over time - at twelve, I predicted that dysphoric thoughts would consume more and more minutes out of each day, until I could no longer think of anything else. It would also become more intense, especially after that point, where it would rise exponentially. This is known as a positive feedback reaction.

I used to deal with dysphoria in one of two ways. The first way involved using anger; I would put on some death metal, some hard rock, or some depressing emo music, and I would proceed to daydream about various things. Often, this was about having fantastical magic powers, and being able to kill many people and destroy cities. The amount of anger I held inside at my peaks felt strong enough to destroy the walls of my bedroom all by itself, without magical powers. The emotion was very tangible, and powerful, and far beyond the point of creating violent desires. It filled the air like the heat of summer.

The second way was more healthy, and in my latter years (high school and post) was far more widely used. Instead of tapping into my incredible rage, I used my sadness to find release instead. I would usually turn on some emo music, and spend a night crying, hours at a time. So far, my record for solid crying stands at a period of five hours. I enjoyed crying thoroughly, and I sought out new ways to make myself cry when it started to become difficult with older resources. The anime Elfen Lied was the most helpful I have ever found, and to this day, its song Lilium can make me cry with ease, even though I have heard it over a hundred times.

My sorrow was also tangible. It had and still has a particular smell to it, and it feels very nostalgic because most of my more vivid childhood memories involve me crying.

Both emotions distanced me from humanity, reinforcing how different I felt, and strengthening my contempt for human beings as a race. I haven't recovered from my dysphoria yet - I know it's still a present force in my life, but it has nowhere near the influence it once had - and I'm not sure that I ever will. I hope that I may... but I face the possibility that I will always carry resentment for humans, to some degree.


Afterthought: I forgot to mention how the use of my voice affected me, so here it is: I found it very difficult to speak at twelve years old until full-time at eighteen, additionally. My deepened voice made me cringe with every uttered note, so I often refrained from using it. It was a source of great emotional pain, with many physical symptoms. It was probably the third-largest source of my dysphoria, with the ones above it being my jealousy of other girls, and primarily my hatred for my own body and its appearance.


And ... that's what comes to mind at the moment. I expect my reactions are very different from many, but such is the nature of being and organic life-form. 

This is by no means a comprehensive list of how I felt but it's the things that really stick in my mind

As a child I wanted to play with girls toys in a girly way, instead I would play with my boys toys in a girly way & as soon as anyone in my family asked what I was playing I would respond "I'm playing war", as I had 2 older brothers I knew what was expected of me as a boy. My favourite pastime was baking cakes with my mum.

Somewhere around early teens (or maybe a bit earlier) I was angry & upset when I realised that i'd not develop breasts & I also noticed that boys could be fun to be around (say no more). I found that wanted to join in with girl chat but as with teenage girls any female conversations stopped when a boy was near.
I found myself becoming jealous & angry with the young women around me just because they were young women & I wasn't.
Also when my mum took me clothes shopping I would be casting furtive glances at the womens clothes thinking how nice they were, I would then get sulky as my mum forced me to try on male clothes.

As I reached either mid or late teens I had a revelation when I found out that it was possible to have a sex change, until then I thought that I was gay & that all gay people wanted to be the opposite gender.
If an employer ever gave me a hard time about my health issues then I would respond with comments about how unfair it is that they give women time of for choosing to have a child but they punish me for being born with hereditary illnesses, I now realise that this was due to my jealousy of women being able to give birth & bugger al to do with them getting time off for it.
The first time I fully dressed as female I felt so comfortable that the last lingering douvbts were removed, all that was left was for me to spend the next 15yrs or so trying to remove my fear of how my family would react.

Throughout my life there have been a few constant things that have always tried to remind me that I should be female:

I don't like what i've got between my legs, it's just wrong

I've spent most of my life worrying about the way I talk with my hands almost as much as my mouth, I spent most of my male life with my hands in my pockets because I was so worried about my hands giving me away.

Whenever other people were around i'd have to give more thought to how I walked, as soon as I was alone i'd start reverting to walking in a more feminine way.

Womens shoes aren't just something to cover & protect your feet, many of them are works of art that should be admired, when you see them in a shop window they should draw your eye to them & hold it until you've walked into a lampost, you know that a pair of shoes are a work of art when they make your feet tingle with happiness & sing with joy
(sorry, but I appear to have gotten carried away in that last bit).

I'm sure that i've left out loads but it's almost 4 am & my brains starting to conk out

For me, it was a never ending nagging that I was not mean to be male.  Sometimes it is all that would occupy my ever waking moment.

Sometimes it was as if I had been oppressed by a "demon".  That was what I used to call it.  It began when I was a child, but I never really knew what was going on.  I thought it was normal.

Then I heard Christine Jorgensen.  And that began the research in to transsexualism.  I sought out the Gender Institute in San Francisco, but they would not help me because I had never lived as a woman.   I fought off and on for years until I was about 30.  It was then I tried to transition but I need to work, so back in the closet I went.

I lived in hell for the next 24 years, trying to be what the world saw.  And I tried to end the pain with suicide.  Three times.  But the gods had plans.  And so here I am.  I am happier now than all those years.

Only one step to go.  When that happens, I am unsure.  But it will be a joyous day, regardless of any pain.

Thank you all for sharing! Kelly and Jane, your examples remind me of exact situations from my past.

> A very large factor was being excluded from being friends with girls
...
> any female conversations stopped when a boy was near. ... I found myself becoming jealous
...
> I have found it difficult to connect. Relationships never worked

I find that all of these examples are very much interlinked in my case. They form the root cause of my gender dysphoria.

I used to feel very offended, unworthy, unloved, unwanted, inferior, hopeless, etc as a direct result of the exclusion scenarios you've described which played out over and over again throughout my life until my transition. Eventually, my final decision to transition a few years ago resulted from my ultimate exclusion from my profession by women who formed the majority at my workplace.

Nobody excludes me the same way anymore now. This is probably one of the biggest benefits I've got from passing. They don't know I'm not genetically female. This is exactly why passing was so important to me during my transition, the rationale for which I found hard to explain to the out-and-proud people who ridiculed me for focusing on passing. My gender dysphoria would have actually worsened if I were not passing or if I were outed previously and I would have killed myself.

It seems to me now that my dysphoria was primarily a cry out for social rights, right to expression, right to be part of some social community I connected with, and the basic freedom to just be myself.

I was denied those social rights as a result of gendering by others who saw me. Specifically, they saw my features and gendered me based on gender stereotypes in their minds. Then based on that gendering, they denied me those rights. As a result, I disliked those specific features of my body which other people used for gendering me. I developed anxiety if anyone saw or could see those features. And I viscerally envied people, specifically women my age, who did not have those features and hence could exercise the same rights I was denied.

So dysphoria for me wasn't originally as much about feeling trapped within a wrong body as it was about the social consequences, which I immediately tracked back to the causes which were features of my own body. I had already made that connection between my features and the way I was being treated at a very early age of around 3 or 4. Hence while I never exactly felt I'm in the wrong body, I always felt I had unacceptable features invading my body which became even worse with puberty.

I could never pinpoint this rationale while I was suffering from that dysphoria. All I could think about then was to somehow get over it. My mind lacked clarity. And I was unwilling to admit a lot of things to myself.

Now I see the significance of that exclusion and the resulting social isolation. Human beings are social animals. Healthy well-fed human infants left isolated for too long often die. Attachment is very important. And I had none, all thanks to my features!

My gender as visible to others was resulting in my isolation. Isolation was like a death sentence. My mind was crying out for help, with a fight or flight response against my gender. That was my dyphoria. However, I struggled with that, not being able to tell anyone about it, with the fear that something even worse could happen - that's how I actually suffered the most, even more than the dysphoria itself.

I don't know if my experience counts as gender dysphoria. Perhaps I'm not even trans in the traditional sense of having a female brain. I'm really not sure. I don't really mind what label gets applied to me.

For a long time, I believed that my dysphoria was a sexual fetish that I took too far. It was the reason I was previously unsure whether I was doing the right thing by transitioning. However, I still get sexually aroused when I look good, and I don't have dysphoria anymore (as long as nobody else sees me as anything other than a woman). Besides, I recently learned that genetic women are aroused too when they believe they look attractive. So I can finally set aside sexual fetish as the reasoning for my dysphoria and think about my dysphoria on its own as a separate problem.

I revisited this whole thing because my sexuality became depressed at high levels of estrogen and I did not like that one bit. I needed to question all of my decisions right from the start. And this has been a very useful exercise! So thank you!

Quote from: noneatall on July 30, 2012, 03:57:27 AM
I don't know if my experience counts as gender dysphoria. Perhaps I'm not even trans in the traditional sense of having a female brain. I'm really not sure. I don't really mind what label gets applied to me.

Noneatall, it is SO gender dysphoria.

You are telling my story. I haven't undergone any transition, so I'm still in the state where trying to make friends with women is awkward. It is so frustrating, lonely, etc., that the people whom I most want to fit in socially see it as awkward to be with me, a male bodied person. (Married to a woman, which makes it more complex. My wife is 100% OK with having lots of female friends, but they don't know that.)

Like you, I don't dislike my male body (though I really wish I had been born female), don't actually FEEL female, (but it took decades before I could feel the slightest bit male), but I am not comfortable in friendships with males.

Thanks for posting. Please keep posting. I'm interested to see where you are going with this.

Sounds a lot like mine, including saying good-bye to my hair starting at age 16. The only values I could cling to was being a workaholic and provider. After 30 or so years of that you look back and realize you led a joyless life.

I always felt I should have been born a girl. Even experimented with HRT and part-time transitioning twice in my 20's. Both times "Being Normal" won out. Over time the only way I could orgasm was to get deep into the fantasy that I was the girl. 

So here I am now, 3 years HRT, living part-time, finally able to look back and feel proud of my life and the things I accomplished. All thanks to loosing a lot of the shame I carried around about being trans. Yet another poignant example of you are only as sick as your secrets. Even my wife, who knew of my dark side from day one, is supportive. Thanks to seeing how much I've grown as a person overall during these past 3 years of me coming to grips with myself

Kelly, Maria, and Jenny- it both comforts and saddens me that others are able to describe exactly what I've always felt.  Saddens me, because it's such a miserable feeling, and a terrible position to be put in by the gendering of others, as noneatall describes.  Comforts me, because I'm finally seeing I'm not alone (that silver lining).

Some of my earliest memories are of anxiety caused by when my best friends (girls) began to exclude me during playtime and recess.  I would wish I could somehow become a girl, just so I could be included.  I always thought I was alone, because my dysphoria wasn't specifically the aesthetics of my body, rather the consequences of my appearance.  Thank you, noneatall, for phrasing this when I had never been able to!

And Kelly- the anger.  Ohhhh boy.  It was an easy excuse to get into the anarcho-punk scene because my stepdad was an ex-state policeman, but my true affinity was for the walls of death and circle pits at local hardcore shows.  That transference of pain was something I looked forward to, just as a means of feeling less detached.  Plus, the punk look at least offered a fringe appearance I was OK with...

Well.. This kinda makes me feel better to see many similarities between me and others(you guys) I've have a question now
I seem to go through phases there are times when I will have many of these feelings towards wanting to be a girl but there are also times when I'll hardly think about it at all
Do any of you hop in and out of frequently thinking about it?

What I can say, is that for a long time it would come in waves; I'd be able to push the dysphoria out of my mind every so often, but it would always come back, each time stronger than the last.

But, it's possible it's just the way I operate, with the tendency to overfill my plate, in order to be kept too busy to pay mind to any issues/depression/anxiety/etc.  Of course, I wouldn't recommend it...being overworked and overwhelmed by GD can cause a lot of problems...

Before puberty, it was "Oh well, I was born a boy, I'll just have to be a boy."

During puberty and afterwards, it was this nagging sensation that something wasn't quite right with me. I became suicidally depressed at the start of the summer between my junior and senior years of high school and I couldn't figure out why. Eventually, with the help of a therapist, the depression passed. But, I never really figured out its cause. Looking back, I thing that GID was the cause of this deep depression.

I'd never found myself attractive, until I went to a bar for the first time at age 42. I'd been legally separated for about 5 months and living full time as Connie for about 2 months at this point and getting ready that night I looked at my reflection and for the first time in my memory I thought, "I look good."

Since becoming aware of my dysphoria, I feel that the sensation of wrongness stems from the fact that I have the wrong body. Just living full time has helped a great deal. I'm not out of the woods yet, but the trees are getting thinner.

This is the question I make myself the most: Can I truly say I have gender dysphoria?


Logical thinking / looking for signs on the past:
- Always hanged with the girls at school, unti the gender separation become more apparent. From that moment I was alone
- Never managed to get will with kids, or participate on their "manly" hobbies. Usually I was either alone, or I was the punching ball, always.
- As a kid I was rather pissed of about staying in a gender identity. Clothing, toys, attitudes...
- I had my era of wishing to be a girl, when I believed in magic or miracles. Hopes have to die and face the reality.
- With the age, internet, etc, trans stopped being some sort of stereotype monstruosity to be something I loved and identified with.
- Never had any sense of male fashion. Yet, I wanted to paint my nails, wear dresses, heels, have long hair... Now I want to do it more than ever.
- Everytime I walked on "auto mode", my mind was watching the same reality, imagining it as I was a woman. For more than 15 years.
- Every time a work of fiction was about trans issues, gender bender, etc, I was 100% attracted to it.
- While watching porn, it excited me to imagine I was the woman, no the faceless men banging her.


Emotional thinking:
- I hate my body and face since they started to change with puberty, even my voice. I see it, and I need to move away from the mirror. I wish for a more feminine looking body. When I started to lose weight, I felt more like a woman, and even wanted to have breasts.
- As for my face, everything looks wrong and not mine. I can't see that face.
- I can't see any atractive on me. Tried to get slim, tried to bulk muscle, nothing worked. They told me I was attractive, that I only needed a better attitude at life, but it never worked. I still feel like a Frankenstein monster.
- Sex with penetration feels just wrong, weird and unnatural
- I did myself the question of "Do you see as a woman in ten years or is this only a phase?" I though about my life in ten years and how I would be, and I wanted to cry. I can't take it anymore
- Whenever I read about somebody explaining his/her transitions, my hearts starts pounding and I feel like this is what I've wanted all my life. I feel from the depth of my heart that this is the way I need to be
- I just don't feel like a man. Never could. Yet I don't have any regrets about being a woman.

It's more on the heart than the facts for me. It's been like that for years, but I just didn't want to listen to myself and I was too scared of what society will say and how it would crush me.

For me gender dysphoria began as a child, as far back as I can remember begin around 6 years old and all the other girls were playing barbies and going shopping with their mom I was fully content with hanging out in the garage with no shirt on like my dad playing darts or fishing. There was even a time as a child when my older cousins would tell me "You know you're not a boy, right?!" and I replied innocently with "Yes I AM! It just hasn't popped out yet!" Haha! Somewhat of an embaressing story now but part of my journey nonetheless. As a young child I didn't think anything was wrong with me, I just felt a little bit different than all the other boys. Different is not bad. Then I got older and began my socialization into society as a "young female" this is where everything started to feel wrong, people began to judge me and wonder why I never wanted to dress up in frills and dresses. That wasn't me, because I was a boy. At this point though (early teens) I kept this all inside because I didn't understand it myself and I didn't want to be viewed as some sort of freak because I lived in a small town where we didn't even have any kind of LGBTQ support of any kind. I felt alone as I'm sure most transgendered people do. I had to learn to accept myself. Once I did that I could start to come out of that "shell" of a lie and live my life.

Gender Dysphoria in a sense is a disconnect with the gender you were born with. At least that is my own personal defenition, but there are a million word and for each word an infinite amount of definitions, I think it's different for everyone since no two people are exactly alike and no two journeys are completely identical either.

Quote from: Connie Anne on August 08, 2012, 12:13:18 AM
Before puberty, it was "Oh well, I was born a boy, I'll just have to be a boy."

During puberty and afterwards, it was this nagging sensation that something wasn't quite right with me. I became suicidally depressed at the start of the summer between my junior and senior years of high school and I couldn't figure out why. Eventually, with the help of a therapist, the depression passed. But, I never really figured out its cause. Looking back, I thing that GID was the cause of this deep depression.

OMG! Nailed it.  This was one of the things the always held me back, I feel, from coming out to myself fully for so long.  Once gender lines were drawn, I just tried to be a boy.  Its definitely not a coincidence that at the same time, I went from being super social and outgoing to my teachers calling me a loner.  This just snowballed into a pretty deep depression, and unimaginable distress for not knowing why.

Still pre-transition, but just figuring out the root of my depression has generated a clarity I've never experienced before.

In answer to the OP question: We seem to forget... I'd had been told that before (pre-op) - and now it is happening to me also.
Soon I will simply not be able to give a proper answer, that is how it feels right now.

All I can tell it was bad, bad, BAD heavy and VERY sad stuff going on inside me.
And now it stopped. Puff, just stopped.

Axélle