I reacted to what I now recognize as dysphoria with avoidance for most of my life. A lot of others have recounted similar symptoms - disliking the way I look in pictures, hating shaving, and generalized depression that I unconsciously avoided addressing. I was never invested in conventionally masculine interests as a child. I got way into video games, which I now recognize gave me a way to roleplay female identities through feminine avatars without directly addressing the source of my discomfort in meat space. Unfortunately, my body trended masculine as I aged - thick beard, taller than average, prominent facial features, etc.

I leaned in during my twenties and got into strength sports as a defense mechanism, because I was afraid of being seen as a target to cis men. This actually helped, as I became friends with several very strong cis women who helped me to decouple “physical prowess = masculine, frailty = feminine” in my mind. I recognize now that I had several misogynistic ideas imprinted from my childhood that I had to unlearn.

As a result of all this, I am now visually very masculine presenting. I am tall, have a large beard, and am visibly muscular. I sometimes view my body as something other than myself, like a trusted bodyguard rather than my own form. This is probably not healthy, but it is better than my earlier state of generalized nonspecific depression.

I’ve been making an effort to be visibly queer at work in attempt to make something positive of what I’ve done with my body. I wear skirts and dresses, use they/them pronouns, and introduce myself as nonbinary. My goal is to “tank” negative attention away from other GNC folks and normalize free expression in the workplace, which I am primed to do both as someone who has accumulated some prestige and power and as someone whose physicality tends to illicit deference in others. Paradoxically, I feel that presenting as a “muscular dude in a dress” is received more positively than if I were to attempt to pass as a cis woman, although that is speculation on my part.

I dunno how sustainable this posture is, as I often find myself envious of trans women who are brave enough to abandon masculinity all together. However, I am still afraid of losing the protection and privilege that comes from walking around in a physically intimidating body.

CW: ED, drug use, sex, and suicidal ideation

I transitioned when I was a teenager, over a decade ago, and I ultimately don’t remember how bad it used to feel for me, although I do remember the impact it had on my day to day life. I guess that is a little bit of a strange thing to say considering that I have significant trauma from it. I guess the dysphoria was always there for me since I often wished that I would be reincarnated as a woman. This hope and idea frequently made me feel suicidal at around 13/14, although I never made any serious attempts.

I realized that transitioning was an option when I was 16. I saw a Reddit post that helped me to acknowledge that HRT would actually have mental changes as well as the physical ones which made me reassess if I wanted the physical ones (I did). I ended up awake all night having a sober ego death. I found some pretty shitty posts online that made me worry that it was too late for me to transition and that if I didn’t manage to transition by 25 that it would be too late for me. Throughout this dysphoria episode, I somehow managed to avoid finding the word “dysphoria” or making the link that it meant I was trans. I was still in a bad state the next day and my mum picked up on it so she asked if I wanted to go to a nearby cafe for a chat. I said that I wanted to start hormones in the car on the way there. She still denies that it is the case but my mother’s reaction was absolutely awful. She outed me to my grandparents, her friends, and my child psychologist, and said the classic line, “Are you sure you don’t just want to be gay?”

The psychologist told me that this was dysphoria and then he asked if I had a name picked out; I didn’t really but I said one of the names I had considered and it stuck. Thankfully, as services go, this psychologist was one of my best experiences in trying to access trans healthcare. He referred me to the children’s Gender Identity Development Service right after that appointment.

Over the course of the following year, my mental health suffered. I developed really bad problems with executive dysfunction because, at the time, I really struggled with the idea of making a body that I didn’t like perform actions. It took me years to realize the link but even now that I am (mostly) comfortable with my body, that executive dysfunction remains a major issue for me, due to it becoming a force of habit. My college work suffered as a result, and to be brutally honest I should not have been there while I was that unwell.

For 8 months, I delayed making any steps towards transitioning with the expectation that GIDS would help me in a similar way to the psychologist who referred me there did. I realized how wrong I was in that assumption by the time that they saw me. The first thing that they asked me what being a woman meant to me and I didn’t really have a clue how to answer it. They then went on to ask me about my masturbation habits and if I had tried wearing “women’s clothes” (I had not). I concluded that GIDS was unlikely to actually offer me anything so I began taking things into my own hands, with some help from Reddit lurking, which was when I began to experience gender euphoria for the first time. I borrowed an old dress and bra from my mum without asking, which I know is shitty, but considering her attitude towards my early transition it was probably the right call, since I didn’t have access to money either. It didn’t take much but I saw potential “girl” in my features that day. I also gained the ability to realize that people might eventually see me as sexually attractive, which admittedly turned me on. I later realized that this refusal to consider how others could ever see me as sexually attractive was also dysphoria. That said, being more familiar with GIDS and the GICs now, they probably wouldn’t have had the insight to make the connection.

The steps that I took to begin transitioning myself encouraged me to seek further outside help. I was the first person that I knew well to transition so the person that I spoke to ended up being the councellor at my college. She wasn’t great at helping but she affirmed the changes that I wanted and called me by my name, which was enough for me at the time. I went to my college LGBT group but I was the only out trans girl so it didn’t really help as much as I would have liked. For the next 4 months, my dysphoria was pretty bad but the steps that I was taking to transition were useful in softening the blow a lot more than the 8 months prior.

A lot happened while I was still at college for the next three or so months but my relationship to my dysphoria remained pretty consistent so I won’t go into to much detail. I did get harassment from strangers and I lost a few friends but that didn’t really come into the dysphoria side of things, and was more of an issue with loneliness. My main source of it was still that I didn’t really have anyone to tell me what steps I could take to make myself feel better, but also feel more normal. I did start DIYing HRT around then and developed cup-filling A cup breasts within less than two months. I was very happy with them but strangely enough, this also gave me further dysphoria because everything I read online told me that my rate of development wasn’t possible - it was, but likely because I am, what I later found out to be, MAIS/PAIS (intersex). Anyway, I really managed to make things feel better for me by embracing the idea of “fake it till you make it”.

I had, and still have, a thick head of hair but it wasn’t very long, so for the first 6 months of my transition, I would wear a wig to alleviate that aspect of my dysphoria. I eventually stopped wearing it because, by then, it hindered me more than it helped me. My mum had pushed me into a shitty fast food job after I left college, even if I wasn’t well enough to be there. I made new friends there who never knew me as anyone else and that really helped, though none of them were trans. I do still wish that I had asked the one who had hair extensions for advice, because that would have probably helped me to reduce my dysphoria a lot. I barely got any facial hair but I got some so I tried using Veet on my face which gave me a rash and made it look like I had more facial hair than I did. I remember getting a pretty nasty dysphoria episode over that.

For the next 3-4 years, things progressed slowly but surely. I did, sadly, lose a lot of the shape around my boobs because I developed quite a nasty eating disorder, mostly over my shoulders seeming too big. Everything but my skeleton shrinking made the same issues worse. I also suspect being underdosed on my HRT contributed a lot. My sense of style slowly improved over time, and despite my ED making my body develop in a way that made me more dysphoric, people who later became my close friends started to assume that I was a cisgender woman. I would still find my mind drifting over if I actually fit in while I walked down the street, but because I spent all my time in a much more LGBT friendly city, I learned to put it to the back of my mind because strangers did tend to refer to me as a woman and it was probably just an effect of the trauma of my early transition more than dysphoria itself.

I had pretty nasty genital dysphoria, which I also learned to ignore until I found out that I had actually managed to get a surgery date. In the first couple of years of my transition, I always said that I would avoid sex because of the dysphoria. That didn’t end up lasting for various MDMA related reasons. When I would smoke weed, it would give me extra sensation in the tip of my dick, which would always make me really dysphoric though. Strangely enough, I used to imagine getting eaten out when I would receive oral sex, which meant it wasn’t too bad for me. It felt very similar but getting eaten out just keeps going for as long as it is stimulated. I have never been a fan of anal because it would always make me really aware of the fact that I didn’t have a vagina, and these days it just isn’t worth the bother.

After I learned to manage my ED (and switched to injectable E), I started getting shape back in a way that is actually really feminine. I’m pretty sure my hips have realigned since surgery too. I don’t have any body or social dysphoria at all anymore. I still have some facial dysphoria, but mostly over my nose, which most other women in my family have anyway. I’d still access FFS in a heartbeat if I had access, even if I am in a position where I have managed to successfully infiltrate GC and neo-Nazi groups in person.

If you want some further reading on it, I would recommend Gender Euphoria by Laura Kate Dale. If fiction is more your thing, To Own The Libs by Zoe Storm is probably the best example that I have ever come across over how people tie themselves in knots to justify treating what is obviously dysphoria to themselves.

After I started puberty, I started to feel very dissociated from my body. I mostly think of myself as a floating set of eyes and hands, kind of like a VR game. Remembering I occupy a body and specially this body is always quite disconcerting. It was only when I read other trans people describe this experience, and point out how it wasn’t normal, that I was able to make the connection to dysphoria.

I recognize my dysphoria as the feelings of numbness/nothingness I have over who I am. Like for most of the time, I feel a distance from my body like it’s just kinda there rather then being me. Come to realize that there’s words for this specific type of dysphoria Ie depersonalization and dissociation. I mean come to understand I do have the more traditional traits too, not liking my facial hair, body hair, face and body etc in general but most of the time it’s just no feeling at all.

That’s also why I believe people should focus on gender euphoria, because I think that every trans person does experience some dysphoria it’s just can be extremely hard to recognize. The question that cracked my egg after doing research about trans topics was “do you think you would be happier as the opposite gender” and instinctively I knew the answer.

Feels like pressure.

At times it’s just a barely noticeable background level of weight, like sure I can handle this, no big deal. At other times, it feels like a crushing weight, painful, can barely even sleep, and all I can do is seek some kind of gender affirming euphoria to feel some relief.

Tonight is one of the latter, after feeling like I clothed myself in lies and had to perform all day, the pressure is unbearable. Looking forward to an evening of painting nails, makeup and spinny skirt.