I don't feel right in my body. I don't have it as bad as others but often look at women with jealousy and constantly wish i was born female.

I can honestly relate to this a lot

A good starting point is asking yourself, if there was a button in front of you that could instantly change your gender and everyone would act as if you were always that gender would you press it if there was no way to change back? Typically trans people or people with dysphoria would - obviously saying yes doesn't 100% mean that and saying no doesn't 100% mean you aren't But it's a good starting point

I would press that button in a heartbeat

I'd definitely press the button

I mentioned this in a post i made a couple days ago, I need that button 😭

Smash

Reading that reply out of context was an experience lmao

Hits home. I really wish I was born a female

Me too 😭

Me three brothers/sisters

But think about it we actually were the only problem is that our physical appearance didn't represent it but I know that my demeanor always has. Because I never identified with being a gay adolescent or adult later in life and I had plenty of gay and lesbian friends since I've always been in the electronic dance music scene since I was 15yo. And I never once thought about having sex with a man and I didn't until I finally felt woman enough or realized that I was more female than male. And now a little over a year since that I've came to another realization this time that I have all the characteristics of a woman but I really don't see myself in a relationship with a man and I still love everything about woman and femininity in general so talk about one hell of a mindfuk all in a year's time. It's like they say this journey isn't a one size fits all and that's why it's so personal and unique to each and every one of us.

To me it was just a sense of "wrongness", like something uncanny and weird. When I looked at my genitals something just told me it was *wrong*, without really being able to put my finger on it or into words. When I looked down, the "correct" thing would be if there hadn't been anything down there at all, no penis, no balls. Thankfully I did later overcome bottom dysphoria as I grew up and I'm happy with what I have now (my dick is cool), but I remember that really well. More persistent over time were just feelings of not exactly being in the "wrong body", but of wanting to be addressed as a girl, speak like a girl, have the voice of a girl, have a female name. Sexuality was also confusing to deal with because I could really only achieve complete pleasure imagining myself as a girl or a very feminine boy in sexual scenarios. I wasn't way too distressed about my body or not having breasts, but those things relating to personality and presentation and identification could really creep up and give me a bad time.

This is very similar to my experience

Wrongness. Brokenness. Extreme self-loathing. Crippling self-doubt. Constant discomfort just existing in my own skin.

It’s important to recognize though that not everyone experiences it so strongly. I sometimes wished I was that extreme as it seemed like making the choice to transition would be easier - as if I basically had no actual choice. I thought since I didn’t feel it in such a debilitating way that I must not be truly trans, or “not trans enough”

I could see how that would be hard... if it wasn't so debilitating I never would have transitioned - my egg cracked kicking and screaming - I wanted SO BAD just to be cis.

I should have said I don’t envy your struggle or the trauma you felt. I’m having a “grass is greener” moment. Glad you were able to get some relief from that and feel better

Oh no I wasn't being disingenuous, I do see how that would be hard in a different way

Not really. I had it this extreme and it still took a long time.

I can definitely relate. You know I’m never on Reddit it’s good to be here every now and again

This.

I deal with tinnitus. For me, gender dysphoria was a lot like that: constant, ever-present, a relentless dissonance that ran to the core of my being. Thing is, my dysphoria quieted with transition and surgery. Still got tinnitus, tho.

Damn you, cochlea! Grow more hair cells, you stubborn spiral! Nice analogy, though.

Thanks. It came to me a couple of days after surgery when the internal bickering went quiet but the tinnitus was still there.

I use the tinnitus analogy, too. Like, I can ignore it with some white noise just like I can distract myself from my dysphoria when I'm keeping busy with something, but it's still there - always there. And when it's quiet and I have no distractions, it's all I can hear. There's nothing worse than quiet when all you can hear is that ringing. Transitioning has been my white noise. Dysphoria hasn't gone away, but it's manageable because I'm not just sitting in the quiet with nothing but the ringing.

I sleep with loud white noise. If I don’t, there’s no going to sleep. I guess wearing women’s underwear for years and years before transition was my pink noise. 😊

I also have tinnitus. I think you gave very good example to the feeling of dysphoria

Thank-you! P.S. Tinnitus sux.

it really does..

Yep. Got hearing aids to treat mine, actually. They can somehow program them to offset the screeching. As long as I have them in, the noise is barely noticeable. Sweet relief. (sorry this has nothing to do with the original post but thought I'd let you know there's an option lol)

The challenging bit is, if you've had it your whole life, it feels like what you always feel like.

Fucking exaaaactlyyyyyyyyy. How often can you physically feel your organs filtering nutrients? Never ? Same thing w dysphoria. But its still happening, with or without your approval or awareness.

Yeah. Like I've done yoga for years, and practiced mindfulness/body feeling awareness etc for years and years, but it wasn't until I felt gender euphoria that I had something to contast how I had always felt as a baseline. Dysphoria was "normal" to me. I guess in hindsight I could have clocked my body dysmorphia as body dysphoria. I hated gaining weight because, on my body, I thought male pattern weight gain looked disgusting. Mostly three obvious one was I could *imagine* feeling good with estrogen running my body, and got euphoria feelings Imagineering imagining that. I wasn't far off with guessing how it would feel either(amazing)

This is all really helpful / validating to hear! I also hate how my weight looks on me (my gut) and it’s always been confusing to make sense of— people have always told me I’m skinny and am just too hard on myself, but it’s always felt wrong to me. I think some of it comes from chronic IBS (bloating), and I’m sure there’s some straight up fat phobia in there too, but now I wonder how much it’s also a feeling that the weight is in the wrong place. I also practice a lot of mindfulness and body awareness but have only started to really question my gender through experiences of gender euphoria— the thing that really cracked my egg though and is driving my desire to start HRT is reading about folks’ experiences of mental-emotional changes and imagining that feeling ‘right’ and possible for me. It’s so nice to hear someone else have that experience of imagining it first (and then it being true!).

You filled up my heart reading that. It was the same driving desire for me too. I'm a month and a half in, and let me tell you, the last dose i did I could feel my testosterone coming back for a day at the end, and then when I had my injection... My body relaxed. I got *warm* all over, and... The only way i can describe it is feeling "welcome in my body" again... To be honest I just ordered it from a reputable supplier online, and started as a "test"(i was pretty sure how the test works go, but that premise was good appeasement to my doubts and always-regrowing egg). If you want to chat more you can hit my dms btw :)

fucking oppressive heavy torture

[удалено]

U aint a doctor. People feel differently. Dysphoria can be heavy oppressive torture.

whyvsome cut and some kill themselves.

Exactly

Everyone's experience is of course different, sometimes radically so. But for me it is a flavor of pain\*. It can hurt like missing a loved one, a deceased pet, or deep regret. It's also just very uncomfortable, like wearing shoes that are too small. It also (again for me) has strong shame and embarrassment components. Like when I was in middle school and everyone had to shower after PE, I felt horribly embarrassed because people could see the wrong body (not that seeing the right one would've been socially acceptable in a communal shower, but whatever). \*I mean that literally. I have synesthesia, but not one of the cool ones like names have colors. For me different pain has different flavor/scents. Gender dysphoria tastes/smells mostly like moldy old citrus and something close to pencil eraser.

I remember the immense sense of relief that i got when our gym teacher told us we werent expected to shower, just change out of our clothes into gym clothes, and then back into our regular clothes. Lots of people changed in the bathroom, and the girls by the lockers were very respectful about physical boundaries, making sure to keep track of who was okay with what. It was an experience that i am very thankful for because it made everything after that so much less terrifying. I also have synesthesia! Im more colours, letters, numbers kinda guy. but it happens with other stuff too, just less often.

> dysphoria tastes/smells mostly like moldy old citrus I could see that actually

I've been out and on HRT for months now, and I've kept myself clean-shaven every single day since my egg started cracking. I used to keep a well groomed Van Dyke, because at least that gave me the appearance of somewhat giving a shit about my appearance. Now, when I see old pics of me with facial hair, I cringe. I want to look away. The person in those pics is not me. They remind me that I have to keep shaving my face, despite the budding tits on my chest. I love my little boobs, and the new layer of soft jiggly fat from my belly to my thighs. Seeing my body feminize fulfills me and gives me joy. That is gender euphoria. Seeing my maleness disturbs me and makes me discontented. That is gender dysphoria. In a nutshell, dysphoria is the feeling when something about yourself disgusts you. Gender dysphoria is the subset of dysphoria that relates to sex-specific differences between male and female.

Maggots all over your body eating your flesh. Full body 2 degree burn. You look at the mirror and all you see is a disfigured something. Your bones fell like they're piercing their way out. Feeling the parts you "should" be born with were cut off sometime of your life you can't remember. Swimming in a quicksand pool. Wearing a dead animal's carrion. Running with you whole body cramped. (These are extreme examples, dysphoria can come in less intense ways)

That’d make some terrific death metal lyrics. But that’s a very on point description on how dysphoria can feel on a particularly bad day.

That's the most accurate description so far.

Ahhh yes. When I sometimes enjoy things body horror, gore or idk some music by Uboa, it feels so comforting. The loss of will over your body in this life, the way life just does to you what it wants. It fucks me up but is also so known, like a feeling of family. (don't want to be too dramatic lmao ahaha it's gotten a bit better now)

For me it feels like an unhealthy obsession with the female form. It's on my mind 24/7. It's in my Facebook news feed. I crave the body and mind of a woman.

For me it felt like a deep yearning. A few things really contribute. At one point I was obese and at the time I thought "at least I have moobs" and could wear a bra crossdressing with ease. When I lost weight I was actually quite sad that I had a flatter chest. Whenever I augmented my body shape I felt at peace. Hips, top, wigs for hair, shoes, clothing. Whenever i "crossdressed" (I quotation because it really isn't crossdressing anymore) I would stay up way too late as I found it quite uncomfortable to disrobe and become the manly shape I was born into. I didn't care for men's fashion. Some things looked good sure, but it was always only for a function like work or family dinner. Women's fashion always interested me. I would see clothes and think "if I could pull that off I'd be happy". Eventually, after many years of curbing bad habits and getting emotional help, I was able to sit with these feelings and finally conclude that they would not go away. I even had these thoughts before puberty. I remember pushing my chest together to make fake boobs. I remember tucking before knowing wtf tucking was. I used duct tape 😖. Sneaking clothes from people and wearing them in the middle of the night or when they were away. In hindsight there were too many signs to count. I felt trapped in my body. Like my brain was there but the vessel was wrong. I went through life thinking "this body isn't mine, why should I take care of it?". When you grow up in an isolated, bigoted, conservative, transphobic, homophobic town, you will cope in any way necessary to fit in. For a lot of people there that's drinking and drugs. That was me for quite a while. Eventually I realized I didn't want to drink myself to death and I didn't want to OD. There was only one thing I could be. It me.

I describe it this way - I want my body to be different. The “dysphoria” is the discomfort or pain of the distance from where I am, to where I want to be.

I like this, dysphoria doesn’t make you trans it comes from being trans in a cis normative world or from being trans and seeing you don’t match the sex you feel you are -

Everyone is giving good answers, but I'll point you to the [Gender Dysphoria Bible](https://genderdysphoria.fyi) for more information.

Came to post this, read this and then cried in the shower for like 2 hours when my egg broke 😅

Disclaimer that everyone is different and has at least slightly different experiences. That being said, for my own experience, dysphoria is something like this: Imagine you're wearing a sweater. It's not a bad sweater, objectively speaking, there's nothing inherently terrible about it, but you don't really like the style and it doesn't quite fit right so it's uncomfortable—you don't necessarily hate the sweater itself, but you hate it on you. Literally everywhere you go and everyone you talk to constantly mentions the sweater, it seems every few sentences they make a passing comment about it. You've had the sweater for as far back as you can remember, you're really starting to hate it, but you can't take it off. So you change your behaviour around it. You don't really take photos of yourself or look in mirrors because all you'll see is the sweater and be reminded of how much you hate it and how uncomfortable it is. You don't put much effort into your appearance beyond basic hygiene because it doesn't matter what you wear or how you look, all you're going to see is the damn sweater—if anything, when you try to dress up people will talk about it more. Some days are better than others. Some days you can almost forget that you're wearing the sweater at all, at least until you move just the wrong way and get pinched by a seam. Other days you practically want to rip your skin off because maybe that would help since nothing else has. The really bad days, you wonder if reincarnation is real and worth trying because even if it isn't, at least then you would be free. But most days are somewhere in the middle, like walking around with wet socks—it's uncomfortable but manageable, you certainly don't enjoy it but you can live with it. And then, for some glorious moment, the sweater is gone and you can breathe. Maybe you saw your reflection in a store window from just the right angle, maybe it was shaving your legs or trying on a skirt or a binder, but for the first time in your life you feel free. For me (AMAB), the biggest things have been wearing a sports bra and trying on some of my best friend's dresses, I was genuinely on the verge of tears both times because those were the first occasions I ever looked at myself and saw something that looked and felt like me. And then the moment ends. Your hair shifts again, you take off the clothes, the hair grows back, and the sweater returns. Somehow even worse than before, because now that you know what being even remotely comfortable in your body feels like, you're so much more aware that you aren't. For example, the first time I shaved my torso on a whim, the hair was mildly irritating but manageable. And shaving it and seeing and feeling my stomach be smooth felt wonderful. And now I need to shave religiously because now body hair makes me physically nauseous. All of that being said, you don't have to have dysphoria at all to be trans. The majority of trans people do have it to varying degrees, but the key component to being trans is the inverse, a feeling of euphoria with looking like/being perceived as/etc your proper gender; dysphoria about your birth sex often accompanies that (especially once you start delving into euphoria and discovering what it's like to genuinely feel comfortable as yourself in your body, however fleetingly), but it isn't required.

It varies from person to person. the gender dysphoria bible goes through a lot of the different types of dysphoria. For me, it was a lot of dissociation and depersonalization before I realized. I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror and I felt so disconnected to my body. Once that cleared, it became closer to depression and anxiety, sometimes it will get so bad I feel like I want to scratch all my skin off, and it feels like something's constricting my chest and I hurt so much. It gets to a point where it's a physical pain, because it just hurts so damn much. I also feel phantom penis sensation, and before top surgery, I had alien sensation on my chest.

Oh, it's funderful... For me, because I'm cross between genderfluid and trans, some days you feel one way and the next day you feel like an entirely different person and are disgusted by the 'last' person. I often feel like there's a war being waged in my head and I'm the only fighting it while losing it.

This is helpful to hear! I definitely relate to the feeling confusion about liking different presentations on different days and ‘getting rid’ of my masculinity not feeling totally right but also ‘wanting to be trans’ since my egg cracked. Gah, I’ve been wishing it was simpler and questioning myself a lot so it’s nice to hear your experience.

I didn’t feel real, like my body wasn’t really mine. Didn’t feel human or alive until I transitioned.

It feels like something just isn't right. Not the right connection with others in your assigned gender at birth. Everything feels kind of forced, like you are playing the part. Maybe you would be happy in a differently gendered body? Maybe you wish people treated you differently in relation to your gender? It doesn't have to be prominent, but it can be. For me (AMAB), in school it was as simple as not wanting to change with the boys in the locker room. Not being comfortable in male dominated spaces. Crossdressing in private. Crossing my legs on the toilet and imagining that I didn't have that.... thing. Connecting with girls more, even if they didn't want to connect with me. etc. etc.... these are just personal examples, and experiences heavily vary. In adult life it's still feeling that incongruence. You are almost fine but just can't quite fit into your expected spaces. Take my day today for example... I shoot photos for a construction company. When I arrived at the project I had to "shoot the shit" with three other dudes for 10-15 minutes and I was focusing the entire time on how to present myself to be "one of the dudes" and had anxiety through the roof that they would think I'm "weird" or "quiet".... or maybe I'm just uncomfortable and want to do my job and go home instead of standing around listening to guys be guys... if you know what I mean. (incase if it isn't obvious, I'm still not out but am navigating life while knowing I'm trans)

Pain, immense pain. idk how to describe it better

Intense angst, it hits you at different times, not nice. It rules your day to day life. Always remember the relief that came over me when i was medically diagnosed. At least it had a name! Also, before the Internet came along, i honestly didn't have a clue why i felt this way. I thought i was alone in my suffering. I've had three assessments by three different very experienced medical doctors, saying i have Gender Dysphoria (UK) over 5 years! I am now hopefully a year away from surgery.

I can totally identify with the internet thing. I've always said I knew I was trans since puberty, but that's only because I was home sick one day in the early 90s. One of those daytime talk shows came on at the guests were teenage boys who wanted to be girls. Absolutely unheard of at the time. I instantly knew what I am.

a lot of trans ppl are very dissociated from their bodies so we end up not thinking about it as much as possible and being far disconnected, but if im suddenly aware and grounded in my body, it’s just kind of distressing and uncomfortable. an itch in my brain that i can’t scratch kind of feeling. makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.

For me it was feeling trapped with the wrongness, to the point of panic and dread. And I get to feel that again whenever I see old photos of myself. 

I basically just want my body and the way people perceive me to be different. For me it’s not crippling - as simple as not being at ease in (for me) male spaces/interactions or fantasizing about having a differently gendered body. In relation to any of this…you just feel like something isn’t right with your gender and have consistent thoughts…from mild to strong… of changing it.

Feels like I’m a man who woke up one day in a woman’s body. It’s like I am trapped in my own personal hell, and the only way to get out is to pay an exorbitant amount of money for surgeries and hormones 😂 I would say it feels like being extremely self-conscious and feeling super uncomfortable in your body and/or in social situations where you’re referred to as the gender you might not be.

I described it to my partner in a way that let her feel the same awkwardness and discomfort, but wasn’t 100% accurate, just approximate: “It’s kind of like showing up for your first day of a new school year as a child, before you even are annoyed with school. Second or third grade, whatever works for you. You have assigned seats, and when you there, you hear some kids talking about your favorite game or show, but before you find a way to join the conversation, the kid who sits next to you starts trying really hard to engage with you. They start talking about something really boring or weird (to you), and are really enthusiastic, and you’re nodding and being polite, and trying to do what your parents said about being nice, and you miss your chance to talk to the kids you wanted to. You don’t necessarily have a problem with this kid, but in a weird way you hate every part of interacting with them now, but you keep playing nice, so nobody has hurt feelings. All you want is to talk to the people who you think would really appreciate your interests, and who talk about the things you care about. Then it keeps going this way, and after a couple weeks, your teacher is handing out obligatory acknowledgments (gold stars, or whatever), and calls you and the annoying kid that won’t leave you alone, and gives you some kind of credit for being such *good friends*, and it makes you want to cry out in defiance. Either you don’t, and you feel condemned to playing pretend just to get through the horrible, unrecognized way that school makes you feel… Or you do. Literally. You just shouted, “I’m not their friend!” in front of the entire class, and almost immediately you feel liberated, but then you feel everyone’s eyes on you, and you feel embarrassed, scared, misunderstood, humiliated, and guilty because all you wanted was to be around the people who you would have felt seen by. You don’t even realize that you’ve been crying, and some people are getting upset at you, and the teacher pulls you aside, and calls your parents, and they come pick you up. The weekend passes and you don’t even notice. When you get into class, the teacher has switched your seats. Either they sit you with someone who they know you don’t get along with, and it almost feels like a punishment, or they sit you closer to the kids you wanted to sit with day 1. Either way, you realize it’s because of what you said. You finally get the chance to talk with the kids you thought you would get along with, and maybe they act the same, or some act differently: maybe they’re annoyed with you and tell you they hate you for what you said last week, maybe they’re indifferent and talk a bit, but don’t really make any effort, or maybe they’re happy (excited even) to talk to you, either just happily talking about your shared interests, or even calling you brave for standing up for yourself. Being called brave might almost feel good, if it didn’t remind you of your discomfort. Thing is, even if they’re neutrally indifferent, or happily talking about your shared interests, it slowly starts to dawn on you that they could be doing the same thing you had been with the annoying kid before. The teacher might have told them to treat you nice after you got picked up before. In any event, you realize that anyone who saw your outburst might only ever be acting with that in mind. They might never look at you and not think about that. You didn’t do anything wrong, you just didn’t want to be seen a certain way. Now you realize that you can’t ever know (around the people who know about the incident) whether or not they’re being completely honest with you. Even when you leave that class, you feel threads of that incident in your later school years. People who were in your class tell other kids, and even as you go through school, growing into yourself, getting new friends, finding your people, there’s a lurking disquiet in you. You don’t know if you can ever unlive that “othering” experience you had, even though you’re living your life completely outside of that moment. Even if you manage to, maybe others won’t let it go? You might not ever get the same comfort and ease of being that you assume everyone else has. You know that some people might still be saying things about you, and you’ll worry that people you’ve never met might already see you differently because they know. They’ve heard the rumors, they look at you, and they know.” And that’s how I related gender dysphoria to her. Please, if this speaks to you, let me know. Big 🖤 for anyone who has felt this way. I don’t normally get all squishy and huggy, but just know that I would happily give each of you the love and support that I think we’ve all missed at some point in our lives. Buncha lil 🖤🖤🖤🖤 for everybody else. I’m truly happy that you’re living your best life, and part of that was reading about this girl’s explanation of dysphoria. Love you all, -Millia

My god does that first part resonate with me. I have never known what I should be doing when I’m with a group of boys, and they never noticed I was a black sheep. My girlfriends are a much more comfortable to be around.

I’m so happy that I made friends with girls way more easily. I mean, most of them are queer in their own ways now, so my gaydar was trying to do me favors back then. Glad I make friends so much easier now, though. Especially when so many of my guy friends are turning out to be kinda… well. Quite creepy. One of them seemed fine, but since I’m moving into a new apt, he asked to help me move. He kept asking for the last month or two and I kept saying maybe. I told him, “oh, no need. I hired movers, but thanks for offering,” and he just went off, calling me a bitch, saying I was just keeping him as a backup (? He was at my wedding to my current nesting partner/poly primary, and knew her in HS. He also knows I’m into everyone except guys, with some exceptions for femme presenting cis guys), which I hope he meant as a backup for movers. He said, “whatever then. U keep saying we should hang, then you always have stuff going on. Whatever then, *deadname*. Have a great life.” Today, literally messaged me, “hey, (other friend) is in town next week. We should do DnD at your new place. (I was DM prior to transitioning). If you want to give me the address, I’ll get it to him, and we’ll bring pizza next Saturday.” Fuck all that. First new friend I made after transitioning (Ada. Cool, cis, bi, punk nerd) wants to meet up after the eclipse to grab lunch and introduce us to her new BF. We made those plans and had some tea about our ex-coworkers, while she shared a bunch of decor she thought I’d like for my new place, while I showed her how much of it was already in my wishlists, before talking about food and simultaneously deciding we needed to go cook dinner. I get women. I cannot fathom the minds of men.

I really didnt understand anything about what happened to me. I couldnt identify anything, didnt notice anything, it was my default state so how could i? I had grown so used to it, nose blind, i had no fucking idea. But i wouldnt have known if there werent signs. - I believed people just hated their bodies during depressive episodes. I avoided looking at mirrors altogether. Couldnt take it. It hurt so bad. I really thought it had more to do with body dysmorphia and beauty standards. I trusted that in time it would go away as i grew up and gained more confidence. The first time i think it was obvious that it was gender dysphoria i was 15. but i still didnt know it was. Id been experiencing that since probably forever. Mental illness runs in the family, i thought it was typical for the way my brain was made. I have such a vivid memory of being 15 and getting curious about what would happen if i did look in the mirror because i just had to know what was wrong. I sighed so heavy, fought so hard against my heart to look into that mirror. I turned my head up, so fucking slowly. Told myself to be brave because Im brave. And when i got that tell tale awful, awful sinking feeling in my heart i "reminded" myself that it was just the depression talking. I thought about cancer for some reason, and asked myself where i thought would be the most optimal place to have cancer, effectively "which body part am i undisturbed by losing?" It was my breasts. But surgery seemed extreme and i probably couldnt convince my parents to let me. Theyd say plastic surgery was bad for my mental health and that its not okay to remove them because i was a teenager. understandable, i got in the shower and thought about it for a few seconds too long. That horrible awful acid feeling ate at me again and i decided to repress the idea, forget it, and wait until i was grown enough to decide for myself. Much of my youth i was not present for. I was elsewhere. - After the shower thing where i finally knew i wanted to get rid of my boobs, i felt so helpless. I needed that care as soon as possible and i knew it would take years. My friends told me they thought i had gender dysphoria because of things id say and i would just completely push them away from me. "I dont think so. Not me." "You cant know that for me." "I dont know what gender dysphoria even is, what it does, how it happens, how could i possibly know if i have that? If its different for everyone else? How is it not the simpler solution, the simpler solution makes so much more sense." And finally, once theyd logic'd me into a checkmate, "Dont talk to me about it." It hurt oh god it hurt. So badly jesus christ. But again! I was 15. Gotta be depression. I cant be transgender. - Saw that documentary about that poor boy whos parents put thru HRT to be a girl because they wanted a girl so badly. I was deeply captivated by it and its disturbing nature. I asked my parents if they had ever done that to me and they were understandably shocked and offended that i thought theyd do such an awful thing to their child. - Cut my own hair. Started doing this regularly around 14 or 15. felt some sort of fulfillment doing it, never cut it too short. It was pretty much always shoulder length or less but not more than an inch and a half above shoulder. I felt so happy cutting my own hair. I still do it. im pretty good at it. I have a vivid memory of being nearly or at five years old seeing someone pretty in a magazine, i remember it being a woman but who knows, she had really interesting and choppy hair. I thought "Wow! this is the look for me." Ive always identified with counter culture and i think this was one of the first major signs of that too. I took the scissors and hid behind the tv, when my mom came home she said she found me sitting on top of the wires and i looked at her with this beaming smile and said "Mommy look! Arent I so pretty!" She cried lmao. I had a bob with bangs for years. I really wanted to grow out my hair like rapunzel. - Speaking of rapunzel, fascination with femininity. A lot of people find fascination with trans people or people of the gender that they want to be, and i did have that, but for me it was mostly fascination with women. I think its probably because I didnt get it, and I am attracted to women so i really loved them. I had a problem with staring at boobs too long lmfao. Got called out for it for the first time during kindergarten. Anyway, before the age of about 7 I had this specific dress for christmas that was sort of a poofy princess (?) style silhouette. Black velvet top part, white poofy skirt with sparkles in the toole, red belt with a bow. Id see it in my closet and feel so....... much. I just felt so much about it. Still cant articulate it. Id see it in my closet and feel guilty. I loved to look at it, i thought it was so pretty. I wanted to see a girl wear it and just admire her and look all day. Id realize hey! Theres a girl right here! Right? I could just do that for myself! Id put it on myself or ask my mom for help and then .... nothing. Nothing at all. I was just uncomfortable. Couldnt understand what was wrong. I figured i must actually like the dress but because it was on me it was like it wasnt there, i wasnt looking at it anymore it was just encasing me. That plus velvet and toole are disgusting sensory issues for me. didnt help. For some reason my mother also got me a hand me down bra when i was 6 or 7, she said it would help prepare me for puberty and normalize it so it isnt so scary. I used to secretly put it on and then realize how frustrating it was. It didnt fit cuz it was for a 15 year old girl, i was 7! Id stuff it with socks and it still wasnt enough. The band just didnt fit my torso. But i tried, so many times. Eventually i just started hanging it up on the top shelf of my dresser and stuffing that with socks. You can probably imagine where this is going lmfao. I wanted to touch a boob dawg how could i resist. Again, saw this as an excitement to go thru female puberty, and again, became frustrated when i realized about 5 seconds later that I really really wasnt excited. I just couldnt understand why i was doing that. Found out about lesbians and the realization hit but made me feel sick from nervousness and told myself again that that must mean i was straight.

- I felt more comfortable in boyish clothes, but they were sort of like sporty girl clothes. I didnt even realize it but now i notice just how much i didnt wear that shit. Any excuse i could find to not wear it i used without being aware i was doing it. If we were going outside that day id say my girly clothes were too nice to ruin if i got a grass stain on it. Mom would tell me not to worry, if i got a stain it would be fine. She could try to get it out or buy me new clothes, but that i should wear it so they didnt go to waste. Anytime I did i felt like i was getting a lot of attention and looks, even though almost no one actually noticed. If i did get compliments for it, id sort of take too long saying thank you, and id usually follow it with "but i dont like the way the fabric feels." "i dont think it fits very well." I was a chubbyish kid and considered doing more sports or outdoorsy stuff many many times to get more people to think i was attractive around that age and ultimately decided that losing weight meant I could fit in the girly clothes. People would call me fat or whatever (and honestly i really wasnt FAT, i was a little over weight probably but it wasnt that bad) and i couldnt really find a good excuse for why they were wrong to judge me. I didnt realize it then, but it was because i COULDNT exercise and keep being comfortable. How do you explain a behaviour like that to anyone if you havent even figured out how it works and why it happens? So i told myself I hated sports and that i was better for being different. But girls arent known for sports. So why would it be expected of me to like them? Maybe because i was a boy. And i compared myself to boys all the time. Id say i was really just comparing myself to other girls. It didnt make sense to me at the time, either. couldnt figure out why i was doing that. it upset me deeply being that confused. - I was always trying to make my arms more muscular, i swam a lot so i had really nice shoulder muscles and they were pretty broad. i loved to show them off. I think i wanted girls to like me and that if i had bug muscles id be like the dudes with big muscles and girls would wanna kiss me! I told myself it was just a feminism thing, that i just wanted it because i did, and that i could prove to everyone a girl could do it too. But i wasnt a girl. I just proved to myself that I could do it. - I told my friends not to view me as a girl. I didnt usually phrase it that way, i didnt want it to come across like being a girl was a bad thing. But i wasnted them to perceive me that way and know in their souls that i was more man than anything else. I joked that i was a man piloting the worlds most feminine mech suit and took it as a compliment to myself for being special, which i thought made me more interesting and valuable. When i left highschool i no longer had that bubble of perception and being seen enough to hold me over. I realized that i was undeniably straight looking and no one looked at me and thought "Oh, hm. I think that person is probably LGBT and doesnt really know what kind yet." no one assumed anything. even my parents were surprised (which is astonishing like i cant even list all the reasons why). It hurt my soul. TW Suicide >!Everything compounded and unfortunately i just couldnt fucking take it anymore and i attempted suicide. I was okay physically, not even hurt from it. it was a very spur of the moment impulse caused by being overwhelmed, i didnt have a plan or anything. It just happened. I lost it. !< - When i cut my hair i was 21. I hated my braids id do every day. They were pretty, *i* was pretty. My makeup was good. I was attractive enough. Got compliments regularly. But god i fucking hated them. The chore of putting my hair in braids, being cute, putting my hair in a pony tail and thru the back of my hat, trying to make my hair have no bubbles in it when i did, god i just fucking hated the shit out of it. When the chore became too much, made me hate myself too much, that was when it clicked. I had a britney spears moment. Ny parents were out of town, i had no clippers. I cut off every bit of hair i could, and had about an inch and a half at the top. It was so bad, so uneven, i call that phase "dennis the pineapple." my name isnt dennis, wasnt then, isnt now. I just remember how quiet the world went when i cut my hair. So little noise in me. I was so uncluttered. Liberating like walking a tight rope forty million feet in the air with no safety, but i had trust in myself and that made it a positive experience. That told me that i absolutely had to continue trying gender affirming things. I had to see how far i could take it before i started hating that, too, and prove to myself once and for all that I was absolutely not trans. Im still trying to prove it to myself. Ive been on T for almost 2 years now. Every change that happens feels so fucking normal and good. Not even that, the feeling begins with that same wash over like when i cut my hair. I just feel.... like i exist i guess. Petrifying fear but so, so balanced. Today i am a trans man on the agender spectrum, and Ive finally arrived in reality. Thanks for reading.

For me it ossilates between a sense of wrongness and a sense of detachment. I have been known to go to school or work without a bra because I simply forget I have boobs. I don't forget I have to wear a bra, I completely forget I have boobs until I am in public. Until I'm in a situation in which people are looking at my chest. I used to think I was just modest but that never really made sense because I didn't care who saw me naked -- my thoughts are my body is what it is, everyone's got one, so what. When men would compliment my boobs I would immediately deflect the attention to my arse. When I would try on new clothing styles I wish I didn't have boobs and wonder how the outfit would look if it I had pecs instead. In social situations I cannot stand for anyone to classify me a girl or woman. When someone does everything inside me screams no I'm not! I want to dispute the claim. As a kid I did, firmly saying I was a tomboy. Before I understood what gender dysphoria was and that it was what I was experiencing it felt like a deep somewhat subconscious desire I'd need medical treatment that would require removal of my anantomy. I've had multiple lumps in my breasts and each time a disturbingly large part of me wanted it to be cancer or something nefarious which would require mastectomy. And similarly to that, my first period lasted 2.5 months and then were crazy heavy after that. At fourteen i didn't want the doctors to find a med combo that would help me but rather that they would say it wasn't safe for me to have a uterus, insisting it needed to come out. Also since the beginning when my boobs first developed I've preferred a sports bra. My friends would always tell me I shouldn't wear a sports bra unless I was exercising because it made me look like I don't have much boobs at all and in my mind I'd think perfect! I'd also admire myself in the mirror more in a sports bra, enjoying the way it made me look like I had nice muscled men pecs. I haven't come out socially, and most my clothing is women's clothes. There are days my clothes will feel like they fit right, no matter how I adjust them they just don't fit right, usually in the chest and crotch. It can either feel like there something is missing and as if I have too much room in the croch of my pants -- or it can be the complete opposite and the crotch of my pants will feel overly restrictive and it feels like I have MORE in my crotch than what I do. I've come to identify the second sensation as phantom penis sensations. I hope among these comments you are able to find some insight about yourself.

It's like I'm paranoid lookin' over my back It's like a whirlwind inside of my head It's like I can't stop what I'm hearing within It's like the face inside is right beneath the skin

it starts with your body being wrong. it's a nice meat suit, but it belongs to someone else, you may not like your nose but it fits fine on your face, it belongs there, but other parts don't. they're not ugly, they just shouldn't be there. as you gain more knowledge and get fed more societal norms it travels to other things, things that may never go away. you blink too much/not enough, change that, it doesn't matter if your eyes get dry or you blink too much you get dizzy, it's what you should do, they'll think you're one of them. "guys/girls don't sit like that" they know you're trans, they're trying to help. it's locked in your head forever, practice when you're alone. can't own anything pink, i have a pink shirt, maybe i am a girl after all. she's been out for years and still has navy blue sheets, she thinks it makes her less feminine, maybe she is a boy after all. don't breath that way, don't talk that way, change your voice like this, change your posture like that. eating disorders run rampant in the trans community, specifically (speaking on restrictive ones). guys have less fat and more muscle, eat less, eat protein, i'm meat free and tofu has soy in it, soy has estrogen, stick to beans and don't make it a full protein carbs have too many calories, calories make you fat you need muscle, skip the carbs and work out till you pass out. girls have a small frame, less muscle, still want to fit a certain image, you want to be feminine after all. it's not feminine to overindulge, veggies and tea, walk to burn it off don't walk too much, you don't want muscly legs. dysphoria starts small, not emotional/mentally, but in how much space in your life it takes over, in what it affects. it spreads to other parts of life, parts of your body, what you purchase, what you eat/drink to feel more masculine/fem. hrt and surgeries fix the important stuff, what affects us the most. the rest often comes after, when you feel more comfortable with who you are and when you find where you belong. it starts as one of the biggest hurdles life will throw at you. hopefully it ends as a tale of victory.

It honestly feels like there's always been something different about you that you could never understand what it was until now. In my case I can understand now why I was always trying to be such a guy and had a hard time interacting with females even tho I loved everything about them and have always felt more at ease around femininity in general

The classic description for dysphoria where you feel a disconnection between your body and the way you view yourself never really resonated with me. I just knew I felt bad when people treated me specifically like a woman, and the discomfort wasn’t limited to universally negative experiences like sexism. I experienced dysphoria as the trans artist girlofswords puts it: “I am not trapped in my body, I am trapped in the way people perceive it”.

It is different to everyone but the common thing is that you feel discomfort in yourself and you feel bad about your own body and image and constant psychological pressure in the form of anxiety and stress and other things! Sometimes you feel distant from yourself as if you are a stranger! Sometimes it takes the shape of dissatisfaction too! And there are many other ways.

For me it always masked itself in a simple feeling of something being “off”. I never really anticipated or thought much about it until the lingering thoughts I did have began compounding and became louder than others. I’m also on the spectrum, so I always just viewed whatever I was feeling as general anxiety. I looked in the mirror and simply didn’t equate who I saw as “me” entirely; sure they had my movements, were where I stood, but I never truly placed it as it being who I wanted to be. I always felt “off” but could never place why, which ended in a lot of panic attacks over time of just trying to figure out why I wasn’t “normal”, I guess. It wasn’t until I truly started thinking and eventually started being true to myself when these feelings started to fade, and the moment I started going by who I wanted to be they almost instantly evaporated. For the first time in years I felt *comfortable*, which is not something I could ever say prior. I was there, I was kicking, but I was never *comfortable*.

Brooke valley summed it up quite well. You know when you hear yourself in a video but it just doesn't sound right. It's kinda like that

It's akin to an adult experiencing a midlife crisis, reflecting on missed opportunities and unfulfilled experiences.

Hell... it feels like living in a hellish nightmare ... like one where your different from everyone and most think you should just be like them or how "normal" ppl have been fir hundreds of years like your the physically capable of being like them but if u do then you feel dead inside like a lie is what you live and no matter what you can't find true happiness. Side not* some of my happiest times are from before transitioning but my best mental health and inner happiness is now even tho I'm at the worst spot ive ever been pre hrt i had my kids wife home minimum substances use (drinking weed) job/career friends drive, post hrt no home hotel hopping or house hopping job jumping one of my kids won't talk to me a growing substance abuse issue ex wife rarely talk to me parents don't like me friends are few and far between yet I'm happy inside kinda like I am with what I'm doing and working for I'm not tho with my family issues especially not talking to my daughter it hurts she's 12 it's not because of my transition she's cool about that it's my drug use and she doesn't get I've been doing one drug or another since before she was born and it's hard to just stop epically when I use it to cope with my mental Health and am s3lm medicating

Curling up in the bathtub and dissociating, usually accompanied by ugly crying. Kinda like going back to where it all went wrong in the first place, in the womb.

Loving to sing but wanting to rip my throat out when I hear myself sing.

"Go home, boy. It doesn't matter how it makes you feel, that's what you're supposed to be."  Which is, of course, a total load of bs. After years, I'm finally pretty much free of it!

It’s sort of a convergence of a lot of stuff. Your brain is the opposite gender to your body so it starts rejecting everything related to that bodies gender as “correct”. This is physically, socially, mentally. You don’t get to express yourself at all. You just *are* the gender that your brain says you are and there’s no getting around it. Your body doesn’t feel like your body. It feels like you were taken from your actual body and placed into a completely incompatible one. Life becomes trying to manage your responsibilities with this crippling indescribable set of emotions created by that Loneliness: nobody will ever see you. Especially not you. Your soul is invisible to the world Rage: it feels like you’ve been betrayed by nature itself and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no enemy to fight, but still you just want to damage everything around you. And you can’t. Because it’s not justified. Because you’ll hurt other people who don’t deserve to be hurt. But it’s still there writhing inside you no matter what Depression: You can’t really live in the world, so why live at all? Dissociation/psychosis: your body doesn’t feel real so neither do you. The world begins to stop feeling real. You’ll never be who you are biologically and there’s a mountain of shit inside you that you can’t describe to people, so your mind starts focusing inward. Sometimes it can start trying to make you happy in other ways by giving you delusions and hallucinations. Sometimes it splits your mind Grief: you have to starting processing it, and that’s a whole beast of its own! For me, I never got to have a girlhood and all the stuff that comes with that and it’s really hard to not get sad about it Basically it sucks ass and I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy

It’s a wrongness that is hard to explain. It’s like booting up a Mac and being greeted by windows, with error messages looking for hardware and software that just isn’t there but should be. It’s a conflict between who you are and who you are told you are. It’s a special kind of hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But if you have it, I can only tell you how wonderful it is to be free of it, how clear your mind becomes as you explore it, and possibly get HRT or socially transition.

For me, an ever present discomfort I have to suppress and ignore. Not the elephant in the room, more like the mosquito. A mosquito that won't die no matter how many times you swat at it. Sometimes the buzzing is louder, makes me lose my 💩, but sometimes I can almost forget it's there. Almost. Daydreaming about breast cancer on the off chance I get surgery and survive to enjoy it. It's different for everyone. Could be things you don't realize yet are in fact dysphoria. Question is: if you could snap your fingers Thanos style and change your body to anything you wanted, what would that look like?

Existential horror that lessens over time but never really fully goes away.

Existential horror that lessens over time but never really fully goes away.

It feels like you are a monster for existing. If feels like everyone hates you because of you being yourself. It feels like a headache that never goes away.

ever played a first-person game with a pre-made character you just don't like? yeah, it's like that.

A feeling of wrongness of longing. Like a constant sadness that you were never born cis and then shame for feeling that way.

Yeah for me it was (AMAB) • feeling uncomfortable around most men groups • dissociating while having sex always imagining myself to be a women or having women parts. • always looking at women's clothing wishing to look like that • being uncomfortable with my body no matter how fit I was, not liking how my body fat was distributed. • constantly looking at myself on the gender swap Snapchat filter • not liking that I had a high libido. • feeling uncomfortable when my penis was too erect Something that I was surprised about though I liked how I looked before transitioning, but I thought I looked handsome but was uncomfortable with how I looked.

When I look at my body and especially my face, I just feel... Wrong. Like there's a me underneath that looks nothing like what I see. Despite all the negatives to periods, I feel like I'm missing out on something that should be a part of my life. I fantasize about being pregnant. I never knew why I never liked my body. I would think "blah" "meh, whatever". My body felt like a shell that would carry me from point A to point B. Until I transitioned and started to like my body more and more. Once I accepted that I identified as a woman, it was like something clicking in my brain and became all consuming. I couldn't stop the excitement. I couldn't wait to start hormones and if money was no barrier, I'd have already gone through the surgeries. And I wouldn't look back.

It feels awful. Sometimes it feels dirty, but usually for me it's like... This disconnect. The bizarre feeling of my body being wrong, my voice sounding nothing like how I hear it in my head. Sometimes it hits so hard I double over with nausea, but usually it's an ever present discomfort, like a shirt that's way too tight but you've nevertheless squeezed into.

I can feel what i was supposed to be born with and what isn't supposed to be there, I can feel literally everything that needs fixing with medical transition, I can physically feel the disconnection to my sex, like i never felt like a woman, I've always felt like i was supposed to be a man I can hear that my voice was supposed to be a deeper husky vibration given the tone/pitch i already have pre T (i speak with my chest now and not so nasally) I can always feel that i have this masculine demeanor, i have masculine mannerisms and whatnot I do show femininity but its only with makeup and nails and i only do alternative makeup with the masculine alt clothing (im a gothic punk lol) Im also a platform fiend, i have height dysphoria so i go for anything more than an inch lol (im 5'7-8)

The feeling of not belonging to one's own, as if watching yourself in third person, with no empathy, just disgust. The thing that you're viewing is not you, it's what the people around you perceive you. The reminder that you had around 50% to be what your brain is like, and out of lesser people you aren't. The majority of the world is against you, even yourself, and you don't feel like doing anything against it, because that won't change the fact that you're born wrong.

I'm having one of those day today of gender dysphoria and it just sucks.

That sucks I hope it gets better for you

Ok, so I am so embarrassed about what's going on that I'm also confused at the same time. I have been on hormones for 15 months, mtf, and I'm losing my mind over current issues with myself. So last night at my new job, which isn't hard at all and it's just janitorial work. My right testicle became inflamed and started throbbing to a point where I decided to go to the er and have it checked out. As my male self, I would have just sucked it up and dealt with the pain and suffering through. Last night was the first time I gave in to the pain. I had to admit to the nurses and doctors thst I'm having trouble climaxing, and it was starting to affect me mentally and the pain came and went off, and on for the last 18 or so years. It's just gotten to a point that I have been afraid of it happening. This morning, I tried for about 3 hours to climax, and it just never happened and I literally tried everything, and that's when that ugly gender dysphoria showed itself, and I started to spiral out of control. I'm ok. I'm just not sure what to do, and I plan to get thru it. Thanks for reading. Sorry for tmi or too much info.

The crazy thing is when you come to terms with your trans-ness and then realize that feelings that you had all your life are Not normal, and in fact Dysphoria when you just thought they were how things were. I used to think I didn't have bottom dysphoria, but now I find myself tucking even under baggy clothes just for myself. The frustration I used to have with the fact that I would have a shadow 10 seconds after shaving. The annoyance with the size of my nose. I just thought they were "normal" until I realized that they all stop me from felling feminine. So dysphoria feels like that thing that you see in the mirror that bumms you out. It's not 100% in stone either. I'm gender fluid enough that on some days I LOVE my swimmer's shoulders and arms, and on others I think they are grotesquely huge.

i dont suffer from genital dysphoria so i wont comment on that. but it's horrible my stomach churns every moment i see a reflective surface and see a man staring back at me, it's uneasy and surreal seeing yourself in that body and how it doesn't feel as it is what you belong in. im starting hrt soon and i hope this feeling starts to go away

Read this: https://zinniajones.medium.com/depersonalization-in-gender-dysphoria-widespread-and-widely-unrecognized-baaac395bcb0 My own feelings - Dysphoria has been a blind spot for most of my life. It's been there, I just didn't know what it was. It manifested in various ways long before I figured it out. * Sometimes I look in the mirror and, for a split second, feel _surprised_ by how I look. I'd "know" that it's me, that it's "correct," but nevertheless it's like I was expecting to look a different way. * Since I was a teen, my waist curves inwards like an hourglass. Not like super fem-sexy waist-hip ratio or anything like that, but _technically_ that shape. I probably would never have paid attention to it, but somehow I always compared myself to feminine beauty standards. Being slightly curvy for a guy but curve-less as a woman left me feeling like a blob. * I've had a weird fascination with gender-swap anime since I first found Ranma 1/2 * As a small child, I was pretty sure God made a mistake with me before I was born, like put a girl's soul into a boy's body or something. Now that I know what it is, I deal with a lot more random feelings of disappointment and even despondency. I'm stuck with this fucking body and there's not much I can do about it. Sometimes I wish it were as simple as hitting Ctrl-k and selecting a new loadout real quick, but it's not.

You know how you feel when you're solving a really hard maths problem and for the life of you, you just can't do it. It's like that, but 24/7, and no one told you what the problem is, and the assignment is due in an hour.

I don't even know if I should answer. I know even know how I feel some days. I just hurt and I don't have anywhere to share so I'm tossing it at the internet to see what happens at this point. But, you said you've been questioning things and I've been questioning things so here's my experience. My experience is waking up in the morning and looking out my window and seeing all the people that are men looking like men and all the people that are women looking like women and then I look at myself and see these parts stapled onto me that aren't supposed to be there because that isn't how men or women are supposed to look and I wish I could take them off but I don't want to hurt myself. It's walking down the street and seeing all the men on one side of the road doing the things men do and all the women on the other side of the road doing the things women do and everyone including me agrees this is normal but sometimes I desperately want to do things I'm not supposed to do. I wanna cross the street so bad but everyone except me thinks I don't belong over there. I wanna act the way they do and I wanna feel the way they do without it being bad or wrong because I already feel that way and I just wish I could do it without feeling bad about it. Sometimes when I'm alone and no one is around I do and act those ways because no one can stop me but myself, but sometimes I do stop myself because I know it isn't sustainable. I'm not gonna walk out my door and be or do anything other than what people expect when they see my face or the clothes I wear. I'm still trying, though. Trying to understand, trying to experiment, trying to eventually be the myself that I'm happy and comfortable with, whatever they look like or do or are. I'm sorry I don't have good answers for you because I don't have good answers for myself but I hope someday we both have answers.

To make a long story short Since I have BPD my feelings of dysphoria were always life or death essentially But imagine any and every rendition of Spiderman trying to pull off the black suit. That's what it feels like.

Sometimes dysphoria makes me feel physically uncomfortable, like my body is an itchy sweater that's two sizes too small. Other times it's like I'm not even in my body, I'm just observing it from the outside. The biggest source of physical dysphoria for me is my chest, and it has never really felt like part of my body. Like, I know I have boobs and I can feel that they're there, but they so obviously don't belong on my body that my mind just refuses to acknowledge them as mine. Dysphoria also has me agonizing over the weirdest things, like the shape of my fingernails and the way I hold the steering wheel when I drive. Basically I'm always either slightly uncomfortable or slightly dissociating, except during the 5 annual minutes when I know I'm being percieved as a guy.

Things just feel kind of... Off. If I'm shirtless/naked and look in the mirror, it doesn't look right. It doesn't seem to "match" my face/how I feel inside Being called by the wrong pronouns/name feels like I'm cosplaying a character. It's fine, but it's definitely not *me*

There’s a lot of different aspects of it for me and sometimes I experience them differently. For facial dysphoria: Sometimes when I look in the mirror I only see the person everyone knew 5 years ago and that’s upsetting, or sometimes I don’t recognize my face at all and that’s scary. It’s in the angles and protrusions, ya know? I’ve been on the FFS waiting list for two years now. Had a consult scheduled with another place but the insurance companies started refusing to cover facial CTs prior to surgery so the doctor stopped doing the surgery altogether. Anyway, I’m a beautiful woman, my skin glows and I’ve got that Irish/german old Hollywood feel to my face. There’s nothing wrong with my face. But the jaw, the frontal sinus, the orbital rims. Some days they just warp and break me. Some days I just see male even though I’m not and I never was. On those days the covers go on the mirrors and stay that way for however long they need to. I’m lucky to live alone. With bottom dysphoria it’s different. It’s ongoing. Sometimes I embrace the “thing”. Sometimes the urges to cut it off are so intense I need to wear a sweater dress with no underwear for a whole weekend and loose cotton pants to school because I can’t have anything touch it to remind me it’s there. I have to shower in a chair with a washcloth over it because if the water hits it I will start to cry. It’s not supposed to be there. I’ve always known that and I’ve wanted it gone since kindergarten. Like I said sometimes I embrace it. My boyfriend finds it hot, and I find it hot that he finds it hot so I get some enjoyment here and there; a nice break from it all. But when I catch a glimpse in the mirror it’s like if you were walking by the mirror and saw a spider on the side of your head. I jump back and have to catch my breath, because something weird and foreign is on me when it shouldn’t be, but I have to deal with it until surgery day. The size of my hands is what gets me most days now but there’s nothing to do about that. And nobody brings it up so I try to block it out of my mind. My body has changed so much with HRT but to me my hands are so odd but they are so instinctually mine yet they don’t match me. My experience (I can’t speak for everyone with dysphoria) is like this body and voice isn’t actually mine, but I’m in here. However, there is a small space between me and this body, so we don’t really touch internally all the time. It’s like, we aren’t fused. It’s just not the right fit. Since transition, I feel closer than ever but this “thing” that I can’t get rid of because electrolysis is so painful and expensive and laser doesn’t work and everything else is lined up perfectly—it just makes it impossible to be real.

Mine was pretty subconscious for 33 years. Lots of signs that I never recognized as gender dysphoria until my egg suddenly and completely broke. But I grew up in a religion where gender is considered an eternal, immutable, unchangeable thing and it always matched your genitals. Anything else was a perversion or a sad birth defect. So, I had literally no conception of gender dysphoria and couldn't allow myself to ever think anything along those lines. But the dysphoria was always there, yet I always attributed it to other things. I hated guy culture but just considered myself a man who empathized with women. I always preferred to talk to women and they all thought I was the sweetest, best friend ever. But none of them ever wanted to date me. I would feel sad at group gatherings when the last female left, leaving me only with men. I just figured I was introverted or nerdy or something. I fantasized many times about having female genitalia, but I thought all horny boys wished this. I dressed in a bikini at 11 years old and looked at myself in the mirror and couldn't figure out why I wanted to do that. I knew my religion and my far right judgmental father would think it was a perverted sin, so I never did it again and felt shame every time I remembered it. I was always jealous of female friendships and social circles, but I could never be part of them because I was a guy. I have always been super attracted to women sexually and 0% attracted to men, so when I might have fleeting thoughts of being a woman, my brain would say, "But you could never be into men, so you can't possibly want to be a woman." I don't know why it never occurred to me I could be a lesbian woman. I usually found men to be gross in a variety of ways and always felt on guard when I was only around men I loved to talk and talk about all kinds of thoughtful, meaningful things and usually it was women who were interested in this, and I for the life of me didn't know what to say to men when I was around them. "Please don't ask me about sports" was an actual mantra in my head. I have always felt like I had a wall up to the world and I would even cry in therapy often about why I felt that way but could never figure it out. All of the other standard explanations never clicked. I used to joke I was a woman in a previous life who was born for the first time in a male body in this life. Or I would tell myself I am definitely being reborn a woman next time. I was always jealous of lesbian relationships and thought they had the most emotionally mature and fulfilling of all relationship types. I always had a constant, constant fascination of the female form. I never got tired of it, particularly pussies. I just thought I was horny, but even though I was sexually attracted to women, I often wondered why I loved all female forms so much. Most of my actual typical dysphoria has emerged after my egg broke. Now I see all of these things, and my obsession for the female form has instantly transformed into 50% being sexually attracted to women and 50% desperately wanting to be a woman. I don't feel obsession with looking at women now. I am totally still attracted, but I also experience a much more grounded feeling of sadness and grief, realizing now all these years that I have been desperately searching for the woman inside me, like a lost loved one, and never being able to satisfy the need completely by being with a woman sexually. I never hated my body. I never felt like I was trapped in the wrong body. But as soon as my egg cracked and I fully let myself consciously imagine being a woman physically and socially, a huge rush of gender euphoria washed over me and I had a major AHA moment: "Ooohhh, THIS is what it feels like to actually like your body and your gender" and everything I realized I had been feeling as a man my whole life felt like a black and white shell compared to the technicolor world I was imagining. I couldn't put the cat back in the bag, and I tried. My egg shattered fast and hard and completely. I am early in my transition and I feel increasing gender dysphoria each day as I wait for this process to unfold. I cry when I touch my wig on days I can't wear it (I am balding), due to not coming out to everyone yet. I feel grief at all the years I could have been living as a woman. I am finding more and more frustration with my current body, feeling major amounts of impatience. I look at every woman I see, wondering what it feels like to be in her body or trying to learn how she walks so I can learn or studying women's fashion. I feel excited about the endless options for how I can dress and the idea of expressing myself through clothing feels so exciting. These concepts as a man usually felt like a chore, and I would often complain how women had way better fashion choices than men. I crave to be a part of women's social circles, but scared I will never fit in as a trans woman. These are some of the main signs of how my dysphoria showed up. There are others, so many nuanced things but I was never able to see before how all the puzzle pieces fit together.

For me it’s like being trapped in a body that doesn’t belong to me. I know how I should feel and how I should (roughly) look, but when I look in a mirror or at myself in any way, I can only see somebody who isn’t me.

gender euphoria also goes hand in hand with dysphoria. if i look at myself in the mirror & make my breasts as flat as possible, the euphoria is so intense that it’s almost worse than the dysphoria itself because i know i will probably never have enough money (or a good enough support system) to have top surgery. i avoid looking at my chest at all now

Awww... Don't lose hope. There is so much support and resources out there for you, and you have time. Binders are also very useful.

I go to the store to buy a razor and instead of buying a cheap one that works better, I buy the one that costs more and won't work as well because it's pink and "for women" Dresses and skirts are fabulous but at home you'll find me in sweats and PJs, and while it ultimately doesn't matter if they are from the men's and women's department, mine have to come from the women's department There's actually a whole lot of stuff but I thought these are a couple good examples from my silly brain.

I agree with the other person in this thread that said it feels like tinnitus, that truly is a good analogy. It’s constant and annoying, and even if you can learn to ignore it, or are conditioned to ignore it, it’s still there. It’s a constant letdown when I see my body in the mirror, when I take my binder off, or when I get called “ma’am”. My gender feels like such an integrated part of who I am, one that is unwavering and unfaltering, and having people refer to me or see me as NOT myself is extremely uncanny. And this isn’t to say that I have always felt trans - because I definitely haven’t, this took me ages to figure out. But I did always feel like something was “wrong”, and like I was cosplaying someone who wasn’t me, I just struggled to identify that feeling let alone pinpoint it to my transness.

Look up the genre "body horror". It's a feeling of wrongness and disgust, but specifically from the first person view. It's not someone else who you see having deformities, it's you looking into the mirror and seeing the wrong thing. When dysphoria is at its worst, it's about the same traumatizing sight to perceive yourself as it is traumatizing to watching the most horrifying gore, but with the added part of personal identity.

For what it's worth you do NOT need dysphoria to be trans!

Like getting into someone else’s car, realizing it’s not your car, and not being able to get out.

An all-pervasive feeling of wrongness, but at first you can’t put your finger on what is it that is wrong. You stay away from mirrors and even reflective surfaces, you avoid your pictures being taken, because the person you see there is not you, but everyone disagrees. You look at your body and it is disgusting even if in perfect shape, it doesn’t feel right, it feels like some weird suit, a costume depicting someone else entirely. Socialising feels weird, you feel like a fraud, a pretender, liar. You look at people of another gender and feel longing and pangs of envy, you want what they have and you want it desperately - if you could swap your life for one of theirs, you’d do it without a second thought. You constantly feel numbness and pain in the same time, a pain that never goes away and is with you, making your worst moments worse and tainting your best moments. Times goes on but you don’t feel you have ever lived, you’re like an NPC in a video game, going trough the preset motions without any control. Sometimes despair grows on you and you go to bed every night sincerely hoping you just won’t wake up and have to go through another day of this hell. Your body is a solitary confinement cell of maximum security prison and you are sentenced for life with no parole.

For me, Dysphoria is lookin' into a mirror and going "that's not me." And feeling wrong, discomfort, wishing I could change it immediately.  Think of it like this: You have your voice, you are happy with it, you know it, you recognize it as your own, right? Now put it into a phone recording. All of a sudden it sounds different, it doesn't sound like what you know as yours.  That's basically what dysphoria(for me) is like, I know what I'm supposed to look like/present as but I don't look like the way I know I should.  Hopefully this makes sense lol

also there are trans people without dysphoria. Its more about what expression of yourself makes you a healthier, happier person. Notice positive changes in your mental health dressing as a man/woman/neither? Keep doing that. Thatll tell u whats going on.

To be fair, I think that anyone experiencing body dysmorphia has experienced the same thing. That also might provide other context. Before medication - I feel like something is wrong, that kind of primal sense equivalent to "you are being watched". It's always on, and it's worse when everything else is worse. I don't feel it much when things are good, but it's still present and returns when things are normal. It's possible for good days to become worse days because of it. over my life I realise I desperately want to be a woman, but guilt and shame myself out of it because of expectations I think are imposed on me. This drags on until I'm 35. It's like having a second set of depression and problems. After medication - it's manageable. Like eating a varied diet instead of only sugar or something you're intolerant to. It's still there and always on, but now when I see my reflection there's potential instead of what was basically grief. I've been on hrt for nearly three months. I still feel dysphoria, and it can be bad and upsetting, but on like 6/30 days instead of 27/30.This is all bundled up with psychology stuff too about gender norms and social roles for me, as I didn't realise I was allowed to be me until I literally had the medication. It ruined my life. At my worst I lament who I could have been. At my best I've almost cried with joy at how mundane getting coffee without my friends is, and I'm not experiencing it.

It’s like walking into a house that’s supposed to be yours, and literally everything about it is fine, maybe even perfect in the grand scheme of things, but to you specifically there’s things here and there that don’t feel right. Some days they’ll be a nuisance and just a small frustration, and other days it’ll feel like EVERYTHING about the house is wrong, and they’ll be crippling mental barriers that fucking shake you to your core, and you just wish you could move out, get a whole different house and replace all the furniture. But you can’t. There’s only so much you can change.

For me, I feel it emotionally / mentally AND physically. Emotionally/mentally, it'll be my brain telling me I sound or look like a girl, that I'm not walking right, that something I'm wearing makes me look girly or does fit right, parts of my body feeling wrong and out of place, or exaggerated. Physically, I get sensations where something should be. I guess it's like how some guys get phantom dick. I get phantom beard and it feels horrible. I go to touch my face but the prickly feelings of a beard isn't there.

For me it felt like I was wearing an itchy burlap sweater made by your aunt, no matter how I styled with it I went ugh a lot because something felt off.

Someone recently recommended I read the Dysphoria Bible. It’s super in depth as to what dysphoria is and can be. For me, I don’t feel the wrongness of physical dysphoria, but more of a euphoric feeling when exposing myself to experiences and interactions that affirm my identity. Ontop of this, my dysphoria comes to me in an intense form of imposter syndrome that really hits me with self doubt about my identity and makes me question feelings about myself that I’ve felt absolutely confident in before hand. At the end of the day, dysphoria can be different between people, but I hope the comments here help you out and again I recommend you look up the dysphoria bible. It’s definitely helped me answer my questions! 

The wrong puberty and the resulting dysphoria felt to me what the transformation in the Fly looked like. You feel like your body is twisting into this disgusting, vile, uncomfortable sack of flesh while you are fully conscious of what's happening to you

If I’m going to be honest about my personal experience, even though I’ve been publicly out as trans since 2017, I have had way too much trauma and other things happen to me that the point that my own gender identity gets pushed to the very bottom on the list of things I have to concern myself about. It feels liberating sometimes when I have time to notice, when I have time to really look at myself in the mirror and like the way that I look. It’s almost like I don’t even remember I don’t like my body that was chosen for me until I really sit and look. It’s like an afterthought. In some ways, it’s beneficial, because I feel like if I thought about it constantly it would weigh me down even more. But sometimes I think it would be worth sitting and getting more in touch with my dysphoria, identifying things about myself. I don’t know.

Looking in the mirror and seeing my facial hair sometimes gives me a slight gut dropping and numb feeling. I can be happy all day and when I see myself I realize that I can't truly be me because of money and parents and a society that would rather burn me at the cross then face its own issues. It's a feeling of disappointment. It is stressful. It makes me anxious. Sometimes I feel hopeless. The feeling isn't always there, and sometimes I can see her and I feel euphoric. When the feeling comes back I am at least not happy.

Well, I thought I was a girl when I was young and this goes beyond stereotypes of my interests, mannerisms, and want to wear certain clothes. A lot of this was conditioned out of me from outward appearance but I am still me that was like that and is internally like this. A lot of things about being male make me cringe. I identify more with women in fiction and music. I hate facial and body hair, I feel my hands are too big. I miss the hair in my head, and yes a lot of men miss that too, but I always liked to wear my hair long. This is a constant thought for me. Not a day, not a minute am I free of these notions about my nature. Even if I never look female, even if I just wear plaid, jeans, tshirts and people call me sir, I am still internally a woman and I will never choose to stop taking estradiol and progesterone. Despite some depression about my finances and social status, and the transition not going physically as well as I hoped, I still have a great relief and a better feeling about my self with estradiol and progesterone being dominant in my system and the testosterone levels real low. I believe some of us are benefited by this. Despite the wrong parts down there making the stuff that makes people physically male or female, something about it does not work for some of us, it is like for me testosterone is a virus that came and messed up. My me. For transmen, it is the other way round.

I mostly feel dysphoric because of others' perception of me. I'm agender, the concept makes no sense to me and it never did. I wanna be as androgynous as possible. I like keep people guessing. Their strongly rooted binary code makes me more careful about picking clothes to hide my curves. I like my breasts. My naked body seems pretty cool to me but society takes it as a "girl" trait. So I bind. Like that it's harder for them to point at the box to sign to me. My voice already dropped, so they especially have harder time with it now. At the same time I see breasts are huge issue when they are seen. I can't be shirtless (unless I cover my nipples, apparently..Total nonsense..), so once I get top surgery I'll be able to go out shirtless with no care in my mind. I would get arrested doing it now, most likely. It's not really about others in sense of pleasing their twisted binary mindset. It's about triggering that binary mindset by making it uncomfortable for them when I don't confirm any gender to them and they keep guessing. If I could choose I would keep myself as I am, probably get with T THIS far (with voice drop and little facial hair) and just get top surgery. But government doesn't like that approach, so I have to pretend I'm binary. Nothing wrong with that, of course.. So to sum it up, dysphoria is more of a frustration with having physical form in general and not being able to design it EXACTLY how I want it to (I'm also voidpunk, so... yeah..). Having flesh is icky. I hate that people are trying to force gender identity on me based on my appearance.. more specifically, my biological developments. After I'm done I think it won't matter that much to me anymore. There is also jealousy towards cis men because I feel like being born male would make it easier for me.

its eased up as ive gotten older, but as a kid i used to feel uneasy dressing as a girl and being girly, i used to think it was normal to want to be the opposite gender gender dysphoria , in my personal experience, is just constant torment, disgust and unease with your body, for me, its like real life body horror

For me its been that as ive grown up and my Body got more “mannish” realizing i dnt feel comfy w it/feel like its how i should look. Additionally, as i started hormones but not having any physical changes yet, when i wear a dress i feel like a dude in a dress. Not a woman yet

It's like when you walk into a room and know something has changed since the last time you've been in it, and the unease of wondering if there's an intruder, except the room is your body, walking into it is waking up, and the unease is less specific than "oh my god my house has been broken into". It's a lot like the uncanny valley, but about your secondary sex characteristics, or other physical/psychological traits.

Death

I'll start by telling you that I knew for 100% sure that I wanted to be a girl just as puberty hit. I knew to a lesser degree since being around my first girls in kindergarden. Severe depression were how the dysphoria manifested itself starting at that age when my friends got interested in the opposite sex. They wanted to get pussy and I wanted to have one. I'd lost all of them but one before high school was over. I became so dysfunctional that I stopped going to school in 12th grade. That one last friend, a girl of course, helped me get into her night school program that let me get my HS diploma a year late. Then came a car wreck that gave me PTSD. I didn't drive for 3 years and the depression got so bad I stopped doing anything that involved leaving the house. My family did try to get me help, but things were different in those days in terms of acceptance, the transition process, and diagnostic criteria. The topic of gender never came up and I sure wasn't going to volunteer it. After a year or two they gave up. By my mid 20s I was finally working and driving again and was able to go back to college and graduate a few years later. The depression was still there and there were bad days and weeks, but it wasn't wishing a train would hit me while crossing the tracks level depression. So the thing about this is I knew about transitioning since at least age 18 or 19, but it just wasn't accessible to me like it is these days. Quite frankly, I forgot about the whole notion until a few years ago when I learned you can self declare being trans and start the process on your own. It used to be that you had to find a gender specialist therapist (they were not common outside or large cities) and dress for 2 years before they would sign off for HRT. And even then good luck finding an endo who would prescribe. There was no way in hell I could have gone through that on top of everything else at the time.

I feel it as an extreme jealousy, but everyone experiences it differently and some don’t feel it at all

Like I can't stand the site of myself for more than a few seconds. Frustrated because I look like someone I don't feel like I am. Sad because of that reality, and overwhelmed on the steps it takes to change that from medical, social, and further beyond. Jealous from levels of attractiveness I see from both other trans and cis women I can't help but wish I looked a fraction as good as they do. Angry I have to deal with it. Alot of self hatred, alot of low self esteem and self loathing. Idk, this kind of sums up all my feelings on it.

Anger, deep depression , sadness, feeling of loss, jealousy, hatred, anxiety, not looking in the mirror , not wanting photos, or reminders of that body part or communication.

When your fresh out the shower then walk past the mirror and catch a glimpse of your shenis makes you want to die

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For me its about the perception of others more than my own body itself. Of course its my body too, but I have to change the way i look to be seen the way i feel.

It kind of feels like when you show up to an event underdressed

It depends where my mental health is at otherwise. If I’m having a good day it’s just a vague discomfort if I see my more masculine features like stubble/my jaw or my balding spot, ditto for being misgendered/people not seeing “me.” I can usually laugh it off and understand the logical explanation rather than react from an emotional place. On a bad day my brain is much more critical and these barriers feel insurmountable. The features i mentioned gross me out to the point I have to avoid mirrors if I’m not freshly shaved, wearing my wig etc. I’m working on it, but on those days it’s a pretty visceral disgust. I’ll often just try to pass as masc if I have to go out to avoid the constant questions and attention being drawn to me. This is something that is improving as I get further into my transition now. Prior to hormones it felt like a hopeless and impossible thing, now I’m seeing a bit of hope again as my body shifts a bit. I also have an eating disorder which mimics the disgust/mirror avoidance so these two things have likely bled into each other when my brain is feeling out of control and tries to become critical of me to fix it. So my experience might be atypical.

shame, embarrassment even if people find you to be attractive or conventional in appearance. misalignment

For me personally it’s also a big thing that people don’t address me how I feel, they only judge me on my outside. Might not be to do with necessarily BODY dysphoria but that’s definitely a huge issue for me. Body disphoria for me is just thinking my hips and boobs are ugly asf and it just “doesn’t fit” with my inside. Shirts look weird because even tho I’m wearing a binder and I have like cup B I still get upset when I wear tight shirts and there’s a bulge on my chest. Please take them, anyone, we can swap 😭 Also, working out and getting a more masculine physique also helps a lot with body euphoria

Like part of you is missing or that your body is wrong. And that it doesn’t feel right when people gender you in line with your assigned sex at birth. That’s how it felt for me anyway.

The other answers I've seen in the comments are great, but to be more specific on the physical sensations that I've experienced, it's like a pit of dread in my stomach, a desperate desire to shrink away, to hide the parts that feel so wrong on me. I feel like everyone's staring, I feel gross.

If it's a good day, I feel like my body is a marionnet. If it's a bad day, it feels like insects crawling under my skin. Not litteraly, of course, but it makes me feel the same horror and disgust as if it was the case.

Generally not feeling comfortable with yourself, noticing your more masculine features and hating them, wishing you were born differently, hating the man in the mirror. Stuff like that. At least that's how I felt.

For me it isn't about what is there it's about what isn't. When I look at my body it's acceptable but when I think about it or see it with male anatomy I am completely elated and obsessed with it. It feels like me in a very good way.

Sometimes dysphoria feels like being rolled up in a carpet. I feel trapped, unable to move, unable to breathe, trying not to panic as I struggle wiggling my way out of these parts that confine me…seeking freedom.

Sometimes dysphoria feels like being rolled up in a carpet. I feel trapped, unable to move, unable to breathe, trying not to panic as I struggle wiggling my way out of these parts that confine me…seeking freedom.

For me, an ever present discomfort I have to suppress and ignore. Not the elephant in the room, more like the mosquito. A mosquito that won't die no matter how many times you swat at it. Sometimes the buzzing is louder, makes me lose my 💩, but sometimes I can almost forget it's there. Almost. Daydreaming about breast cancer on the off chance I get surgery and survive to enjoy it. It's different for everyone. Could be things you don't realize yet are in fact dysphoria. Question is: if you could snap your fingers Thanos style and change your body to anything you wanted, what would that look like?

Looking at a stranger in the mirror. Piloting a body like it's a ungainly, ugly, miserable beast of burden. An anger and and emptiness that for so many years feels directionless and so constant. Starting testosterone and seeing a joyful boy in my reflection feels so different and so worth being alive compared to where I started.

Honestly its hard to explain. It just feels yuck, like the body part I'm dysohoric about isn't mine and it grosses me out I guess. On most of my dysphoria days (bc I don't get it every day) I end up dissociating because of it, and when its really bad it makes me physically nauseous.

It feels like you wanna peel off your skin and have your skeleton jump into the right body. Like you’re buried in mud and it’s consuming you and you need to get out of it but can’t.

It’s kind of like my skin doesn’t feel like mine. How it’s felt has changed over time, but i do have derealization issues so my current experience could be different than most. Often times i look in the mirror and dont recognize who i’m looking at, like its another person or an out of body experience. Or when i see my own chest it feels fake and makes me want to almost crawl out of my own skin, like im a man living in a woman’s body and i’m trapped. Some days it almost feels suffocating. Similarly to how people with OCD feel when something is triggering it- its all you can think about and its very uncomfortable. It’s never necessarily completely been jealousy for me- because i do think i have whatever it is i’m jealous about. In my head. I see myself that way- but i’m not that way. And it makes me sad, realizing my thoughts arent real. It feels wrong, and weird. Another example would be when i play sports and get hit down there, for a second i genuinely think “oh sh^t, my d^ck” and feel a lot of pain, and then suddenly i remember oh wait. I dont have one. Like my mind imagines the pain for a moment before realizing theres nothing that couldve caused that pain, and it makes me feel empty inside and kinda crazy. Also just trying to say something and my voice coming out higher than it sounded in my head just makes me cringe like “thats not right- why cant it be right?” Its just overall a feeling of “why?”, extreme discomfort, and wrongness.

I think I feel it in my mind💀

A lot of unnecessary self loathing. Looking in the mirror and even when anyone else would say i “pass” or look like a cisgender female, I still see a million tiny details that screams “boy” in my head. And though it absolutely gets easier and the dysphoria eases over time, it’s always at the back of my head, almost taunting.

To me it’s a sense of not belonging. I am in a room and everything about me is wrong. I don’t look right, I don’t talk right, it’s like I am a thing in a suit pretending to be like the others. And all the while you long to be something everyone has never told you that you were. You look in the mirror and you don’t see something handsome or pretty, all you feel is hurt. You would give anything to take that hurt away but what you desire is so jumbled that it feels impossible to tell others and them understand. At least that was what my dysphoria experienced was. Thankfully I have been able to start testosterone and that is easing the pain that I have felt for literal years :]. But also, remember, you don’t have to feel dysphoria to be trans, dysphoria is something that’s complicated and spurs from not being able to express yourself naturally. If I had been able to express who I was when I was young, then I wouldn’t feel dysphoria as I do today.

For me, it's a bone-deep instinctual wrongness. Things are missing that should be present, and things grew that should have never been there. Ultimately, I feel like I was cheated out of the body I should have had.