Hey y’all, I hope everyone is having a great day!
I was actually really going to write about something else, but started feeling dysphoric so I changed my mind. Dysphoria is ultimately what this whole thing is about, after all, it’s called gender dysphoria. The actual definition of dysphoria, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a state of feeling very unhappy, uneasy, or dissatisfied.” In my opinion, that’s not a bad definition, but it’s certainly not a good one. Dysphoria is something that is very hard to define, and ultimately is slightly different for every single different person, which is why I felt the need to specify “for me”. However, it is something that can be described at least how it feels. Before I get into that, there are really two types of dysphoria transgender people experience, I’ll call them bodily and social dysphoria. It’s fairly self-explanatory, Bodily dysphoria is dysphoria about the body and social dysphoria means dysphoria about one’s social life and social situations.
Bodily
For me personally, the main way that bodily dysphoria shows itself is that there is just something wrong. It’s an intangible feeling that something is not right. It’s not a feeling that I am in danger, sick, or that something is physically wrong with me, but that something is just off. In fact, you can’t even really explain it other than “something is not right”. If you have ever had an anxiety attack, try to remember what that feels like, but then lose the worry and just keep the feeling of wrongness. While it is intangible, it’s not just a general sense; it’s directed at my body, not necessarily saying that something is wrong within my body or a part of my body, but that something is wrong with my body. However, occasionally it is something specific while this is going on, for example, I’ll feel that something is missing off my chest, a heightened awareness to the fact that I don’t have breasts, and my brain says “that’s not right, there’s supposed to be breasts there.”
This feeling wrongness extends to whenever I look in the mirror or any picture of myself. It’s not so much that I think I look ugly, or don’t like the way that I look, but that something is wrong about my reflection or image of me in a picture. It doesn’t matter what compliments I receive (in fact when feeling more dysphoric, compliments about looking nice as a guy make me feel worse), how confident I feel, I do not like what I see in myself. I once saw it described like this “You logically know that it’s you, but it’s not you.” To me, that is the perfect way to describe what it’s like to experience bodily dysphoria, it’s not, for me at least, that I hate my body, but that I know that something is wrong about it.
Social
As I talked about in my introductory post, and My Story, I have always felt more social dysphoria than bodily. The best way that I can describe is that you just simply do not feel like you fit in no matter how much you have in common and/or similar you are to the other guys, it still feels like when you are in their company, you are in a foreign country. There’s a disconnect where even if you grew up in that country, you never can quite feel like you are the same as those who were born and have family from there. I played sports through high school, and was in a fraternity in college. Honestly, there were times when I felt like an impostor even though I was with my teammates or frat brothers, guys who were my closest friends at the time. It had nothing to do with them; they didn’t bully me, or really treat me any differently. I was just another one of the bros, a teammate, a fellow pledge, a Brother. Even though I felt like I was their friend, teammate, brother, there was still that disconnect, I felt different from them.
I felt different because that is ultimately not where I wanted to be, or felt like I belonged. I wanted to be seen as one of the girls, not one of the guys, I remember hearing about how the sororities did pledging and thought it sounded so much better and like me, while none of my guy friends agreed. I found it a compliment when someone noticed my more feminine and softer nature, I didn’t care that didn’t see me as “less of a man” or anything like that when they did, in fact, there is nothing I hate more than being called a man. On the other hand, I love being seen and called a girl. I want to be seen as feminine and a woman, even as someone who isn’t the biggest girly-girl. While the feeling is always there, the dysphoria, for me is this heightened awareness of that disconnect and difference. It’s awkward, depressing, and ultimately distressing. There’s almost not a situation in life that can trigger this awareness, it can be as little as a word or seeing a woman. However, unlike other unpleasant social situations in life, you cannot escape it, it doesn’t end when you’re finished with your speech, the conversation ends, or you walk away. It stays with you like heartbreak, except instead of being caused by someone hurting you, it comes from within you. It’s the awareness of the reality that you aren’t seen and treated for who you really are.
That’s my experience with dysphoria. It’s not constant, it comes in waves, sometimes it’s mild and may only last a few hours, other times days, and sometimes it’s so bad I want to scream.
Transgender people: If you do not mind, what is your experience with dysphoria like? You can just summarize if you’d like.
Cisgender people: Imagine you woke up tomorrow and found yourself suddenly found in the body of the opposite sex, nothing changed about your mind, you are still psychologically you, but physiologically you now have the body of the opposite sex. Not only that, everyone you ever knew suddenly began referring to you as if you had always been the opposite sex. How would you feel?
God Bless, I love you all and I’ll see you next time!
Two Worlds 