How did you “feel” your gender dysphoria? Did you feel “connected” to your body before your egg cracked?
So, going through some changes in life lately (career, housing, relationships) that are currently making me reflect on who I am.
For some added context, I’ve always struggled with depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions. At some point I struggled with self harm and suicidal thoughts too but I worked on that and since then I’ve never relapsed or felt the same struggle with it as before.
However now that I’m not feeling as mentally clouded as I did before, I realize that some of those issues were caused in part by childhood traumas that left me very disconnected from myself. From my emotions, my needs, my interests and my gender.
The last gender part is a recent discovery tbh as I’ve never truly reflected on it before. Like, I always saw gender as something “unimportant” to me. I just presented masculine by default because society told me to and I went along with it.
But while I never felt restricted by my gender externally*, I’ve basically ignored my gender internally and completely disassociated from it.
*(By externally I mean I still liked pink and other non conforming things even if “boys aren’t supposed to”, I’ve always had more female friends, enjoyed queer arts and had gay friends)
I’ve read stories of some trans people saying that they always knew their assigned at birth bodies weren’t right. But I also read of those who didn’t immediately know.
I hope some of this makes sense. I wasn’t sure how to word some parts… but I’m also feeling confused about a lot at the moment hehe and I’d appreciate hearing different experiences and points of view on this if possible.
If this is not the right community for this, please let me know where I could post this
How did you “feel” your gender dysphoria?
I didn’t feel it, that’s the thing. It manifested as disassociation. I never felt present in my body. I only felt present when I was online reading and posting and playing videogames.
Did you feel “connected” to your body before your egg cracked?
Nope.
I can relate strongly to what you describe. And during lockdown I started to notice that I could feel good and present with a feminine presentation that I never felt with a masculine presentation.
Then I fell into a trap of asking myself “do I feel like a woman inside tho?” and thinking no. Whaddya know, once I took estrogen and told people to treat me like a woman, then I started to feel like a woman.
The disassociation is so real. Starting E helped me a lot. Like a fog lifting.
The fog lifted so much and so suddenly it made me manic for like a week. I think because I’m so heavily ADHD because it turns out they’re just now finding out that estrogen cycling has strong effects on ADHD in cis women
It manifested as disassociation. I never felt present in my body. I only felt present when I was online reading and posting and playing videogames
Quite similar feeling. There’s only a few activities or times where I feel present, the rest is just kind of blurry and I go in automatic mode without truly thinking about it
And during lockdown I started to notice that I could feel good and present with a feminine presentation that I never felt with a masculine presentation. Then I fell into a trap of asking myself “do I feel like a woman inside tho?” and thinking no. Whaddya know, once I took estrogen and told people to treat me like a woman, then I started to feel like a woman.
Well then I also fell into that trap lol because I tried asking myself that too in an attempt to find an answer. I cannot recall ever feeling good while presenting masculine as default though, I just did it but I had moments where I experimented a little with things like nail polish, rings and eyeliner that keep popping up in my mind as (few) examples of times I allowed myself to present more feminine
Thank you very much for sharing
I also only started to feel more masculine after starting hrt. Even my memories changed where now it feels I have always felt masculine, even though I know that I actually didn’t feel that way.
While some trans people were always aware, other try to ignore gender like you’re describing. Do you think you’d rather be a woman or something else?
If you want some more info about what gender dysphoria is like, try reading this https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en
Thank you for the link! I’ll definitely check it out
Do you think you’d rather be a woman or something else?
I genuinely don’t know anymore. I used to be confident when answering “no” before but now I’m not as confident and I don’t know if I’m overthinking. But I’d also struggle in answering a lot of things about myself because of my detachment tbh so that’s why I’m trying to allow myself the space to explore without judging now
i will be completely honest with you, i remember barely anything about my life before my egg cracked other than being sad and hurting everywhere.
i think i did what you did as far as just kinda shutting down any part of my brain that wasnt the perfect masculine man.
anyways i have been on E for almost a year and a half, have a supportive partner and life is so much better than before
Its honestly hard to remember what it felt like before my egg cracked. I remember being generally completely miserable in life. I remember looking at women and wanting them. I mistook this for sexual wanting for a long time I feel like. Or wanting to be them because they weren’t depressed… but never feeling the same about happy men. My own gender definitely felt unimportant… just something I did because of expectations and how I was raised. I definitely didn’t always know.
@peanutbuttercupola@hexbear.net tried to link this but its a bit broken for me, https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en was also quite helpful for me back then.
Or wanting to be them because they weren’t depressed… but never feeling the same about happy men.
This is something I’ve never noticed before in myself… Thank you for sharing that. And for the link as well
My own gender definitely felt unimportant… just something I did because of expectations and how I was raised.
Exactly. I just perform it how I know it’s expected of me up until a point. But I realize I also never had the freedom to question it anyway
Not sure what happened to the link but it’s fixed now, thanks for pointing that out.
Looking back, I just played my assigned gender as best as I could while I lost my sense of identity. I never experienced much dysphoria, just a lot of fatigue from performing all the time. Only in intimate relationships did I really experience dysphoria because it felt like my partner loved someone who wasn’t me. At the time I didn’t have the words to describe it though.
When I was still doubting whether I was trans I just went for it since I felt like I didn’t have much to lose. I knew that if at any point I would start to feel regret about transitioning, I could just go back. It helped that I felt very empowered by the idea of getting to choose my own gender. I was finally able to loosen the restrictions I had put on myself to perform my assigned gender perfectly, and allowed myself to just be as comfortable as possible with my presentation and how I interacted with people. It feels liberating and prideful. I love being trans.
I never experienced much dysphoria, just a lot of fatigue from performing all the time.
This is social dysphoria, and it’s valid!
II didn’t often feel any negativity from my performance, sometimes I even liked it. It just didn’t feel like me and it tired me out. That’s why I don’t consider all of it to be dysphoria.
My experience was that I always knew, and also that I didn’t know that I always knew until after I found out. Repression is weird. Idk.
I’ve understood that I’m agender for a long time, I just thought that’s how everybody is and I had to play along with what I saw as fundamentally conservative bullshit. My egg cracking was realizing that gender is a real thing people feel and not just genital astrology.
How did it feel?
Literally felt waves of pain in my teeth like I just got kicked in the mouth, tears tried to well up, sudden nausea. Weirdly, I’d feel the nausea radiating into the nerves of my teeth, like there was a live wire connecting them.
Sorry for the late replay
This last couple of days have been intense out of nowhere and your words came back to my mind
Long story short, I had a talk with my cishet brother who admitted to me that he taught I was gay for almost 10 years. Mind you, the reasons were very stereotypical but he still taught it. I laughed at it at first but of course, paired with my doubts, it made me reflect even harder. Especially after I had just been reading the Gender Dysphoria Bible and noticed that I identify with a lot of the examples given for Depersonalization…
Then I tried taking some time for myself, did some physical grounding and asked out loud to my body “are you trying to tell me you’re trans?” and involuntarily started crying and sobbing for a few minutes
I started wondering how could I start trying to try affirming more my gender and last night when I was alone, I again started crying out of nowhere and felt that feeling you described but instead of being in the teeth, it was the chest for me
Safe to say I’m getting more confused by the day but I remembered your comment today and wanted to give an update
Like, I always saw gender as something “unimportant” to me. I just presented masculine by default because society told me to and I went along with it.
That’s how I felt before cracking. I once called myself “technically cis” because I didn’t think I was trans, but I did not identify with being male at all. I specifically was confused how other autistic people were trans because I mostly felt like gender was BS and never had seriously considered I might be trans until I was in my late 20’s (in retrospect, its absurd how obvious I was trans). Even after realizing I was trans in some form, it still took forever to do much because I wanted some “objective proof” that I was trans and being in a sea of dissociation makes it hard to realize how much of a prison it is (even 2 years after cracking, I started HRT as an experiment and wasn’t sure if it was for me… until being on it for like a week).
I think if you are feeling like you’d want to be interpreting something as a sign, then your desire for it to be a sign is a sign. If you aren’t sure if something is for you or not, trying it out is the best way to find out (where reasonable; unfortunately something like surgeries, for example, can’t be treated like that)
I once called myself “technically cis” because I didn’t think I was trans, but I did not identify with being male at all
I said that too that a couple of times. The last part however I’ve felt for longer if I think about it
I think if you are feeling like you’d want to be interpreting something as a sign, then your desire for it to be a sign is a sign
Thank you for writing this ❤️ I wrote another comment with a small update and thoughts like yours helped for sure
