So a couple months ago I started questioning/cracked my egg. I feel kind of conflicted about it. I resonate a lot with some parts of the gender dysphoria bible and some things I’ve read written by other trans people which to me feels significant. It helped explain the background wrongness I’ve felt but brushed off for years and recontextualized some past experiences that I had clocked as weird but did not understand at the time.
On the other hand I don’t think what I am interpreting as dysphoria is debilitating or anything. I’ve worked, done some schooling and finished an associate’s degree so I feel like I don’t really have it that bad. I did buy some thigh high socks and I like them but I don’t think I felt euphoria or anything wearing them.
I’ve started seeing a therapist to treat my depression and anxiety and I talked about being trans with him a bit. We’ve only had a couple of sessions but he was surprisingly cool and very to the point about it. He said “So you are a transgender lesbian” while I was kind of dancing around it and it stunlocked me a bit. I do appreciate his support but I feel wrong thinking of myself in that way, like I haven’t earned it or maybe I’m just wrong and I’m not trans.
Did anyone else feel like this when they started to transition? Was there anything that made it easier for you to get over it?
Disphoria and euphoria are really hard to describe since they’re just feelings. And if you’ve never experienced them, or learned how to know that you’re experiencing them, it’s basically impossible to identify.
I found it easier to understand how I felt about shopping for clothes when I was a man. For me it was practical, awkward, uninteresting. I just wanted to get it over with as fast as possible and move on. I didn’t care. In reality, now that I’m more aware, I would say that I was avoiding my true feelings about it because it hurt me to shop in the men’s section but I was bottling it up.
On the flip side, shopping for clothes as a woman is fun, and I like to take my time and try everything on. I feel excited when I see myself in the changing room mirror. That’s euphoria, baby!
It doesn’t have to be clothes shopping, try thinking of a bunch of different things that usually cause feelings of euphoria for cis people. Hair cuts, dressing up really nicely for a formal event, interactions in groups with your same-sex peers. That kind of thing. If you feel nothing about most of those extremely gender dependent things, but feel anything at all if you imagine the same scenario except you’re the opposite gender then you probably have disphoria about your current gender and are avoiding facing it because it’s painful.