Back when I was a teen I’ve had a rather weak immune system for quite a while. Once or twice a year I’d have a pretty rough cold and went to the doctor. One of the symptoms I described was a strange feeling inside my throat, like there’d be some foreign object stuck, that doesn’t belong. My cold got treated, I got better, but that object, it never went away.
A while later I went to the hospital due to acid reflux issues. It was a rough time, I woke up and felt sick almost everyday. Again I explained that there’s this weird feeling in my throat, like there’s a knot or something, but the doctors couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary and dropped it.
Fast forward another ~15 years. I’m in therapy, mostly group-settings, and there’s a therapist whom I’ve developed a very strong feeling of trust towards. Very unusual. At some point I’ve mentioned that weird knot in my throat and she tried to help me find out what it might be. Maybe it’s a metaphor? A knot that’s keeping my feelings away from my conscience? Or even a psychosomatic manifestation of that?
Nope to all of that. IT WAS MY FUCKING WAY TO BIG ADAM’S APPLE ALL ALONG! A constant source of gender dysphoria, “stuck in my throat”, since my body told my larynx to grow during puberty.
It’s so surreal, there’s sooo much stuff that just suddenly is so easy to explain, struggles that I’ve thought about for years and never got really satisfying explanations for.
Did you have an interesting “It-was-gender-dysphoria-all-along” experience?
PS: Is there a nice term to address everyone in this beautiful space? I’m a little hesitant to use something like “Hey girls!”, because I wouldn’t want to exclude anyone who doesn’t feel that close to the feminine side.
PSS: Is something wrong with this post? Please let me know.
Discovering gender dysphoria, ADHD, and Autism have totally changed my life. Only wish it had happened in my 20s instead of mid/late 40s, but at least I have a chance to work on all of it before major age related issues creep up.
My inability to make friends was because playing the part of a boy was so taxing and I couldn’t relate to other boys. Or even around people I felt more comfortable with I’d struggle to act as a boy and end up not socializing enough to build much friendship.
sooo much stuff that just suddenly is so easy to explain
Someone posted a meme a while ago about the “I dont have gender dysphoria” to “oh that’s what gender dysphoria is and I have a whole lot of it” pipeline. A lot of stuff in my life does make much more sense when viewed with that lens.
Oh I’ve seen that one… There it is.
Actually yeah here’s one, my partner a few days after I started coming out to her:
“You know you’ve always talked about desperately wanting to remove all your body hair, like ever since we were first together (16 years ago)”. I was like “Have I? Oh yeah I guess I have”.
I’m literally amazed at my inability to have seen this stuff earlier. I keep remembering stuff like this that just has me looking back like “you dumb egg”.
God, the body hair is so awful, i just want to be smooth and soft…
I just took it all off fairly recently. I am working toward the more permenant solutions, but just getting rid of the werewolf hair felt amazing. Hell even sitting in the bath shaving my legs to maintain things afterwards feels amazing because that just so femme coded, and compared to the “haven’t ever shaved” situation, it just feels like basic maintenance now. The disgust at having body hair changed to the euphoria of “oh hey im doing that woman thing of shaving my legs in the bath like loads of women do”.
It’s not gonna be the exact smooth and soft feeling i want for a while, but even just the visual improvement when i look down, hell even just my arms, i like wearing tshirts now. I’m glad i did it.
Totally get it, the actually comfortable fit of a tshirt, without it shifting around constantly because of the layer of hair, is amazing
Its also significantly easier to moisturize, it felt like half the product i ever used was going to the hair and i was using less to achieve more, same for body wash
I took it all off in stages because i filled the damn tub just doing my legs with an electric razor, i referred to it as “shearing” 😅
I’m not dysphoric, I’m just constantly half depressed because I don’t like whatever event, season, year, family gathering, employment, or pandemic is currently happening.
Estrogen makes by brain fine I like it.
i know, and accept, i am trans for some 14 months now. last night i realised that all of my problems with romantic and sexual relationships can be explained with “yep. im girl*”. – 4 yrs ago i drew a diagramm for my therapist trying to explain how “my desire” works. there was a shit ton of arrows, and items like “being the object of others desire” … cringe rationalisations on top of cringe rationalisations.
it takes a while to understand yourself. <3
*still not super sure about that label. maybe read: def not boy.
Huh, relationship experiences will probably be its own rabbit hole to dive into. Now that you mention it, Sex was generally overwhelming, with all the expectations I’ve mostly put on myself, trying to perform like a man. Pretty much thought I’d have to dissociate to make it work and that’s what every man does.
oh yeah! a lot of this pressure was just in my head, but there are cues i got from my partners that reinforced the roles. it was different with men and women. its not so easy to project heteronormativity on gay stuff, but even gay guys (who would have known!) wanted me to be a guy. only once or twice did i have partners with whom i didn’t feel such pressure. and i still refused to understand.
be cringe and be free
I don’t know personally at least for me. I have been depressed. Not feeling a lot. Got used to it. Lucky enough I could cope without medication because I met my wife 8 years ago. I had to… “Toughen up” (which let’s be honest was more leave my sense of self to the side…) since my wife had more trauma and needed help. Today well it’s a bit better for us. But never over, situation hasn’t changed much except for focusing on my own a bit more.
Soon it’s going to be 4 week. Overall happier I think? It is because or hormones? I don’t think so, or don’t know. I guess it’s from accepting my “new” or repressed self.
Once my lady juice gets here I’ll be able to tell you exactly how much of my broken ass brain is due to biochemical dysphoria. Until then I can only guess.
What I will say is that I’ve been routinely searching for (name of neural pathway X) and estrogen. And I am positively astonished how many of my problems could just be down to incorrect hormone type. It seems estrogen and testosterone are extremely instrumental in modulating a whole fuck-ton of brain activity. And it’s just not something I’ve considered before.
Sounds like you’ll get some answers soon, feel free to update, if you’re up for it. Can’t wait to find out what more estrogen does to me as well.
I’ll definitely update.
Ah, that’s a good one! Two of mine that spring to mind:
- My “fetish” for shaving off all my body hair. I had no idea why I was doing it, just that it felt really good.
- When I first went to school, all the girls had pierced ears. So of course I asked if I could get mine pierced too, and was told no. That led to decades of being massively anti-piercings, because, it turns out, if I couldn’t have them then no one could. When my egg cracked and I realized I was just jealous and didn’t have to follow the instructions my parents gave my six-year-old self, I immediately went out and got earrings.
EDIT: how could I forget? When I was about 11 I was convinced that I was going to grow boobs and could get transferred to the girls’ school instead. No dysphoria here, totally cis behavior.
That second one triggered another memory… when I was a kid in a church going family, at some point I was expected to dress more appropriately. That of course meant wearing a shirt, eventually suit and tie. I hated this so, so much, actually never got through with wearing a tie. And I was so, so jealous of all the women who could dress nice in beautiful skirts and dresses. That might’ve been the moment I accepted the lie that I am a man and started to believe I have to live up to that.
Oh, and another fun fact: Turns out most cis-men apparently do not have a phase in their teens, where they wonder if they’d be a better and more productive member of society if they lost their dicks for some reason. It wasn’t even related to gender at all, I somehow just believed, as some kind of eunuch, I might be a happier person.
Ahaha, oh yes. We learned about castrati in music lessons, and all I could think was “that sounds awesome”
