Talking about my gender dysphoria

Recently I ran out of my Spironolactone (for those who don't know it's what is commonly prescribed to trans women when undergoing HRT to block testosterone production in the body) and since my dysphoria is starting to come back I thought I'd share my personal experiances with it to try and clear up some mystery of what it is.



So for starters I've never really -hated- my body. I do have my personal gripes about some of my body parts, like we all do, but those have been things like the width of my torso or how tall I am. The better description for what I've felt is more like the masculine parts of me feel unnatural. Like I'm staring at someone else's hands or (when looking in the mirror) face.



This feeling of your own body being alien to you is fairly distressing at times and has been a major source of stress and depression for me as well. This feeling of not being able to recognize the parts of yourself as "you" (I don't mean consciously, I mean I know it's me when I look in the mirror but there is a feeling that ranges from a little bit of discomfort to a sensation of feeling "wrong" when dealing with those body parts) is the face of dysphoria, not the blind hatred often claimed by groups (such as tumblr) who think that dysphoria means you hate your body.



The biggest thing that I've noticed return lately though is something I've never seen people talk about before and I wanted to share just in case anyone else has felt it: the imagining of different ways you can be injured or killed. Yes, I take the "considering self harm" to a different level by imagining situations where I could (plausibly) lose limbs (to IEDs, mortars, rockets or the like), be shot (while deployed), get stabbed (by someone who doesn't like trans people most commonly), assaulted (drunks, punks or during a mugging), sent skipping across pavement by a fast moving car (plowed into by an inattentive or drunk driver who loses control of their vehicle), and so on. In some weird side effect of my discomfort in my body I have found that when my dysphoria is active my brain thinks of ways for me to be punished for the way I am. I don't know if such feelings are common or not, but this sort of thing only has returned with my dysphoria so I felt it was worth mentioning.



So that's just a little overview of my personal experience with dysphoria and I hope it helps make the sensation make more sense to others.

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