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

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[–] [S] 6 points 1 day ago

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

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