askchapo

I had really intense repression cycles where delving into everything was so overwhelming that it numbed the feelings that were trying to tell me what was wrong. So I’d be really sure I was experiencing dysphoria, then they’d go away and I’d feel “cis” (meaning I wasn’t constantly overwhelmed by dysphoria to the point of not functioning), and then they’d come back. So for me, the answer was that I felt what I felt and labeling those feelings as gender dysphoria was an assertion I had to choose to make. I had to let myself be included in that label. In retrospect I was having very blatant social dysphoria, various types of body dysphoria, and even dysphoria from natural spikes in testosterone. But in the moment before I knew, it was hard to tell.