What exactly is Dysphoria?

[Anne Bonny]

You know I cannot help who I am, I am just who I am. Got up another day even in retired life the business and news comes alive again on Monday and wall street so there really is a difference between the absolute quiet of Sunday when there is absolutely nothing worth watching on television and If I were not stuck here I would probably get out to do something but I can't because of my wife. Saturday is slightly more cause the sitter comes and I can get out. Oh well. So here I am Get up all male and am beginning to figure expenses log the receipts to move money to the account to balance it when ... I suppose Gender Dysphoria for myself is more of a gentle tug inside myself to go and change..I felt flickers of it earlier but suppressed them but here I was with my coffee and I just had to get up go put on my jewelry and make up fix my hair put in my forms and slip into my casual female clothes the female version of my usual guy stuff. those rather unattractive iridescent light green shoes for around the house jean shorts and lt green polo... I even feel modesty when I have my shirt off feeling the need to cover myself. I suppose for some the Dysphoria is much worse...I am not sure what I experience is that but it does bother me if I don't go change or can't change because someone is coming or here. For others the feeling of discomfort is so great it leads them into the surgical suite to have implants and genital rearrangement, plastic surgery really and I do not like looking at my large drooping male member at times when I am feeling feminine and am in the midst of changing and catch myself in the mirror I feel ew! and it makes me feel bad about myself, about my feminine self wishing my body looked the same as other women. Oh well TMI but I am drawn by my feminine self here casting the masculine aside too bad I can't cast the masculine body aside on the chair too...just unzip it step out and step into a female body and zip that up...hum...Oh well the aid will come later, she has seen Anne many times and by the afternoon I will be back again...need to do some work on the truck...guy stuff.

But my dysphoria...if it is that, is a nagging uneasiness because I am not in my female appearance as I am feeling feminine inside...I can suppress it but it keeps nagging at me and it is uncomfortable because it is like an uneasy psychological state mixed with a drive and a desire to switch over fully into my feminine self inside and out. My internal female self does have a different focus and interest than my Guy side which for his part is ready and active for anything from working on the yard or the truck to setting up the sailboat for a sail he is like most guys ready to get dirty while Anne does tend to prefer more light home keeping, relaxing, finance or dishes or browsing for feminine things to wear on line. She is ready to talk to other women and be with them and to be out and about with them so there is a bit of a difference. 

I am 60...so that is something to factor into my thinking on all of this. I am probably quite a bit feminine inside but I am in other ways on balance perhaps more masculine. So will probably limit myself ...definitely want pierced ears, maintain my weight, longer hair...shaving and nails...but after 60 years....yeah sure I had no choice if I wanted a career and a family and a life to go with convention - my choice overwhelmingly...and not unhappy with it at all...my feminine is a lesser light inside but has also been hugely suppressed and hidden so lesser but just...just barely.

[DonnaT]

a nagging uneasiness ...

That is the quintessential definition of dysphoria

[DonnaT]

Ran across this today.

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/tra ... -dysphoria" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[April Rose]

Coincidentally, I am re-reading "My Husband Betty": What Helen Boyd has to say on the transgender spectrum, the tendency of cisgender science to categorize, (mostly legitimate; that's what science does, after all,)and the politicizing that is the unfortunate effect of that,seems to support this position as well.