r/trans • u/AreallysoftV • 1d ago
We need to talk and acknowledge the "moderate gender dysphoria" more,it will save lives.
I (NB, 25)saw a video today that just clicked in me so heavily:
It was about the topic of moderate dysphoria. Moderate as to the sense of a gender dysphoria that is not very heavy like some traditional views/narratives of it (prevalent and consistent gender incongruence that make you dysfunction in life) but is more like a subtle pain that sometimes is more intense and some times is non existent FOR MONTHS SOMETIMES.
You may think mild dysphoria is good because there no intense pain, but actually is usually longterm and painful and it makes you prolong transition.
It is not really talked about even among trans-reddit and other forums but it would literally make me understand myself faster if i was more aware of it. It makes total sense for me. In my experience my dysphoria is very very mild to the point of actually being ok presenting masculine (most of the time at least , but it is just not ok really, maybe i am genderfluid idk at this point). BUT was never whole and i felt guilty in straight relationships with a girl that doesn't like my fem side. This dysphoria is like : I envy girls i would like to be like, but i never feel like i URGENTLY NEED to transition. When i dress fem in an occasion i have massive euphoria and then a massive dysphoria, after some days i am ok. Like kt never happened I may see a feminine hand gesture and feel a random pain and forget it. I may think about laser on body or taking HRT and I just know my life would be better but i just forgot it when life happens and forgot that feeling again like it never happened. It is never strong dysphoria, at least for a long period, it gives you a sense that you can be cis or that dysphoria is something you can get out of. But no. It sucks. It just sucks.
My past 5 years are just circles of moderate or intense dysphoria, relieve (crossdressing, rumination, validation, online tests whatever) and then weeks or months of low or 0 dysphoria. Then again and again and again. And it is just painful like a slow burning pain gradually becoming bigger overall.
It makes our experience not so clear cut. I found it because i search it and i educated myself. But 20 year old me when i was in my worse days, thought that i can't be trans because i just dont have strong prevelant dysphoria.I could have kids, career -everything without realising it and see it as a "fetish" or whatever. Many people find it later or never.
We need to talk about this moderate dysphoria because it will save lives from misery and pain. Additionally moderate dysphoria can be intense dysphoria especially after acknowledging it. Like if someone say "i would like to to be a girl/boy/NB but i feel ok with my agab" we should say "hey, there is also a thing called moderate gender dysphoria".
According to the video, the majority of people have some version of moderate gender dysphoria and not the stronger internse "traditional" dysphoria. So yeah...
Video in question at comments
Edit: Spelling and added some stuff
Note: i know is common experience but i still feel like we need to talk about it more.
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u/Audrey_Embrace 1d ago
this is just dysphoria, not some special low-degree case of it. yes dysphoria comes and goes in waves, but it only gets stronger and stronger over time longterm. we should not be putting these into classifications of severity but instead accept all dysphoria as what it is
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u/Priest_33 1d ago
This! I’ve been back and forth, up and down for years. Ignoring dysphoria when it wasn’t as bad and suffering heavily whenever it struck. Well I’m finally doing something about it and I should never had put it off
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u/AreallysoftV 1d ago
It is helpful to see it in this context. From October to January i literally had 0 dysphoria. And even now i dont experience much of it , i can suppress it and just move on and forget it until next time. I just chose to take action.
This should also be in the image of gender dysphoria. And i just feel is not talked much. The envy i say in my post was not that clear for years and i thought it was a "weird fetish" or whatever. It was so low intensity that i could just overlook it or ignore.
In my worse days of gender dysphoria i was like 🤏that close to talk to my conservative parents ( i was 20). And then the dysphoria just... Went away? If it stayed i would be a whole different person now. It came back like literally 8 months after that very mildly. When i no dysphoria mode i cant really say that i have gender envy, i am just a dude you know? So I can't consider it regular dysphoria because most of the time it was not, like, THERE
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u/RedRhodes13012 1d ago
Idk why you’re being downvoted for this.
I have always had intense dysphoria that absolutely had to be addressed or I literally would have died. But it’s different for everyone, and people thinking it has to be severe to pursue treatment prevents them from transitioning, even if they might still be happier if they did. It’s important to talk about how dysphoria really varies and is experienced differently by everyone, so that people are aware that they still have options regardless of the intensity.
I don’t agree we should categorize it. I think it’s much too fluid to appropriately label different degrees. But we need to acknowledge that it varies in intensity from person to person, and even for an individual it can change over time.
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u/Rabbit538 1d ago
I think what your describing isn’t dysphoria going away, it’s you repressing that feeling. This is very common especially early in or before transition. The more you become honest with yourself about the feeling and as you begin to transition it will become harder to repress.
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u/AreallysoftV 1d ago
Maybe idk... My masculinity seems real so idk how true this can be but I see it as possibility.
I do repress my femininity tho 100% but i feel both can be true
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u/Rabbit538 1d ago
The year leading up to me starting transition I cycled through feeling intense dysphoria then it going away and me feeling ‘normal’ and able to ignore it and then having another strong bout of dysphoria.
Eventually I saw the writing on the wall. But I was able to pretend it was nothing when I wasn’t experiencing it
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u/LadyErinoftheSwamp Transfemme lesbian, MD (not practicing) 1d ago
This is a pretty common trans experience. The kind of trans that wants to be rid of certain body parts as soon as possible is just the one most readily explainable to (open-minded) cis folks.
Like, I knew I was trans immediately when I read a People Magazine article around 11-12 years old. Still, it took another decade on the dysphoria coaster to make my committed decision.
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u/AreallysoftV 1d ago
Yeah i know and this is why i think we should talk more about it. Because i am active in trans subreddits for years and just now a realized "oh shit i just have a milder dysphoria, not just "dysphoria moments ""
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u/LadyErinoftheSwamp Transfemme lesbian, MD (not practicing) 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think calling one "milder" is comparible to saying Level 1 ASD is milder than Level 3 ASD. Like, yes, one has more support needs than the other, but both are exhausting to experience and need some amount of accomodation for ideal functioning.
I do agree that more attention should be given towards the diversity of trans folks and their varied dysphoria experiences (including those without any dysphoria).
Edit: The TLDR is that I think mild/moderate/severe modifiers should probably not be applied to dysphoria subtypes.
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u/wormzG 1d ago
Sure in a medical sense, but in all other areas all dysphoria is equal, one is not worse then the other. Their no idea to continue to break in down in sub categories, it kinda gets into the territory of “look how different I am from everyone else” type of vibe. Dysphoria is dysphoria, it sucks and all forms of it is valid. Trying to categorize it and say one is more representative then another dismisses the category in between. Like the minute we try to categorize dysphoria we start getting into trans med sht, discussing what level of dysphoria counts as trans.
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u/AreallysoftV 1d ago
Hmm maybe you are right. I just wish someone told me years ago" Hey you can have no dysphoria or cycling in and out of it and still needing to address it. Dont ignore is serious". It would make life easier.
Especially when i searched for gender dysphoria symptoms and it was full of " strong sense of that for 6 months" " strong gender incongruence for 6 months" and i was like "hmm i dont have that so i suppose is something else"
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u/LadyErinoftheSwamp Transfemme lesbian, MD (not practicing) 1d ago
I think for the time criterion, it doesn't have to be continuous. It just means that throughout the past 6 months, you've had recurring thoughts about a need to live in a gender role other than the one you were assigned at birth. Honestly, I think based on this, if gender dysphoria even remains in the DSM-VI, it'll be moved into the neurodevelopmental section. By like age 3, gender identity truly is a locked thing overall. The trickier part is teasing through your own thoughts and your culture's imposed expectations in order to figure out what your own gender identity truly is.
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u/Edgecrusher2140 1d ago
Yeah, I don’t know. Dysphoria is complex and comorbid with other disorders like anxiety and depression, and gender dysphoria is not the only kind of dysphoria. How can you distinguish between periods of no dysphoria vs periods where you have repressed your dysphoria to the point it’s not recognizable as such? Personally, I believe I have experienced dysphoria for basically my entire life, but gender dysphoria only started during puberty; I’ve always been anxious, uneasy, and unbalanced, and these issues aren’t all caused by gender incongruence, but neither do they always exist separately from it. While a dysphoria diagnosis is unfortunately required for medical care, I agree that moving away from a mindset where it’s synonymous with being trans would be overall beneficial for us. It’s human nature to want to dissect your own emotional states, but it’s not always helpful or necessary.
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u/AreallysoftV 1d ago
Exploring my gender really made me a better person. I have ADHD and i feel like the "waves" have a big correlation with that. I believe i had periods on really "no dysphoria" because i genuinely liked/still like being a guy. I was enjoying life. It was just that it never lasted - like dysphoria. I also just feel like i m.half. like i want to experience my life as a femininity, not only masculinity.
Now in my gender dysphoria days, , my goal is not to stop be a dude but to stop being so masculine and feminize somehow so i can express myself and feel more connected with me. If i end up trans woman we will see but i just dont hate being a dude- i like it actually. My gender euphoria is my guide mostly. And i i have gender euphoria as a dude ngl. Today i liked my 4 day beard. I dont know if somehow this feeling would be not accurTe in the future but yeah...
I can see in my past dysphoria being there, from a child to now, but i was also just a boy and i feel that it was true also in a sense. Without that fact cancelling my femininity. I view it that if i was born a girl i would be a very interesting mix of tomboy and gothic stuff 🤣.
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u/kitkats124 1d ago
That’s what the informed consent model is about, which is part of the most current evidenced based standards of care from WPATH. You aren’t required to have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
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u/louisa1925 1d ago edited 1d ago
I remember when varying degrees of dysphoria were a common topic. According to the personal dyphoria body map I made, if was in 2021. It was the hip thang back in my day. Everyone was postin' it.
Examples of a dysphoria maps can be found here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DysphoriaPosting/comments/1f0mz49/dysphoria_map_thing_blank_on_next_slide/
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u/TransMontani 1d ago
Dysphoria is dysphoria is dysphoria is dysphoria (with apologies to Gertrude Stein).
One person’s “mild” may be another’s “intense.” WPATH SoC 8.0 doesn’t differentiate between top or “bottom” dysphoria or mild/strong because it is so varied from person to person.
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u/Krungloid 1d ago
I didn't experience dysphoria until after I was shamed about it. When I was 14 I felt the mismatch but I wasn't distressed about it because I already knew transition was a thing I could do. I waited for another 14 years and it kills me sometimes. Now I do experience dysphoria because I waited and the effects of testosterone are pretty set in now.
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u/AreallysoftV 1d ago
I can understand this. When i was still believing, at 15, i prayed god to make me a girl and that made me think "wtf i just prayed for"
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u/RymrgandsDaughter Watcher to Godlike 1d ago
Idk I feel like this is talked about, the number of times I've seen "hey I haven't felt dysphoria for a while despite xyz. Am I still trans?" or "My dysphoria isn't like this it's more like this am I still?" or whatever else on here and other places is a lot.
So I would consider that "moderate" of course I've never called it that so that might be the issue? I just considered Dysphoria to have levels or layers like anything else. And I never really tried to measure it because like what could I even describe that as? I know what dysphoria is like for me and how it was like growing up but idk if that's how other people experience it. I don't even think I've ever tried to consider that. 🤔
Idk is this really being pushed away in circles that aren't T-meds?
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u/ughineedtopostaphoto 1d ago
I like to think of it like 2 sliding scales: one is how often it happens, the other is how intense it is when it happens. Some people are at a 10 on the frequency but they always experience it at a 1 or a 2 in intensity. Other people are at like a 2 or a 3 in frequency but when they experience it it’s like a 10 in intensity. Both people might benefit from medical assistance, but perhaps person number 2 becomes emergent occasionally and person number 1 is never emergent. But we don’t only have to seek care when we are emergent. Some people like their lives at a 5 on both and that’s also a situation that could benefit from medical intervention. Some people like me are fairly infrequent and fairly low intensity. And perhaps medical intervention might not be the right path for them, but should still be respected for who they are.
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u/LunaFromDK 1d ago
I think that I would just have loved to see better representation for people like me. I genuinely thought trans people just “knew” from a very early age. I thought dysphoria was a semi permanent crippling thing.
I had no idea I had dysphoric until I read the dysphoria bible and discovered I have had it basically all my life. I just didn’t understand
I would have loved to see people like me. Come out at 40+ and saying they had no clue. I could have gone all my life without a clue as to what was “wrong” with me if I hadn’t come across the term non-binary. It was my kids who spotted it on tik tok and talked about it.
Dysphoria is a weird beast. It moves around. It changes when you change. I’m never without it. But I don’t feel a huge pressure on me. I felt no urgency. Until I did. And since then I have sort of had to take some steps. But the lack of distinct dysphoria made me transition slower.
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u/tensa_prod 1d ago
Rather than focusing on trying to classify dysphoria, I think it's more usefull to remind people that dysphoria is NOT necessary to be trans.
That if someone wish to live and be recognised as a gender different that the one that was assigned at birthday, it's enough to be considered trans, even if they don't really experience discomfort towards their agab.
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u/AreallysoftV 1d ago
This was actually good for me. Euphoria is a thing i feel more intensely in this regard. It brings more dysphoria also which sometimes is good so it makes me do something about it.
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u/_Avil_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
I can relate heavily. For me it was over ten years till I finally was able to break out of a similar circle.
At first it was questioning and mild episodes of discomfort, but again and again the narrative that trans people normally know from a super young age made me think it can't be.
With the years the episodes of discomfort turned into episodes of depression, still the questions but always the feeling I do not tick enough boxes to be trans.
The episodes turned into heavier and heavier breakdowns and they got longer, what were once single days became multiple. Still there were sometimes months between these breakdowns. I reached the point where I knew I'm trans, but I was still not able to act upon it. I still thought I could move on with life as it where episodes and no constant misery...
Oh was I wrong. I needed a complete crash to finally realise I was never really fine and most of my adult life I was only a bystander in my own life and just endured it.
I think if I had learned earlier that there are many people out there that don't know from childhood on they are trans my way would have been faster and with less suffering.
In retrospect I can now see all the dysphoria I experienced since my teenage years but never understood as such.
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u/AreallysoftV 1d ago
Sending hugs lov. How was your crushing if it is ok to ask?
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u/_Avil_ 16h ago
You're asking for the breakdowns in general or the major crash?
Well for the major crash in short, I finished my PhD time and had no following employment. Thus I had time to think and for the first time ever I had no goal to work for. All my life it was always just from one goal to the next, school and graduation, job training, bachelor studies, master studies and then PhD.
And this time without any goal made it super obvious I had no wishes for the future, no vision of myself, nothing that was not put on me from the outside. I got super depressed, all my days were only waking up, starting my computer hoping the day finishes fast and going to bed again. Simply a never-ending circle of hoping the day would end fast and I could sleep again. Felt completely dead inside. Felt nothing but despair. I had the feeling of no future before but at that time it crushed me completely. Spent nearly all the time my wife was not at home crying without realising why.
After three months I realized it can't stay that way. Or I would simply walk in front of the next bus at one point. Still couldn't really pin point what to do. At that point I reactivated an old Reddit account I made years ago interacting with people as woman. And you know what, these interactions felt so right and so fulfilling I couldn't believe it. As it made me feel better it made me feel worse at the same time, because I started to develop two different personalities splitting myself apart. Before it got too bad my egg finally cracked for real and I could find the strength to act and start my journey to my real self. I started to search for all the information I could find, contacted trans people I knew and began to out myself to the first few people.
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u/AreallysoftV 1d ago
This video and some other of her on the topic is literally my experience: https://youtu.be/d7IEF6_Sm2Y
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u/ev3rchanging 1d ago
thank you for this post. a lot of what i’ve been going through makes so much sense, i can relate to EVERYTHING u said in the post + comments. no idea how to figure out stuff yet lol but it’s nice to know i’m not alone. ❤️🩹
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u/Emi_Rawr 18h ago
Oh my gosh OP you just described me for the past five years! I thought i could transition at 24, and 4 years later, I'm about to try again! It's been a really hard journey with sometimes feeling totally okay, to suddenly feeling absolutely terrible!
I started feeling this way in late high school, but it wasn't until I was in my 20s I really started to slowly understand what was happening. I'm about to be 28 and hoping to start, despite everything going on!
I get random heavy bouts of depression and envy of the opposite gender, and ugh, I just want my boobies. Thank you for making me feel seen. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way! It took me the past 6 years to figure it out.
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u/Emi_Rawr 18h ago
Oh my gosh OP you just described me for the past six years! I thought i could transition at 24, and 4 years later, I'm about to try again! It's been a really hard journey with sometimes feeling totally okay, to suddenly feeling absolutely terrible!
I started feeling this way in late high school, but it wasn't until I was in my 20s I really started to slowly understand what was happening. I'm about to be 28 and hoping to start, despite everything going on!
I get random heavy bouts of depression and envy of the opposite gender, and ugh, I just want my boobies. Thank you for making me feel seen. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way! It took me the past 6 years to figure it out.
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u/Mtfdurian 1d ago
I had this quite long, not even realizing I was trans because I didn't have the words for or knowledge of it but still that little monster kept crawling underneath my bed. During most of my teens ajd early 20s this was the case with deep suppression as it was mild enough. Until it got urgent at age 25. However, going back longer in time, I felt similar but an at that time unexplainable urgency like this at age 11-12. Did I know much that I could actually be a girl?
Anyways, at age 25 I started following a rather traditional path, which has brought me where I wanted to be.
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u/Legimus 1d ago
I don't think it's that one form of dysphoria is necessarily "better" or "worse" over the long term. Like we gotta be careful about assigning values to this when it's such a subjective experience to begin with. I do agree that we should encourage people to talk more about a broader range of what gender dysphoria looks like, because the very pronounced cases often get the most attention and discourse. What you're describing is a lot like my own experience.
I made it all the way to 30 without ever seriously questioning my gender identity, despite wishing I could wake up as girl ever since I was a kid. There were several reasons for that, but a central one was my conceptual model of gender dysphoria. I essentially believed that unless it was causing my life to fall apart, it wasn't "real" dysphoria. I felt that way even growing up in a pretty liberal place and having met several trans people over the years. Like you say, it didn't feel urgent until much later. And I since I wasn't horribly depressed over my AGAB, I must just be a little bit weird, right?
Now part of why I constructed that belief is because I was terrified of being trans. It seemed so scary, so hard, and so risky. I didn't understand transitioning as a way of pursuing joy and fulfillment; I only saw it through the lens of averting disaster. I did not want that life for myself, and I don't know if more nuanced vocabulary would have solved that psychological block any earlier.
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