Thread. Something that helped my dysphoria a lot was a change in overall perspective about being female. For me, radical feminist ideas helped a lot. It gave words & acknowledgement to what I had experienced my whole life. It wasn’t just me, it was real. https://twitter.com/newthoughtcrime/status/1314158639385653253

Gender critical ideas where also of great help. The idea that nothing other then my biological sex made me a woman & That’s the only thing that did. It gave me an out from the gender prison. What came next was identifying what exactly my dysphoria was. I had to name the feeling.

Fear, sadness, anxiety, hate, disgust, shame, repulsion. Then I needed to ask why. Why do I feel deep disgust & shame around myself/body? Why do I feel “wrong”? What about me exactly feels wrong? My answer? I act like a man & that’s wrong. Why?

I had to go back to the first time I could remember feeling shame around my masculine behavior. I was 7 or so & my mother told me I walked like a man & needed to walk like a girl. I became obsessed with walking differently. I then became aware that people noticed these things

& paranoia around my presentation set in & would follow me for the rest of my life. Ok, so I know the feeling, I named it. I knew the cause, I found it. The rest was just practice. Every time I had that feeling of shame around being butch I would think of the cause & tell myself

“This isn’t a truthful thought, the shame is not an accurate emotion, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Or “this is my mother’s voice, this is not mine.” Then I would usually think of something nice about butch woman. “We are strong, free, brave, & we are loved

& accepted because of who we are by other beautiful lesbian woman.”

This isn’t a rocket science, this is pretty common ways a lot of therapy works. I didn’t come up with this all on my own either, I had other detrans women who came before me who had to ask these questions.

I sometimes still have “dysphoria “ shame around myself as a butch woman . But it’s not debilitating anymore. I can push through it. But I also give myself permission to retreat for a while if I need to. Dysphoria isn’t a full stop, it’s a starting piont to healing. #detrans