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I'm sorry fellow internet stranger. I feel a lot of the same things a lot of the time too. It's also hard for me to find appropriate places and people to vent about it to, and I've been similarly frustrated with therapists. I hope you're okay with me adding just a little shared misery, feel free to ignore it if you can't handle hearing about someone else's struggle with dysphoria right now. My intention is to give some comfort through company, not to make you feel even worse or more hopeless. Whether or not you read it, I want you to know you're not alone.
More Discussion of Dysphoria, self-harming behaviors, internalized transphobia
Have you ever self-harmed by obsessing over gender theory, or trying to find the perfect argument to destroy any transphobic/TERF ideology from its foundations? I tend to do that when I'm feeling particularly bad and it never really helps. Sometimes in turns into this horrible spiral where I'm trying to like, argue myself out of my dysphoria. Like, oh, I'm only dysphoric because of bullshit patriarchal cishet standards and conceptions of "natural" sex and "real" gender anyway, so if I read something water-tight convincing enough that undercuts those ideas, I can somehow talk myself out of it, make it go away. But it always makes it worse, because in doing so I only end up focusing more acutely on where the pain is coming from, and inevitably I end up reading pages of explicit transphobia, ostensibly to find all of its flaws and pick it apart and make it feel less true, but I'm reading it anyway and it ends up sinking in and making me feel like complete shit, sometimes for days or weeks.
That is to say, I really relate to feeling like an imposter in my own skin. That I'm somehow less "real" than what I am. That there is an ontological gap that cannot ever be completely filled.
But sometimes, I feel a real sense of pride in these same things. I have my friends and my partner and the occasional queer acquaintance who I feel truly do see me for more than what I see in myself, who make that realness tangible in ways that it doesn't anywhere else. Sometimes I'll find a particular piece of art or writing that I really do think just gets it and I'll feel seen in a way that doesn't feel like being exposed, but embraced.
And sometimes, very rarely, I'll manage to see that in myself, if only for a moment. And in those fleeting seconds, it all feels worth it.
sorry to anyone who feels this is an inappropriate use of this space. i understand there's sort of a taboo around venting and using shared spaces as therapy sessions because, well, i'm sure we all know where endless, normalized pessimism can lead. we've all heard of 4chan. i'm very much not trying to cause a chain reaction and I promise not to make this kind of posting a habit. I just, idk, something about this specific comment really struck a chord with me, so I really wanted to reach out and share my own experiences with the same sorts of feelings. I hope this is ok.
if anyone feels like they want to talk about any of this, ask me questions about it, or just feels like shooting the shit with someone who might be in a similar situation, my DMs are open
all love to all my trans comrades. thanks