Gender Dysphoria

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Gender Dysphoria, what is it?

~Let’s learn more about it~

It’s a term that describes the distress someone may feel towards their gender identity, related to one’s assigned gender or sex.

A very large variety of people struggle with gender dysphoria, but I feel that there are even more people that don’t quite understand nor get why and how people experience it.

Why can the experience of gender dysphoria become such a problem? It’s simple really.

The feeling of not wanting to be in your own body, or being uncomfortable with the thought of being in it.

It’s a very emptying feeling and honestly isn’t the easiest to ignore.

Those who do experience, well I’d imagine that it’s different for everyone. For instance, I don’t deal with gender dysphoria as much as some others I know. Or maybe I deal struggle with it more than some.

Though there’s nothing wrong with that, it doesn’t make any less of a person.

Point is, it’s something I’ve found a lot of people don’t know much about.

For everyone it’s different, just like loads of other things.

And honestly, different isn’t bad.

┍━━━━━━━☟━━━━━━━┑

┕━━━━━━━ :point_up: ━━━━━━━┙

What Are The Symptoms?

●・a desire to be treated as the opposite gender

○・wearing clothing that is generally

associated with the opposite gender

●・a strong desire to be treated as the other gender or an alternate gender different from assigned gender

○・no longer desiring the primary sex characteristics of their birth-assigned gender

●・distress or impairment in social, occupational or other areas of functioning

○・strong dislike of their sexual anatomy

●・a strong desire for the physical sex characteristics that match their experienced gender

┍━━━━━━━☟━━━━━━━┑

┕━━━━━━━ :point_up: ━━━━━━━┙

What Causes Gender Dysphoria?

Causes of GD aren’t exactly known and aren’t completely understood. Generally, the onset is during early childhood or adolescence.

You may be thinking, why is it more likely to experience gender dysphoria at a young age rather than an older age?

Well, when children are born, they are of course signed a sex-based upon their physical anatomy.

A lot of the time, the sex that a child is assigned can determine how that child is raised and how others interact with them.

Then when they grow older, they can begin to feel there is a mismatch between their assigned sex and their gender identity.

This mismatch can lead to feelings of gender dysphoria in some cases.

Although I would also like to mention that several different factors may play a role.

Hormonal influences during prenatal development, genetics, or maybe environmental factors even.

┍━━━━━━━☟━━━━━━━┑

┕━━━━━━━ :point_up: ━━━━━━━┙

Misconceptions/Myths

Gender Dysphoria and Body Dysmorphia are not the name thing:

Body dysmorphia is an obsessive focus on a perceived flaw in appearance, not gender identity.

Children aren’t old enough to know their gender identity:

Many children are absolutely capable of making decisions about their gender identity.

Sexual orientation is the same as gender identity:

Someone’s sexual orientation can’t be deduced from their gender identity.

┍━━━━━━━☟━━━━━━━┑

┕━━━━━━━ :point_up: ━━━━━━━┙

Treatment

Treatment generally focuses on helping the person explore their gender identity. It is highly

individual and is honestly just based on each person’s unique needs.

If you think that you or your child has gender dysphoria, then see a GP.

And if the GP agrees then they can refer you to a GDC (gender dysphoria clinic) where you will be assessed by a specialist team.

If you are already seeing a doctor or psychologist for other conditions, ask them if they can refer you to a GDC.

Treatments that is provided by the GDC are intended to provide lasting relief from gender dysphoria.

But this can also mean different things to different people.

There are some people with gender dysphoria may prefer more extensive treatment that will involve the use of cross-sex hormones and gender-affirming medical procedures.

Treatment can also involve body modifications that will help align someone’s outward presentation with their internal gender identity.

Hormone therapy and/or surgery are also two ways this might be accomplished. But I’ll mention again that this really needs to be adapted to the goals and needs of the individual.

It’s an important thing to that not everybody will choose to go through with gender affirmation surgery.

Some may want to achieve a full transition to what gender they identify while others will only minimize secondary sex characteristics, for example facial hair or breasts, things that don’t align with their gender identity.

Hormone therapy and surgery are two ways that this might be accomplished. But again, treatment needs to be adapted to the needs and goals of the individual.

┍━━━━━━━☟━━━━━━━┑

┕━━━━━━━ :point_up: ━━━━━━━┙

Conclusion

Gender Dysphoria can cause tons of thoughts and feelings that aren’t good for the brain.

These thoughts from the feelings on its own can cause a lot of things that can have a negative impact on somebody.

Let alone stress, it can become as severe as anxiety and possibly depression.

Which can be a harmful impact on daily life.

It is important for people to learn more about it, and that if they’re feeling that they’re dealing with GD, they’ll be able to take action on it.

I hope this helped and that it wasn’t too long and confusing.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Have a great day/night!

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰