@widerlenspod
I listened to this podcast at work today. Brilliant well done both of you and thank you. I find both of these women so informative. I identify with so much of what you have said in this, I can't wait to hear the other episodes. https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0vZ2VuZGVyLWEtd2lkZXItbGVucw&ep=14&episode=ZTI0ODcxY2QtOTJjNy00MjVjLWEyNGYtNWI2YmU3ZDNiMzIx

One of the ways I deal/cope living with dysphoria is talking about it, and listening to people talk about it vs the reality of transition. Sometimes I can not voice the ways in which I have been or am feeling distress and so this sort of resource is priceless to me.

I also did not know that it was common for children with dysphoria to have a 'dark phase'. I just know I had one that stayed from around age 10, when I hit puberty, and it really fluctuated with severe highs & lows from that point on, for more than a decade. I didn't tell anyone

that I was suffering. I did it in silence. I didn't know anyone like me, or who seemed to truly understand me, despite knowing I was loved by my family. I felt so lonely for so long and transition just wasn't a thing then, where I am from.

I am glad I didn't have those resources as I feel I would have used the medical model during all of my pain. I lacked knowledge about the risks&consequences such a decision would have. It would have lead me down a path I don't feel is the right one for me, even though it still

draws me. I agree that alongside how you feel in your mind, there is also reality. There's how I feel and then there's reason and thinking those feelings through to their logical end. I feel wrong in this body of mine, it sometimes destresses me but the reality is that

Transition and the medical model is not going to change that for me. It might ease certain things for a while. But really, the reason I feel the way I do is internal. I think it originates from society's expectations on how girls&boys, how men&women should stereotypically behave

And I never feel inside those 'normal' parameters. That is something about me that does not need to be medicated, I don't need to literally cut away parts of my body or alter myself because my sexed body doesn't fit neatly with stereotyped gender roles.

Really, gendered roles are very fluid things. We may all cross over at times from what is typically considered to be 'male' to 'female' behaviour, or vice versa. As Stella said, it would be great if there was no pressure to choose which ones we have to call ourselves. Why not

Just be? Why not just celebrate who we are, who others are, without gender being the overarching, overriding discussion, or even sometimes the elephant in the room? This is why I campaign under the motto 'Love The Skin You're In', celebrate yourself how you are. You don't need to

Fit neatly into boxes of how society deems are perfectly acceptable ways to be. I think that is why I internalised everything as a child, and what started as feelings manifested eventually in distress around my physical body. I can understand this as an adult, I can see why I

Felt the way I did when I was young as well. Despite this, I have never lost the dysphoria around my body. So I learn ways to cope with it instead. To live and be happy the way I am. Gender rules are still present in society. But IMHO, rules like that were meant to be broken