What Does Dysphoria Feel Like?

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I have many alarm clocks.

There’s the daily timer set on my phone, given the optimistic hour of 7AM with several back ups for when I inevitably decide to roll over and pull my girlfriend close.

There’s Hobbes, leader of our feline trio. He’s an expert at sticking his whiskery muzzle against the bottom of the door the moment he hears motion in the bedroom. I’ve learned to categorize his cries, as well, from the commanding to the plaintive.

There’s the neighbor who leaves for work at 6AM every day, their ultra-bright headlights angled right towards my bedroom window.

But dysphoria is worst of all.

Imagine going to sleep in your bed and waking up in an icy cold pool, your heart hammering as your brain struggles to come online. Those panicked seconds when you’re aware you’re awake but it’s almost impossible to process what’s happening to you. That’s how dysphoria rings the alarm, when I’m shocked into a consciousness that feels wrong — that I have somehow woken up where I should not be. In a body that I should not be in.

If you go and Google dysphoria, the first results are clinical. The Mayo Clinic, one of the top hits, summarizes:

Gender dysphoria is different from simply not conforming to stereotypical gender role behavior. Gender dysphoria involves feelings of distress due to a strong desire to be of another gender than the one assigned and by the extent and pervasiveness of gender-variant activities and interests.

The American Psychiatric Association adds:

People with gender dysphoria may often experience significant distress and/or problems functioning associated with this conflict between the way they feel and think of themselves (referred to as experienced or expressed gender) and their physical or assigned gender.

Distress. Problems. Distress and problems that doctors themselves inflamed by treating transgender and genderfluid identities as pathological for decades. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition only dropped “gender identity disorder” in 2013, a recent shift away from telling trans people they shouldn’t exist and towards alleviating the pain of dysphoria. The World Health Organization was even…