#Is this vent-y? I'm not sure? I feel sorta bad about it

[theamazingdigital-place]

Ah.

That was a post to see-

I don't remember making the insides of their rooms. I didn't create the setups. At least I don't think I did.

Trust me, I wouldn't want to make Zooble's dysphoria (dysmorphia?) worse.

I care about everyone in my circus.

Even if I was detached from them on occasion and didn't respond well to situations.

Even if my priorities were not always well placed.

[lgbt-aesthetics]

What's dysphoria like? I'm not sure if I experience it or not.

Please do not reblog this post! It contains personal accounts of the mods that some of us are uncomfortable with being widely shared. If you reblog this post you will be blocked.

James: *low whistle* buddy you sure are asking the hard questions. Obvious trigger warning for body negativity, dysphoria, and brief mentions of dyadic afab genitals (at least in my answer) please take caution when reading this post! Also, I say some pretty awful things in this post. Please note that I’m talking about my body and my personal views on it and experiences in it. Nothing I say in this post is how I think of other trans* people and their bodies or experiences. Dysphoria can make you think some really problematic things, but I wanted to be completely honest with you so you can really understand what it feels like.

I’m sorry if my answer sounds a bit vent-y, this is a really emotional and touchy topic for me so I can’t just remove my feelings and give you a text-book definition of what dysphoria is. Dysphoria is different for everyone so you might not relate to any of our experiences, but still experience it yourself. 

Personally I feel body and social  dysphoria on a daily basis. The body dysphoria is an intense feeling of wrong. It’s like there’s these hot-spots that just radiate negativity on my body. Mainly my hips, genitals, shoulders and chest. (And face, but that’s easy to ignore as long as I don’t look in a mirror). It’s like, someone took a highlighter and colored in all those parts of my body and put a bunch of “!!!!!” and arrows pointing to them and is constantly screaming “HEY!!! LOOK AT THIS!!!!! IT”S FUCKING DISGUSTING. PAY ATTENTION TO IT AND FEEL AWFUL” and that’s exactly what I do! It constantly makes me miserable lol. But anyway, on to social  dysphoria! 

Social dysphoria for me is not as bad as body dysphoria. It only effects me when people don’t know I’m trans. If they do know but continue to missgender me, I couldn’t care less because they are obviously an idiot. It’s only when someone doesn’t know and says, “Hey! [birth name], what’s up?” or I pass people and they say “wow! Her hair is so cool.” that I get dysphoric because they are preciving me wrong and if they are a stranger I see once on the street, they will always have the idea that I am a girl in their head and there is nothing I can do to change that. And that really bothers me.

tl;dr: Body dysphoria is when you feel distress about how you perceive your own body, social dysphoria is when you’re distressed about how other people perceive your gender, and both are complete hell to deal with.

Ash: i dont experience body dysphoria, but i sometimes get social dysphoria. if its like, a good friend of mine, and ive explained my gender stuff to them and they dont respect it, it just kinda feels like a stone in my stomach really, heavy and uncomfortable. i also got my partner to help explain body dysphoria a little, hope it helps! ♡

“for me, i get extremely anxious, self conscious about being perceived as, for example, female, because of how i look, how big my boobs are, how feminine my face might look. its that extreme social anxiety i feel, and the looking at myself and thinking “this isn’t right” “this isn’t how I’m meant to look”. like i’m not meant to have those, and they are wrong they seem overly noticeable and I’m constantly thinking that people are seeing me as female because of them. i often dress to look as masculine as possible, just so that it isn’t as bad feeling for myself, so i don’t get instant anxiety going out”

Quinn: To me, dysphoria comes in spikes. Most of the time I don't even notice my body and how people perceive. But there are times when I do notice and it's feeling of disgust towards all the parts that are ''wrong''. I often try to avoid it by not looking at mirrors but that doesn't really help. My social dysphoria doesn't come from other people misgendering me, I am so used to it. It comes when I have to misgender and dead name myself. I can't really describe feeling for this.

Sascha: I will try to keep this as short + general as possible but of course I speak from my point of view and therefore am as subjective as anyone else. Also I didn’t knew the term “social dysphoria” before so if you got some specific questions it’d may be better to talk to one of the other mods about this. Body dysphoria “simply” means that even if everything’s alright with your body you feel like something is really really wrong. In this case we don’t talk about eating disorder related BDD (body dysphoria disorder) but about body dysphoria related to gender, so it’s most likely that u feel like your genitals or other parts of your body which are “related” to gender (shoulders, hips, etc.) are “wrong”. Like I don’t mean stuff like a woman thinks her boobs are too small/big cause like even if she feels that way it’s might just her body image but not her feeling that her boobs are wrong cause they belong to a female body or something. I mean things like you feel your chest is too flat because you are AMAB but are a trans*woman (for example). So if you experience feelings like that which aren’t related to poor body image, beauty standards etc. you most likely experience body dysphoria cause of being trans*/nonbinary. 

Presley: My dysphoria just sorta ebbs and flows, like I’m so used to being dead named, misgendered, and mispronouned that I just sorta ignore it. When I do have the days, I am more distracted and have a constant sick feeling in my gut. Everyone can tell because I get quiet and don’t really joke around.

note: you DO NOT have to experience dysphoria to be trans/nonbinary!

[readingontheroof]

(1) Hi so I hope I'm somehow able to word this properly and not be an awful person (I'm sorry my emotions are still running kinda haywire). So yesterday my datemate told me that they are aromantic and they've known for about two months now and they didn't tell me earlier (even tho they hate lying/keeping secrets) bc they still love me (but not romantically of course) and they were worried I was going to cut ties with them completely in order to get over them and not want them in my life

anymore. Which I don't think I would have done, but given my past experience and personality, I think it was a reasonable thing to think. So after they told me that, I cried a lot and we talked about it some more, but it wasn't really a proper discussion since I was crying so hard. (I don't know if this helps but I'm an infj and my datemate (?) is an intj. I'm also asexual and they're pansexual. Sorry to dump this on you, I just think you're insightful and give good advice). We've been dating for 10 months now so it's a little bit hard finding this out after we've already been together for a while. While I understand why they waited 2 months to tell me (didn't want to hurt me, we were already dating, didn't want to permanently lose me) I'm still mad and wish they had told me earlier. I'm very future-oriented and I plan things out so far in advance, I was already imagining a future with them and was so happy and excited about it. I can change this image of coursebut it feels so sudden and it's like everything's been turned upside down. Last night I was overwhelmingly sad, and today I'm still sad but also angry. Maybe it wouldn't have but that's 2 months I could've spent stopping myself from getting attached to this future image. We talked about it together multiple times: what we each want, where we want to live, what kind of cats and dogs we want to own together. I know we can still live together, & I'd really really love that, it's just that someof the certainty of the future has been ripped away and it was really comforting and wonderful to think about. I really love them a lot and I can't think of anyone else I'd rather own cats with. Last night they said they'd still like to be in a romantic relationship with me and date me and continue doing everything else we've already been doing, but they don't want to be involved with any of those romantic rituals like getting married, etc. All I want right now is to continue our currentrelationship, especially since they want to and they really want to be in my future. It's just that I'm so attached to the idea of romantic love and marriage (it's so stupid though) and I don't know how to get away from that & I KNOW that no matter how much I'd like to continue this current relationship, I'm going to eventually want to get married and I don't want to regret anything. The ideal future would be for me to live with both them and someone else I'm married to in the same housebut all I can think about is how there's no way that'll ever work bc then that's three people's lives, jobs, wants and needs we'd have to coordinate in order to live in the same place and area. The probability of it working out is so unlikely & I don't know if I'd be even be able to find someone else to date who'd be willing to do that. I'm thinking the best option is for me to break off my current relationship with my datemate and do something more akin to a qpr, I just hate how vague anduncertain the future seems now. In the midst of this, I'm still mourning our past relationship (it was also my first romantic relationship). I really hope I didn't say anything to hurt their feelings last night but I tried to make as clear as possible that it's okay for them to be aromantic, I'm just upset about the changes to my vision of the future. Like if only I could get rid of this attachment to the idea of marriage and romantic love, and all that sappy stuff, then we could still continue our current relationship into the future the way it's been. I've just been so happy since (and before) we started dating at college and it's kinda of just a shocker, like I was too optimistic. I did get some warning from my instincts which I probably should've listened to (I hesitated before asking them out bc I thought they might've been aro but they said yes & later when they talked about possibly being polyarmorous I freaked out bc I went on a forum & lots of ppl had similarviews on platonic and romantic love and in poly and aro communities and I was worried that they were aro and I brought it up to them and at the time, they thought they were poly so they reassured me BUT two weeks after the convo realized they were aro. Fucking weirdass ni. Should've listened to it. In addition to this, I have become very attached to cuddling and physical intimacy and I don't want that to stop...but at the same time I'm worried I'm never going to stop liking them if I don'tstop the physical intimacy. Last night they said they'd be fine with whatever I wanted to do (become friends, continue the romantic relationship, or continue the romantic relationship and affection until I find someone else I want to date). Honestly the third option sounds the most appealing but I'm just worried I'm gonna be trapped in a limbo and that my new ideal future option is too unlikely to happen & by continuing the physical and emotional intimacy I'm keeping myself from formingother bonds with other people. I don't want to cut them out of my life, bc even if we ended the romantic relationship, we have become so close with each other, and I enjoy spending time with them more than anyone else at college right now. I know that they really value their relationship with me as well, since they said that they trust me more than anyone else and they have a lot of difficulty opening up to people. I'm not quite sure what kind of advice I'm asking for, maybe I just neededto write all of this out. I'm sorry this was so long, I just have so many emotions. I guess I'm wondering what your opinion is, & if you have any advice on dealing with overcoming the loss of a former vision of the future & replacing it with another one (the biggest question I guess). Also maybe any advice on whether or not you think it's something that would work & if I'm still being too optimistic. Do you have any tips on how to go about forming a qpr? Thank you so much! Feel free toanswer whenever you happen to have any time!! Also if any of these messages get lost or eaten by tumblr, let me know & I can resend them (I've saved them). I'm sorry this was so long! Thank you 

Honestly I'm starting to feel a little bit better after writing all of that out and thinking about other possible future options (happy ones of course) and it's really nice. Thank you for your blog & all you do for the mbti community. Mbti always makes me feel better when I'm feeling bad and reading your thoughts and insights on it is always fun. I guess it's sorta distraction but it's still nice and isn't really hurting me so thanks 

Okay so first i wanna establish i’m likely aro myself so i dont really have a great understanding of the differences between romantic and platonic feelings.

So, one thing I’m confused about is how the relationship would go if you proceeded like the INTJ suggested, (the same, but w no “rituals”). What exactly about the relationship right now would be romantic to you that wouldn’t continue, besides stuff like marriage? Bc I think the biggest disconnect wouldn’t be in not doing x y z, but in a difference in how you view the relationship. If they view the relationship somehow differently bc they are aro, what are those differences? Bc obviously it isn’t a sexual relationship but you were doing things that would be “romantic” rather than “friendly.” I think it would be helpful to try to figure out what has changed, really at all. Bc if you are viewing the relationship very differently from each other, I can see how that could cause pain.

It definitely seems like you want something more from the relationship than they do, and I do think that if you continued the relationship with you sort of pretending it’s a romantic relationship and them sort of pretending it’s a friendship, with you knowing it will never fulfill those expectations you had, it will feel like something is missing and bitterness/pain/disconnection might come from that. I think if you decided to continue the physical intimacy but say you’re friends, that’s what you’re going to end up doing. I think you shouldn’t cut them off or avoid them, it just wouldn’t be logical. I think you should keep your friendship, but try not to do anything you would see as romantic. Maybe a little space right now would be really good, for you especially, to get your head around it without any pressure or guilt. However, I do think that given time (esp given your types), you could change the nature of the relationship and move on in a way, especially bc it is your first relationship. I think you could be best friends, and you could end up with a different romantic partner that you have a healthy, fulfilling relationship with.

I do think you should trust your instincts, if they’re telling you anything at this point. It seems like doing so would put you in a place that feels natural.

I don’t have any tips on how to form a qpr bc i’ve never had one and don’t really have a want for one, but I do advise you to be careful, bc boy have a I seen people try to have a qpr with someone they clearly have a crush on and it isn’t fun for either of the people involved.

No prob man, I rlly hope it works out for you. I do think the venting helped you organize everything! I’m glad you like my blog, thanks :)!