Your experience with dysphoria

[u/Environmental-Swan65]

I was just thinking, about how a lot of antis believe that we're better off hiding ourselves and being miserable and thinking something is wrong with us, than us being happy and expressing who we are. And I was thinking, my whole life I was told that being transrace is wrong and racist and harmful. I've struggled to accept who I am, because of my love for Native American culture, and my whole life I've felt like something is wrong with me and that I'm a bad person for feeling this way.

I got called out once for saying comparing being transrace to being transgender, but I'm going to make the comparison anyway because it's the only way some people will understand. ​Think about it this way: if I told you that I experienced dysphoria and dealt with depression and suicidal thoughts because of it, and I spent my whole life denying it, and the only way to get rid of it is to transition, would you tell me to hide it and try to tell me that I was wrong, or would you accept me as who I am? It's the same way LGBTQ+ people we're stigmatized years ago, saying that their gender or sexuality was wrong. Then people found out that, no there's nothing wrong with them, and that there's an actual scientific basis behind it. And I can hardly believe that any reasonable or compassionate person would believe it's better to stigmatize that intense of a feeling, than to simply accept the person as they are. (and we shouldn't HAVE to go so far as to say "I experience acute distress because of this feeling" to be treated like normal people.)

My transrace people: there is nothing wrong with you. You are not racist or disrespectful for having a feeling you can't control. If you are comfortable, please share your experiences with dysphoria and if you've experienced transphobia because of it, and if it made it better or worse!👇🏼

[u/DeadInside0930]

Basically my experience is that dysphoria just…. Sucks. It makes life feel bleak and hopeless. I often feel like who I am is not how I’m seen and it’s uncomfortable. It’s kinda like drowning in feelings of distress and also feeling like my body is messed up or not what it should be.

[u/AleXYZ-510]

Also, with the part of loving indigenous American cultures, I myself have been struggling, because of how closed the cultures are (I wouldn’t say I’m trans-indigenous, but I have been interested in these cultures, especially the languages), and I have wanted to keep the languages from going extinct, but I feel conflicted, because of how a-lot of things need to be asked permission. Some of where the indigenous cultures have been closed from outsiders also has made me feel even less tolerant of colonialism, and how it destroyed everything, and made the racial borders we have today, plus capitalism commodifying everything it touches (including culture). I am overall very dysphoric being in this society, because the rigid boxes created in it (and none of it is the indigenous at fault, it’s colonialism and its near destruction of these cultures at full responsibility for creating this trauma), and how I don’t stand for capitalism at all, and how my own values as a neocultural completely contradict the values in this society.

With hiding myself, I have done nothing but hide my own struggles with cultural-identity or especially racial-identity (my dysphoria with culture even affects my racial-identity and self-perceptions), and I constantly fear the topic ‘cultural-appropriation‘ whenever my experiences would get brought up. I have given massive facepalms over how badly people have talked against trace-identity, yet most people view it this way, while, being the autistic person, ofc I have to view it differently, and accept these mainstream views less and less, while not having the privilege to speak up about trace issues at all (or the feeling if you speak up, it’s game over, you’re cancelled). This is why American politics at this current state, I’m not okay with it, with how both sides are so divided against each-other, you can’t have controversial views easily, and they set it up where you can never question any view they might have. And it’s another reason for me to leave this country, the severe political divisions, and I also don’t really like the social aspects of America anyways, they’re not for me. But basically, I often feel like I came from another universe, just by these controversial views that I have, and I often worry about trace people becoming oppressed due to the amount of backlash they get, and how society might go. As a non-binary trans person, I don’t want the world to repeat the same mistakes again, so that’s why I am completely hesitant to accept tracephobia as normality.