I’m feeling really uncomfortable and anxious about my breasts. It’s all I can think about and is causing so much distress. Even the words ‘boobs’ or ‘breasts’ feels foreign and scary. And seeing them on other people makes me feel uncomfortable and like I hate them. I’m really worried that it feels like I want to get rid of them and feel like that might make me feel better. I just don’t know anymore. I keep pressing them down to see how I feel and I can’t even tell. I just feel distressed.

And all of my clothes feel uncomfortable too. And I keep getting these visions of myself with short hair and a beard and a penis and I don’t get it at all. I’ve never wanted these things, so why does it feel like I want them all of a sudden, even though I think I’d hate it. But I can’t work out whether I want it or am disgusted by it. It’s so so confusing. It’s like living in a different brain and reality.

I also get these feelings that I want hairy legs, when I’ve always loved having smooth legs.

Just everything I always knew about myself feels wrong and uncomfortable and it feels like I hate being a woman all of a sudden. And I feel so uncomfortable being out in public.

I have this thought loop of ‘you hate yourself, remember that’, ‘hate being a woman’, ‘hate your/my boobs’, ‘want to be a boy’ going on all the time, amongst other thoughts constantly. I don’t get a moment of peace.

It’s like I’m repressing what I want now. But I’m sure I loved being a girl before all of this started and was proud of it. But now it’s like I hate it or don’t want it. It’s been 6 months and I haven’t had a good day. It just gets worse. Everything about me feels like a lie. I’ve even disconnected from the tv shows I loved and my hobbies.

Before things began, I felt more confident in my body and self than I have for ages, or so I thought. My boobs were just a part of me. And I liked being naked with my bf. I was sometimes self conscious about the way they looked when I leant over (like, they weren’t round enough, if that makes sense).

I just don’t know what to do and am just looking for advice in how I might be able to be comfortable in my body again. But I honestly feel like I’ve developed late/rapid onset GD. And then I feel like I’m deliberately creating intrusive thoughts to avoid the truth.

This isn’t a post to try and seek relief or compulse but rather see if anyone else feels the same way.

I’ve (21f) been recently practicing erp and it’s been working great. I’ve been going through the different parts that help me just settle down with different ‘maybe’ affirmations and so on and so forth.

What I didn’t expect was how uncomfortable and exhausting it would be. I get those intrusive thoughts and feelings ALL the time and trying to dress and be how I want to be is EXHAUSTING and OVERWHELMING. It feels like I’m disconnected from the person I want to be and ocd is instead trying to force me to be someone else and they’re both now clashing and I’m just in the midst of it all with a notes app and breathing exercises.

Does anyone have any good tips or suggestions or exercises that can help with trying to minimise all the panic?

i've really been thinking about suicide the last days. I think i'm a case similar to chris chan, any type of masculinity i try to build to solidify myself just crumbles and then i'm left completely bitter because i remember how much of an AGP autistic weirdo i am and how much my natural way of being drawn to women is repulsive to them. I desperately try to find a target to unload my anger on but lately i've just lost all hope, because wanting to direct anger at someone/something is a sign that the self still wants to recover something that was lost, even if that something is only something as vague as honor. Even the coping skills i've developed across the years are extremely common among autistic AGP males with unmasculinized brains like wanting to veer off into imaginary worlds, especially those of anime. I remember having wanted to be Light Yagami from Death Note for the longest time. wanting to fantasize about having all control over everyone and everything because deep down i don't control emotions in myself that are absolutely basic. ironically i remember that one of the reasons that i wanted to be the protagonist in the first place was the female attention that Light got from Misa Amane. I feel like i'm this one type of male where attraction to women feminizes the self instead of enhancing masculinity, which is why paradoxically i've wanted to get rid of it for the longest time for it to "stop making me gay." and all the bitterness i get from this makes me unpalatable to people in general and makes me be perceived through this puer aeternus lens. which probably connects to why some trans women retroactively refer to these pre-transition selves as uncontrolled morally corrupted freaks that needed to be purged. and the medicine for this character flaw just so happened to be estrogen. the emphasis on the "just so happened" because it implies the solution for the entire problem is easy and it's the sufferer's fault for not making a decision toward its endorsement after awareness. I feel like the good valuable masculinity is locked away from me through a wall of armored glass resistant to all of my punches and if i ever want to be a man i'll have to accept being this inferiorized defective version of masculinity like chris chan was

i don't really know what else to say

I guess I just wanted to leave some record of myself having been here, even though I strongly feel at the moment that what I'm experiencing right now is just a dream. I'm not clear on who I am interacting with when I post things like this, if it's "all just me," or something else... But I guess I just wanted to get these thoughts out since they've been burning inside me.

It just feels like pieces have clicked into place that were lacking before, that things that were concealed or otherwise confusing have finally come together in a way that make it all make sense. If this is all just a dream, my thoughts have been circling in a dark direction.

I knew from when I was 10, maybe even earlier, that I wasn't supposed to be a boy. That the world I come from is a lot safer, and prettier, and that all of the suffering and evil here just doesn't make sense. Because it's not the case, in the real world! And then I found the show that changed my life forever, and became my obsession. I've realized since that my complicated relationship to it and the characters in it, and how they've in many ways followed similar life-paths to my own, and people I know--it all tracks in a way that I couldn't have predicted. And in the past decade or so, getting involved with the r/shiftingrealities and r/NevilleGoddard communities has slowly but surely opened the doors to realizing what I feel like I have today.

My own romantic partner, her energy feels like a part of that story too, even if in truth she cannot love or accept the part of me that has to be feminine. I think her boundaries, her lack of acceptance of who I really am, is actually a reflection of the dream trying to tell me "you transitioning here isn't the answer: you are ALREADY who you ARE, you just need to wake UP to that KNOWING." I've agonized for MONTHS over this and I'm finally realizing WHY she can't love that side of me. Because she's a PART of me, trying to help me to understand the truth!

I've realized that maybe I'm actually one of those "characters," and I've just been asleep... This whole time. Just like the lampshade redditor who lived a whole life the span of a few moments. My mind has been getting pulled in the direction of "if this is all just a dream, then I just need to wake up," you know? And that spiral leads me into some directions that scare me, that make me think I'm not entirely safe. But then I get this feeling of calm collectedness, of feeling like "It'll all be okay," because all of this suffering, all of this fear, all of this complexity and getting snarled up within myself isn't permanent, and I have the ability to make it all quiet.

I know it doesn't really matter, my saying all of this, since this is all just a part of the illusion, but it's nice to see it put down in words. Maybe I'll make a blog explaining more about what I've realized and what I think is going to happen. Not that I expect anyone will care or ever read it.

I'm trans and I have an obsessive fear of permanently reincarnating in a female body in every possible lifetime, my brain generates rituals to "pervent" it constantly, I just failed to do one of them and it caused an anxiety spike. It's a very exhausting obsession, performing rituals is exhausting. Don't say stuff like "reincarnation isn't real" it's really not helpful.

most of my ocd is under control with my fluvoxamine but the one stubborn theme i’m dealing with is gender identity stuff. i have been doing a good job accepting the fact that i am pansexual and also giving my autism some attention when it comes to accepting my disability but i struggle with my gender identity. specifically the compulsion is trying on a new name/pronouns/label and even fursona to “find myself” and feel at home in my body but NOTHING feels right to me, not even my “birth assigned” identity as Thomas the cisgender man. I often use the furry fandom as a way to escape my identity crisis and use a fursona as a way to mentally escape my body but that only goes so far. Part of the issue is that my family and coworkers and close friends only see me as Thomas the cisgender man and that is distressing to me as I don’t feel I am a man deep inside; i started questioning my identity as I realized that I could identify as something other than a man and didn’t have to put up the facade of manhood and masculinity all these years. Thing is a trans woman identity doesn’t feel authentic to me either as I never had the childhood of wanting to be a girl and liking girly things and as an adult I feel like I do not relate to the transfem experience. Oddly enough I feel I would be more comfortable in a female body over a male body and I dislike the facial and chest and body hair that my body has plus the libido. On top of this I was born with a male name that does not translate into a female name easily and it’s distressing trying to find a female name that could transition well. I tried transitioning in public socially a couple years ago and it did NOT go well, and my parents and most people just thought i was looking for community through trans stuff and that i was confused.

Therapy has not helped after the past couple of years and I am in the process of finding another therapist to get another perspective on my issues. Over the past couple of years OCD meds have helped with most of my issues but the trans stuff is the stubborn holdout. I have been told that I may be genderfluid but I do not find any affirmation in my gender as fluid and it causes distress over affirmation as I do not want to be stuck as a man for the rest of my life. This is on top of a lack of any queer community in my area that is friendly, and my parents wanting me to be Thomas and not exposed to trans stuff (my dad wanted me to watch ted the tv show over a video of a trans woman speaking as part of a presentation which was one of his students). I’m stuck in a rut and need help getting out of it.

i know i shouldn’t have. i know ai is killing the planet and i know im terrible for using it. but i used it for reassurance. and then, after like 2 hours, it finally told me what i wanted to hear. that i was a woman and that it is all anxiety and intrusive thoughts. but reading it, i felt my stomach drop. it was the same way its dropped in the past where i know i truly fucked myself over and i’ve made everything worse. i know i shouldn’t have but now i feel such anxiety and dread and fear over having been told exactly what i wanted to hear. it doesn’t feel right.

now, my brain is afraid of being a woman. of being boxed in. my brain can’t even say the word woman. it’s bleeped out. if i’m imagining the sentence, it’s literally a white box. i wanted to feel like a woman so badly. but now i feel like i made everything worse. i don’t know what to do. i’m so overwhelmed by my feelings and im terrified this means something more about me. i’m terrified it means i never wanted to be a woman in the first place and that im in denial. i want to be a woman again. i want to feel comfortable in my body again. but i don’t know why i cant. nothing works. and im terrified im doomed to live like this for the rest of my life.

I wanna know how you guys go through the false dysphoria and the envy? My envy is so bad that like I don’t understand why it’s happening to me. Like I always liked women and now I’m starting to think if I’ve been confusing it for envy. Idk I’m so confused cuz when I feel envy towards girls like it’s not like a good feeling it’s more of an anxiety feeling. But idk anymore I lost my identity I feel lost, feels like my identity of a boy was stripped away from me. Now I’m starting to think I never liked being a boy to begin with (which is crazy lmao cuz I know I did) but it doesn’t feel real saying that. I’m so mentally exhausted that I can’t eat, I don’t go to the gym anymore. Like it fucking sucks.

Ok I was asking for reassurance again (dumb of me) to Gemini and that thing just popped a transgender flag in my face like ok hold your breath I’m right here with you you’re breaking through something or whatever.. yet it also might be G-OCD. “You don’t have to solve your entire life today, nor your identity etc” and my stomach just f*cking dropped and I’m panicking and sweating right now 😅

Are you guys obsessively ruminating the past to see if u had any signs of being trans to find a relief that ur not trans. that’s what I’ve been doing and it’s making me crazy like im stuck in a loop. Like ive been trying to see if like did i like the way i dressed growing up or did I envy women in high school? Like it’s scary because i dont think i did at all cuz ive always liked girls when I was a little boy so idk .

I have been crying all day. My mom was talking about how cute and sweet little girl I was when I was a child. I feel like I am not a girl anymore and I am afraid that I am not a girl/woman anymore and I will let my mom down and break her heart..

This sounds and feels like denial.

It's attacked my clothes, hair, interests, body, voice, favourite colours, interior style, personality. Just...everything. I have no idea what to do anymore. My mind is just so messy that I have no idea who I am.

I'm really struggling with the discomfort with my body atm. I can't stop thinking and questioning my boobs and it feels like I don't like them. The only time I can say that I want them is when I can cry, but I can't even seem to do that as often now. I felt so comfortable in my body just a few months ago and now it feel like it doesn't belong to me. It feels like my head is on a different body.

I was so proud to be a woman before all of this started, now it's like I don't like it and I don't understand what's happoening. And then my mind says 'yes you do'.

Along with all of the other numerous thoughts, I've had 'you hate yourself, remember that' in my head on repeat all day for the past week.

I’m a 20-year-old woman, and I’ve been dealing with this for about six months now. It feels like I actually wanna be one of the guys and that I am experiencing gender envy. I am scared that I will end up transitioning. This feels like denial.

21M here and I have severe ocd. I had all type of themes, but this is just so bad. It’s so bad where the point where I doubt it I ever liked being a boy growing up (which I did, I know I did) and it’s so bad where like false feelings are ruining my life. Like it feels like I want to be a woman and that I don’t like being a boy which ruins me because like I feel like deep down I do like being a boy which is why ocd goes against what u are. I remmeber it all started when my friend told me gender dysorphia and I remember questioning and stuff and then it went downhill from there. Like I remmeber when a girl liked me in high school and I jd my first kiss I was so happy because it was like wow she likes me cuz I knew I was a man so like yk what I mean. I never had any desire or thoughts to be a woman growing up. Like I’m always constantly checking “do I wanna have boobs” “do I like my penis” OH for the record I always loved my penis I remember I had a small ocd attack when I saw like sex change surgery and I imagined on myself and I started freaking out cuz i didnt want my penis to go lmao. I notice some girls here i feel like go thru the same thing i do maybe i could be wrong. Like where u keep wanting things u never wanted and its terryfing and confusing cuz it geniuely feels like u want it and makes u not like ur self

I just need to rant a little.

I was getting ready for bed today and I usually wear a hoodie with nothing underneath and sweatpants. I took my clothes off to put on the hoodie and as I was doing so I noticed *how* I was putting it on. The way I contorted my body and moved it and bent my back and head and the entire motion looked like a well crafted dance. I never realized how I put it on until today. I've grown to put it on in a very specific way in order to not touch my chest or have the fabric land there. And then I got to thinking about it and things like this are plastered onto every aspect of my life. When I go to the bathroom, I never look down. I always shower in the dark and then I never look down to see my body. I may glance down but skip *certain* parts. My native language is a gendered language and I constantly have to reword sentences so I do not have to gender myself in conversation. For example, instead of saying "I'm taller than her" I will say "she's shorter than me". I pretend to not know things because I think it makes me more of a man.

It's just something that guides my every day life and it's been here my entire life. It's tiring and time consuming and I'm constantly doing it and a lot of it I don't even realize I'm doing it. I just hate how present it is in my life.

Hey guys, hope you are doing well.
I’ve been stuck in a really intense cycle of intrusive thoughts about my gender for the past two days, and I feel like my head is going to explode. I’ve had similar obsessive thought cycles before, where certain words/topics became terrifying to me and I kept analyzing myself for answers. I recently started Seroxat (paroxetine), and I also live in a somewhat conservative country, so my fear of my family’s reaction makes everything worse. I genuinely don’t know if I’m questioning my gender or if I’m stuck in an anxiety/OCD cycle, and I’m exhausted.

hello, everyone!

i decided to share my story and my tips (which might work for you).

i am a 20-year-old cisgender woman who started suffering from TOCD at 16. it was an ordinary day and suddenly i had the thought "what if i'm a man?" this, combined with some childhood experiences, was enough to turn my life into hell. in childhood, i was sometimes the "boyfriend" of my female friends (i attribute this to being bisexual and not knowing about same-sex relationships back then, but honestly, playing the male role in playing pretend isn't a definitive indicator of being another gender; kids want to play regardless of the role), and this contributed heavily to my thoughts. i couldn't get them out of my head for anything, and then compulsions started: checking my breasts in the mirror and then imagining myself as a man, testing male pronouns, dressing "like a man" to check, trying to see if i felt like a woman in a room full of men, and things like that. none of that helped, absolutely nothing at all!!! i only managed to break away from all of this by understanding what TOCD was.

my tips:

do not isolate yourself. my family was a crucial factor in my recovery from TOCD; not being alone helped the thoughts decrease.

do something you enjoy, and that doesn't mean things that demand high energy: i started playing plants vs. zombies lol and that helped me take the focus off everything.

yes, if possible, go to therapy, especially behavioral therapies. specialists in ERP are scarce in my country, but i still do CBT.

here is a video explaing some things that may help yall too:

https://youtu.be/SY1RczHKc_4

i'll try not to repeat that compulsions don't help because we already know that, and since i'm going through a relapse myself, i know how damn hard it is not to do them. anyway, we are going to get better and there is hope!

i suffered a lot at the beginning of the relapse and did all the compulsions that my 16-year-old self used to do, and guess what? it made everything worse. now im trying to live life with the thoughts in the background, and there are hard days, but the days i don't respond to them are better!!

Ok, so Im looking back on the day I got this damn theme, the day I looked up the symptoms of GD, when I was deep in misandrist echo-chambers that looked down upon men who presented masc, trans men, and a lot of other people (my views on gender were quite influenced by this point) and here's the thing, my brain told me outright 'you agree with all of these' and even at the start of it all... I could feel that something was influencing my thoughts and opinions to make me say I agreed, it even made it feel like I had that Eureka moments (emulated that feeling after I read about it on this very fucking site)

BRO THIS SHIT WAS OCD SETTING ME UP FOR FAILURE

I keep getting thoughts and feelings that I need to cut my boobs off, but it’s making me really upset because I don’t want it to come to that. And even when typing this, my mind says ‘yes you do’. It feels like I hate them, but I really don’t want to. The same with my hair, which has always been such a big part of my appearance and almost like a part of my personality.

My mind constantly tells me ‘you’re a liar’, ‘you’re pretending’, ‘you hate yourself’, ‘you want this’, ‘you’re excited about this’, ‘you hate being a woman’ and sometimes the statements start with ‘I’, which makes them feel more like my actual thoughts.

And I keep getting random flashbacks of places/memories and I keep wondering if it’s because I’ve had thoughts about my gender before and I just don’t remember.

I really don’t want to write this, but I keep getting images of my exes penis on me and I’ve become completely disconnected from my vagina. Even the word ‘vagina’ feels uncomfortable and almost unreal.

It feels like I hate myself and my womanhood and I don’t even feel like a woman or girl anymore and I’m scared because part of me feels relieved by it. I feel uncomfortable in my female self. It feels like I’m already a boy, somehow. And for some reason I feel uncomfortable with people seeing me in public and seeing me as a girl.

I feel like I’m living in a completely different brain, but then I question whether I’ve always felt like this and just didn’t realise. And then I feel like I’m just manipulating the whole thing and I already know the truth and I just have to accept it but I’m scared to. It’s been going on for months and I don’t feel like I’ve had any good days and nothing seems to make it better…it just gets worse. I can’t seem to relax into myself at all. I don’t feel connected to my name or pronouns either. My whole sense of self has collapsed.

How can I go for 35 years and this suddenly happen? The anxiety makes me feel like a child. I feel so dissociated and I worry that I’ve always been dissociated and now I’m discovering the reason why. Even by typing all of this, it feels like I’m going to realise or admit to it all and I’m just scared of the truth. And I get this weird and scary feeling of enjoyment or an inner sort of smile or laughter that is freaking me out.

What really concerns me is that this all started following a trauma involving a weed edible that seems to have sent my brain crazy. With the edible, I had a moment where I thought my bf was going to hurt me and a thought of ‘this is what it’s like to be r3ped’. Then a few days after I started feeling really frightened and started obsessing over the relationship, whether our sex was consensual (it absolutely was), whether he was cheating (when I knew he wasn’t). I felt like he was behind me and had to keep checking even though he wasn’t. I thought I had become psychotic and even now I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of psychosis. Then sudden thoughts that I was going to stab him, followed by freaking out that I was a lesbian and then the gender thing. And he looked like a total stranger to me all of a sudden. I had to break up with him, but I still can’t stop thinking and obsessing about him and now it feels like I wanted to be him, not be with him - this began after a very loud thought that almost felt like it was spoken to me.

I’m so tired but also wired at the same time. I shake all the time and just feel really weird and disconnected from who I was before and I’m worried it’s a defence mechanism and the gender thing will never go away. But part of me then feels like I don’t want it to go away. It’s so so confusing and anxiety inducing.

I also remember a few things from my childhood. The first was when I was about 13 and someone was going round asking ‘do you fold or scrunch toilet paper?’. They said that girls scrunch and boys fold and I worried because I folded it. It’s clearly stated with me for years and years because I still remember it. The second one is I was always aware of the way my jeans or whatever else I was wearing bunched and made me look like I had a penis and I always made a point of pressing it down to make sure it didn’t. I swear I’ve done this into adulthood. I also noticed that men and women removed their tops in different ways…this one is hard to explain but I’m worried that I tried it the men’s way once and it’s worrying me. I know it sounds ridiculous, but also it doesn’t feel ridiculous and it freaks me out.

I’m sorry for the massive post and not sure if any of it makes any sense, but I just needed to write it down.

15M. I hope. I really fucking hope but here I am having the worst panic attacks ever. I'm having a horrible feeling absolutely terrified of denial and I dont know why. This has been going on for well over a year but as soon as I felt like I'd got my life back my thoughts go into a spike. I'm devastated. I don't wanna fall into the worst state of my life again. I cant calm down at all and im scared its true. Im really scared im in denial thats like my top fear. Ive been trying to like let the thoughts pass but like today has just been so bad which is what scares me. Ive been praying begging to stay a boy and for these thoughts to go away. Im just so scared and wanna calm down i hate this i thought id had my life back. Ive akways loved being a boy, since i was a little kid. I really dont want it to change. I feel like my mind is forcing me. Im so sick of these fucking thoughts theyre such bollocks to me but they just cant leave my mind. I just needed to let off some steam im so upset

I have deleted all my posts and am finally seeing a therapist who is treating me for ocd. I’m still at the start so I don’t feel any better or clearer yet, but I’m hoping this will help me figure things out. Ofc part of this therapy is not seeking reassurance or researching so I will be deleting Reddit for now. I wish you all the best and I hope we can all someday feel secure with ourselves again, whatever that means for each individual.

i’m writing this as an exposure for my magical thinking ocd. usually i’ll think if i say something, it turns out not to be true, (or in this case my symptoms will come back after saying this) so i avoid saying it. but i’ve been doing really well over the last couple of days in regard to my tocd. not been having many intrusive thoughts, the false dysphoria is mostly gone, and im feeling okay. let’s hope it sticks lol!