Behind transgender is a choice in the sense that the issue is the experience of gender dysphoria and being transgender is merely one of a variety of ways you can choose to treat the dysphoria. It's analogous to how having poor eyesight isn't a choice but the way you treat it such as by surgery, wearing glasses or contact lenses etc. is a choice. Thus, there's no such thing as "convincing yourself" you are or are not transgender because being transgender is not something that is done passively - it'd be like a person trying to "convince themselves they're not a glasses-wearer." So the first thing to do is to stop thinking as if you're intrinsically transgender and need help escaping the inescapable and start considering it in the sense of you experience gender dysphoria but are looking for an alternative way of treating it.

I would recommend receiving therapy from a therapist who doesn't have an agenda to push you away or towards transition - for some people, it certainly might well be the best treatment for gender dysphoria. I feel as though transition is a worst-case scenario treatment - physical effects to your body aside, it can only mitigate but not eliminate dysphoria because you never will truly have the body of the opposite sex - you can have surgery after surgery but you will keep being made dysphoric by the remnant parts of your birth sex. If you learn to become comfortable with your birth sex, it is a possible to reach complete elimination of gender dysphoria. If you compare it to any other mental illness that causes loathing towards one's body like say body dysmorphia, the golden standard for treatment of that condition would be for the person to be content with their body in its healthy, naturally-occurring form - not for the body to be hormonally and surgically manipulated to chase an unachievable conception of what they want their body to look like.

Personally, I am a lot happier after choosing to treat dysphoria with self love rather than transition - it's far nicer feeling content with one's body than despising every aspect of it. If you'd like to know how I personally went about that, I am more than happy to share that with you

really sorry if this isn't what you wanted to hear, but maybe some food for thought. i've not experienced it personally, but perhaps her support of your transition shows that she's very supportive regarding gender in general, so she'll be supportive of your detransition. i guess her saying "you've always been male to me" was her trying to reassure what she thought was a trans guy in a dysphoria-inducing time, more so than making a point about anything. perhaps the very sign that she was conscious enough of possible dysphoria to attempt that reassurance shows that she cares a lot about trying not to make you uncomfortable, so she'll be supportive of you as a woman too. she sounds like a really kind woman.

i mean the initial reason why i desisted was because i knew my boyfriend was entirely straight and there's no way he could love me as a man. he's also helped me feel better about my body and helped me feel attractive and feel like my female parts are more right. although this wasn't the intention at the time, i'm certainly reaping the benefits of detransition now (feeling a lot better)

I relate very heavily to this entire post. I feel like most posts in this subreddit are from people who don't experience much social dysphoria per se

I feel like I'm starting a new battle, which I hope I win. One day I believe not to feel mental pain when being referred to as 'young woman.'

Absolutely something i've thought about a lot. An old woman called me a "young lady" while I was out today and the dysphoria it brought on was incredibly frustrating, but I really have so much hope that one day it's a phrase that'll just wash over me with no discomfort at all

We will get through this :)

I will outline one path I have in my experience seen a lot of people take.

Say there is a person who is debating whether they're transgender - maybe an AFAB person who hated wearing dresses and played with trucks as a child and doesn't wholly relate to the traditional idea of womanhood. They're been exposed to the transgender ideology, started watching a lot of trans media, and starting to question if they themselves are trans too. Beginning to consciously focus on gender and their sex characteristics, they start experiencing what they feel is dysphoria - where once was apathy towards one's breasts might now be a level of discomfort. As they continue to think constantly about their gender, these feelings of dysphoria slowly increase until they start feeling maybe they are transgender.

At this point, they stumble across the transmedicalist community which tends to almost (but not quite) glamorise intense dysphoria in that sense that it breeds the idea that to be undoubtedly and truly transgender you must have crippling dysphoria for fear of otherwise being at 'trender.' Intensely focusing on gender and plagued whether consciously or subconsciously by the fear of not being truly transgender - an identity they are now strongly attached to - the dysphoria that has already developed then quickly spirals into crippling dysphoria. They are despising every aspect of femaleness but at least confident in the fact that at last they are undoubtedly transgender, unlike the fake trenders.

Sustaining this level of self loathing gets really, really exhausting. The crippling dysphoria they are experiencing was artificially cultivated; they came into this whole mess pretty much dysphoria-free. Whether through consciously deciding enough is enough or just gradually moving away from transgender-oriented circles thereby allowing themselves to obsess less over gender, they slowly realise the community they have forged through this self-loathing isn't worth the pain it is causing. Thus, they one way or another wind up down the path of detransition.

I see myself a lot in this post. I hated being trans, but believed the narrative that transitioning was the only solution; I never realized overcoming dysphoria was even an option before coming across this sub in about September of last year, and I felt incredibly inspired. In the past 10 months, my dysphoria has not gone away completely, but it has improved 10 fold. It has been a lot of emotional pain: I’ve felt like I’ve really had to confront dysphoria head on in order to reduce it, but the results have been amazing.

What I have done is far from some kind of standard procedure for every desister ever, but I will nevertheless share what has helped me. I began by distancing myself from all links to the trans community; blocked all trans content from appearing on my youtube recommended, and left all trans related social media. From my own and others’ experience: constantly being exposed to it and thus bringing attention to my own dysphoria was not health. I got my boyfriend to start saying the things that normally made me dysphoric: I got him to start referring to my body parts in a female way and tell me that I am a woman. During this, I put a lot of effort into trying to be relaxed hearing it, and telling myself that it was okay. It felt different from how they would normally trigger me, because it was gentle and came from a place of love and care. I think this was mainly all I did for a couple of months. I reached a point where I felt very comfortable hearing these female terms used by him. Whenever I got changed, I would stop hiding from my body. I would gently touch the parts that made me feel dysphoric and just try and think “It’s all okay. It’s just me; it’s just my body.”

I guess I really tried to take on board the idea that I am not defined by my sex. It defines me no more than I am defined by the fact that I have two legs or a nose. It’s just a quality of me as much as being human is a quality of me, and I am so much more than what’s between my legs. Whether male or female I’m still just me, and there is nothing innately wrong with being either sex: I can just exist in the body I was given and that’s an okay thing to do. I guess I tried to view desisting from GD as just learning to love my body as it was. Within a few months, I felt like I could shower comfortably and was honesty just so much happier in general. Whenever I got dysphoric, I tried to override the voice in my head that angrily responded with “why couldn’t I just be male: that’s the whole problem here” and tried to replace it with positive words of affirmation. I soothed myself with these kind words, rather than the first response which is almost like worsening it by creating more dysphoria in my head. I told myself that just because I was dysphoric, didn’t mean that there was anything wrong with being a woman.

I tried to think critically about dysphoria a lot, and ask myself why I felt the need to be male. I never felt like I reached a concrete answer, but even my lack of answer to why, only made me feel stronger that desiring to be male was an ungrounded feeling. At some point along the line, I came out as detrans to a few accepting friends and got them to refer to me as female. This once again allowed me to experience getting referred to as a woman in a safe and comfortable space.

Having my boyfriend compliment my feminine parts I find also helps. Or even complimenting them sometimes myself. Rather than shame, it makes me feel like they’re beautiful and something good to have. Even outside of dysphoria, I’ve tried to work on loving myself more: reminding myself of all that is good about me. Dysphoria can sometimes be almost the opposite of that.

I never set about this process with any particular plan in mind. I just take it slowly, and keep trying to find areas where I can push and expand my comfort zone in terms of dysphoria. Trying something new hurt a lot, because I would have to face this dysphoria the first time before learning how to tame and manage it. When I get triggered, I sometimes tell myself to the effective of just “so what?” As painful as it can feel in the moment, when it truly comes down to it, what’s really so bad about being called “she”? I try and view it that getting gendered as female in public is nothing more than people accurately acknowledging that my body is the certain way that it is. Of course, a lot of these positive affirmations are far easier said than done. They’ve taken me a long time to really take on board.

I hope this was, in any way, of use to you. If nothing else to serve as inspiration that you are not alone; it has been done. I know of people whose dysphoria has entirely gone away. Best of luck to you, and I hope you find happiness in whatever form it takes.

speak from your head/throat rather than your chest. the voice drop is from the thickening of the vocal cords, which as you said, is irreversible though. anecdotally, i've seen detrans women whose voices have naturally risen slightly after detransitioning, although i would guess that's more a psychological change than any kind of physical one.

you can achieve a feminine voice. you won't end up back at your specific pre-hrt voice, but with training, a feminine voice is entirely achievable. you could probably gain a fair amount of tips from voice training videos/exercises intended for trans women.

:)

The "he made me in his image but I have deliberately altered it" argument seems to only ever be applied to being transgender. Have you ever dyed your hair? Gotten a haircut? Gotten a tattoo? Had surgery? Hell, even in wearing clothes you're altering your body from the state it was created in. There is unsurprisingly no mention of being transgender in the Bible. I'm not encouraging you to continue your transition or to end it, just don't make that decision based off your faith when it has no bearing on this.

to clear it up if my phrasing was confusing - i never medically transitioned, but i did do so socially entirely.

i thought i was trans because i was dysphoric in short. i hated being called female and i hated my breasts and vagina and my feminine voice and hips and face and girlish name. in hindsight, i'm aware i experienced a lot of internalized misogyny and i have underwent a lot of childhood trauma, so they are likely contributing factors in those feelings. but ultimately i felt like any trans person - i experienced dysphoria and the world told me the solution to dysphoria was transition, so i did exactly that.

how did the relationship help? well, like i said, it helped me feel better in my body. i was made to feel like my breasts were a source of beauty rather than unsightliness. and same for all of my body. also, he would be there for me to listen to my feelings and talk them through with me, and he'd devote a lot of his time to actively helping me feel less dysphoric. in many ways it felt like a dilemma between being a man, and keeping him, and viewing it like that sort of gives me the motivation to keep working towards detransition, and viewing him as some kind of "goal" in it. i'm a lot happier as a woman, and i'm very pleased with the effects of detransition, but it's certainly difficult. it's a lot like exposure therapy - it feels dreadful in the moment, but with amazing benefits. but without viewing him as a "goal", i don't know if i'd have the strength to keep working at detransition.

i would want to say it's possible, in the same way that soldiers who get their penises blown off in wars and penisless ftm people sometimes manage to find love. not to put down its difficult - it'll certainly still be harder than someone who hasn't had a penectomy - but still very much possible. just as a general suggestion - perhaps you'd find more luck with bisexual people? i don't know. good luck - there is certainly someone out there who'd be willing to date you