Body Dysmorphia vs. Gender Dysphoria! What's the Difference!

Gender therapist explains the difference you need to know between gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia and how to distinguish it.

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Hello Friends! I'm Dr Z, and this is a channel where I help you break free from dysphoria!

👉NOTE: I work solely with adults, and all video content is marked for adults only. As such, the information shared is based on my experience working with adults only.

DISCLAIMER: Note that as a clinical psychologist, I created this channel to share information. Therefore, I won't be providing or offering therapeutic advice. I am also not a medical doctor. When I speak on medical issues such as hormones or surgical procedures, the goal is to share information and not to provide medical advice, and you should always consult with your medical doctor. Additionally, this channel is for those seeking information and understanding and to gain awareness.

#gender #genderdysphoria #transgender #nonbinary #genderidentity #gendertransition #gendertherapist #transhealth #transgenderwomen #transmann #enby #hormones #dysphoria #selfhelp #transformation

[OfficiallySarabi]

This video is an explains why the "born in the wrong body" story for transgender people is a bit too simplistic and misleading. Most people have something about their body that they don't really like. But, as you said in your video, it's the /incongruence/ between the outward sex characteristics and the internal gender that distinguishes body dysphoria.

For me, the "born in the wrong body" story is part of what made me doubt/suppress my feelings for so long. My body is mine. I love it. It's strong and beautiful. I'm grateful for it. When I'm in a good mood, I'll take lots of selfies. But I've always felt it's too feminine. I look at my face and feel sad there's no beard. I touch my neck and notice the lack of adam's apple. I try ignore my chest, because it's an inconvenience and feels like it isn't mine. The list goes on. But when I separate myself from my body, when I pretend it belongs to someone else, I can see there's nothing wrong with it actually. It's a perfectly nice body. I always thought my feelings just had to do with some weird fantasy. Now I'm starting to realize what it is.

As always, thanks for your videos, Dr. Z!

[biancawilloughby]

My deepest dysphoria is with my face, head and breasts. I cannot bear how my face is not a woman’s face and my breasts are not women’s breasts. I am lucky to have a petite feminine body but my face is a man. I pick apart every part of my face; nose, lips, chin, jawline etc because they are too male. I feel defeated by this and want to give up transitioning. It’s very painful. I live in hope that HRT will help change this.

[reidar]

I can’t tell if I’m trans or just gnc or just uncomfortable with my body. I’ve always been uncomfortable with having breasts ever since they started developing. My mother would tell me to drink papaya milk, thinking that it would make them bigger. She said it would make me look more beautiful (which I didn’t understand but accepted anyway). I believed what she said about papaya milk at the time and went along with it for a while, but I avoided it after my chest grew even bigger. They’re not even that big, but I just wanted to be flat-chested for some reason, and I still do. Seeing myself having a larger hip and butt was also really weird to me, so it’s like I’ve never been comfortable with anything other than the androgynous body I had as a kid. The thing is, I’ve always been mostly fine with people calling me a girl and seeing me as a girl up until I started questioning my gender. There were, however, times as a kid when I would think that “my personality is half male and half female” and I became very drawn to androgyny and gender neutral characters at some point. I can’t tell if my discomfort with my body has to do with my gender identity since I often have a hard time “feeling my gender” in general (I think I only know that I’m not male (though for some reason I’m fine with being a “boy”??? It’s like feels a bit more gender neutral despite being somewhat masculine so I feel fine with it?)), and perhaps maybe all the times I felt drawn to androgyny was just me wanting to present more androgynously while still being cis? I’m planning to buy a binder right now but I don’t know if I should be doing that if I’m just uncomfortable with my body without being trans.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this anymore. I’m sleepy and I guess I just want some general advice about this stuff? 😅

[hatsumiyo]

I was so afraid of confusing body dysmorphia with gender dysphoria that i had to practice self love and body positivity... Now i see my body and i dont absolutely LOVE it, but i think it looks pretty good, and can be certain others would find it attractive. Even my breasts, now i objectively know they are very nice. All this hasn't eliminated the dysphoria, so i gotta say im happy to have been able to at least get rid of one doubt!

[Katemccutcheon]

I know I have gender dysphoria I known I had it for awhile but with the help of hormones and possibly surgery I am hoping to relieve that gender dysphoria. This video was very helpful because I wasn't sure of the difference between the two but it just confirms for me I have gender dysphoria

[heartofdawn]

For me as an AMAB, it's my genitals. They've always felt like they were simply added on as a afterthought, and weren't integral to who I am.

What's helped me separate dysphoria and dysmorphia, is a number of things. I've always love how flat and smooth woman are down there, it just seems so right. I don't want it bigger or smaller, I want it gone. I've been getting euphoria from feminine things, like my skirt brushing my legs, and one morning it felt like they were just gone, like there was nothing there, and it was the best feeling in the world (until I panicked and had to check I hadn't actually cut off the circulation).

I'm a girl, and it's all I ever wanted, but never felt I could be.

[robinhajek]

I used to think I had body dysmorphia, until I realised I actually had gender dysphoria. I think I probably have both actually. But what I want is to look beautiful rather than handsome. (I'm transitioning towards female). Or sometimes, when trying to explain it to others, I say I would rather look like Taylor Swift than Brad Pitt.

[CorwinFound]

When I started accepting that I was transgender, a LOT of my issues with body dysmorphia abated. I was able to see some body parts (like my breasts) in a much more positive light. There wasn't anything inherently ugly about them, they were actually perfectly fine and even pleasing body parts, they just weren't right *for me*. The feeling just disappeared that if I was thinner or toner or prettier then I would be better in all sorts of ways. I had the realization that there is nothing inherently wrong with this body, it's just that it's the wrong *gender* of body. Although I now experience dysphoria it is soooo much less harmful feeling than the self-loathing of dymorphia.

[royalukas]

For me body issues preceded gender dysphoria but were a huge factor that led up to my determination that all along I was transgender. Once I saw it for what it was (and it took many years), I then begin to heal what had been broken.

[chloetheoe]

I used to be very insecure and very scared of gaining weight and had eating troubles and i wasn't really sure about why, but after starting to look into my gender and understand myself better i'm pretty sure that i associate having more weight with being bulkier and looking manlier, which i feel incredibly uncomfortable with.

Thank you for your videos! They really are helping me figure some things out (like my suspected dysmorphia possibly stemming out of dysphoria) and you speak very impartially, which is really hard to find!

[bradleyvanderwesthuizen]

Thank you for this video Dr Z! In 2017 I was running from dysphoria and in great denial, so much so that I over compensated trying to be more the male I was assigned at birth and I went into a 2 month dark cycle of taking Acceptance was the key to coming out of this cycle.

[Sol_stitium]

I’m still confused because honestly Idk if I’m trans. Most trans ppl figure that out at a very young age but I’m only recently feeling weird about my body. I know I’m not a trans man but I also know I’m not a woman and lately I’ve started to realize that the way I see my self isn’t what I look like on the outside and definitely not the way ppl see me. Everything about my body is feminine and I’ve always hated that. I don’t want to be a guy, I just want to look like someone in the middle of both. I hate my chest because it shows ppl that I’m a woman. Even my name makes me mad. The way i see myself as a non-binary/gender fluid person isn’t the way I look at all. And now that’s I feel this way everything feels off and I hate it. Hopefully someone relates to this. My biggest fear is that I’m probably this way because I haven’t embraced my feminine side as a kid or that being a woman has been traumatic. I feel like if I start changing my body now I’ll regret it later or something :(

[ragefulhobbit]

My parents keep telling me to love myself and my body. The thing iI, I DO love my body, it's a fantastic body! It's just not mine.
I should be a boy. I know it, and have felt that way since I was pretty young. I had lots of signs growing up, all of which my parents completely downplayed or missed altogether. I don't know if I'm just faking it, though. I always feel like I'm faking it because I happened to have some trans friends. I don't know how to feel, but I'm trying to take it slow and figure stuff out before any changes are made.

Thank you for the video, it helped to explain some stuff to me.

[creature]

Quarantine has definitely affected my mental health, I’ve been very dysforic,

[kayla]

I've realized something similar and heard stories from others along this line, feeling "fat" or otherwise bad about stomach shape until fat redistribution or having other corresponding curves (i.e. breasts) made it look right. So it can be a very blurry line.

[BagelBagelBagel]

I am nonbinary AMAB and the fluidity of this feature-targeted dysphoria is something I hope to be more in tune with. Mirrors are a curious space to play in, and I am grateful I can explore both my external image and internal image, which both seem to change a good deal. Which is why discovering my queerness is so cool, radical acceptance is a necessity to face the change, and the acceptance translates into other parts of my life. I am a painter and it's fascinating to see how I painted myself before I was actively questioning. The dysphoria is there, and the curiosity is there, and I didn't have a clue. This journey is crazy stuff

[oliver-rhcd]

thanks for this. I had a bad night because a dysphoria attack. Even though I had this attack of non-stop thoughts of "its not flat.. cut them off" I still have doubts of being transgender because at times i dont mind looking at my breasts but they dont feel like mine. sometimes i tell myself its dysmorphia instead of dysphoria because i have always had body image issues but this video helped reassure me that what this is, is dysphoria and that i dont have to doubt myself. your videos are always incredibly helpful :)

[DeadLion]

I don't believe I experience body dysmorphia but I wanted to watch this video so I could reflect and know for certain if my dysphoria was actually dysphoria. This video was very educational, thank you for making such amazing content!!!

[occultclassic]

Having lived with both, I’d think of the “body issues” side of gender dysphoria more as body hyper awareness, and body dysmorphia as a distortion of self image. They do overlap and reinforce each other, though, so it’s not the greatest description, but at least has been helpful in trying to explain some of what my subjective experience feels like to people.

[kamikkaze]

I think I have both dysphoria and dismorphia. Started last session discussing with my therapist so that I can finally "end" this matter in my life. I know it's not going to end, is a journey that takes long and way way far. But just having the words to put what I feel is going to remove a painful weight of my shoulders