Do I have gender dysphoria? If so how bad and what should I do? Read more at TransgenderZone.com and don't forget to ad

[sakurasanta86]

Since I have been about 10-11 years old, (I'm currently 17 almost 18) I have always been having feelings in the back of my mind about being a girl (I'm a boy), this didn't really bother me much and I would usually dismiss the thoughts and get on with life. However, in the last 2 ish years, these feelings have started to become more common and much more serious than in previous years, which has seriously left me unhappy with not being able to decide my gender because I will half the time have strong feelings in a man but later on I will have a desire to be a girl and become depressed about the fact that I'm a boy, I found this quite hard to get along with but I managed to live with it. However the last few weeks or so have been extremely challenging for me with the wanting to be a woman as I feel a woman most of the time yet sometimes still a man, it got to the point where in all of my fantasies and dreams I was a woman and recently I went out to shop for women's shoes and clothes making me feel nervous yet happy even though I didn't buy anything, I've also found that on one occasion I was starting to find some men attractive when I thought I should be a girl however this was only on one occasion and I'm still exclusively attracted to females . This whole situation has become very distressing for me and I was wandering if anyone would be able to give some insight and understandings to my situation

[Steffi]

Hi

I'm not in any way qualified to diagnose you. I can only speak from my own personal experiences and my observations of other people with this problem over the years.
Without some in-depth discussion it is impossible to even guess whether you are a transsexual or a transvestite.
Two things are near certain -
1) If a person has these feelings, they do not ever "just go away"
2) The intensity of the drive will escalate until you achieve some sort of balance with it. For some, this might be dressing up a couple of times a year - for others, it might lead all the way to changing gender-role permanently with or without surgically changing sex.
(....you have recently been window-shopping for female clothes - it is very likely that in time you will buy some. Most people with this problem have gone through several cycles of buying clothes then throwing them away and swearing to never do it again......only to buy more clothes in the future and repeat the cycle several times.
Deny - Express - Guilt - Purge. The cycle continues until the person arranges their life in some sort of way which allows expression of this drive.

For both transsexuals and transvestites it is extremely common for feelings of gender dysphoria to wax and wane in intensity - sometimes one (almost) completely forgets about the entire thing, perhaps for several months at a time. Even when the thought does cross your mind, you have no particular urge to actually do it and you begin to think that you might "be cured" and have left it behind you.
- then it comes back, with crippling intensity.

You do need to do something about it in some way in order to avoid a lifetime of secret suffering from either/both guilt and suppressed inner yearning.