I'm curious to hear experiences of others who are well into transition and live full time or consider themselves already transitioned (whatever it means to you). Do you have moments of dysphoria and what triggers it for you, and how you cope with that?
The reason for this thread is that I had two different moments within a day from each other that made me feel insecure and very anxious - I recognized the feeling, even though it has been a while since I had it. For example, due to Covid, I took a pause from electrolysis, waiting for my younger daughter to be eligible for vaccine (the rest of my family is vaccinated). Anyways, I have over 3 years done but still fighting some hair on my upper lip and a bit on my neck. I don't like seeing anything there so every couple of days, I will just quickly shave it off with a dry razer without any shaving cream. Except on Friday, I decided to use shaving cream to get a clean shave and when I saw my face in the mirror, it was like someone hit me in the stomach. I wasn't ready to see that.
Another time, my daughter was playing with filters on my phone, and stuck a phone in front of my face and it drew a thick mustache. Again, the same feeling. Finally, I found my old voice recording from 2.5 years ago as I needed to send it to my new voice therapist as a baseline sample, and was horrified to hear my old voice. On the other hand, it showed me how far I've come.
I was wondering if these due to me not being 100% secure with living as a trans woman, or is it normal and everyone has these moments.
As a background - I did shift a gear in April when I started a new job. I was hired as a trans woman and have been seeing myself more as a trans woman and less as a non-binary person. So even though I am getting close to a 4-year trsnsition anniversary, I feel that only the past 6 months I lived unambiguously as a woman and only woman.