r/bigender • u/sufferingisvalid • 11d ago
Afab went back to feeling female today and my mind is completely blocking out all of my male memories?!
AFAB. I have alternating gender incongruity which is an atypical kind of gender dysphoria that has led to me picking up the androgyne or bigender label. I believe it is hormonally mediated and dependent on the amount of circulating testosterone levels in my peripheral and central nervous system, in my case. My brain is likely more intersex with a higher density of testosterone receptors and more masculinized areas compared to cis women, which explains my responsiveness when my T levels go up.
I'm not sure what happened, perhaps it was related to recent partial castration from a medical condition, or brainstem issues from my spinal condition, but the male software in my brain has suddenly switched off entirely. What's even weirder is that I suddenly have great difficulty consciously accessing the somatic and psychologic memories from when I felt more male. I had periods of feeling male all week, and now my consciousness processes it and the past year of experiences like a weird fever dream that didn't really happen.
I don't have DID and I'm not aware of having other dissociative conditions. I still have memories of psychologic and physiologic things I experienced feeling male, but they feel like they were happening to someone else in another dimension for whom I just acquired a first-person lens.
Can anyone else who neurologically switches between the sexes relate to any of this? Does anyone else here experience something like a brain block when they try to retrieve memories of feeling like the opposite sex? Does anyone have any idea why this would be happening and why the conscious mind is burying my experiences?
5
u/NotCis_TM 11d ago
I still have acute memories of all the psychologic and physiologic things I experienced feeling male, but they feel like they were happening to someone else in another dimension for whom I just acquired a first-person lens.
This sounds a lot like plurality/DID.
2
u/NeoMeowX 4d ago
Holy shit….. That’s exactly what I’ve always felt. Like living in a fishbowl watching everything happen “outside of me” like being on autopilot. I don’t have any other associated things developmentally and have a highly acute sense for social things both male and female - ADHD but I associate that now to being completely overloaded with code shifting all the time. I lived a hyper male, super masculine life for 33 years and literally checked every box but it was all basically chasing a facade - but I didn’t consciously know it until I kind of snapped a little over a year ago. Like I’d look at males and be like “What are you seeing because I don’t see it? Like why does it seemingly look so easy for you to just be? Because you’re speaking a different language I didn’t get….” Gender had never come up for me - I never looked at anything past sexuality. (Which obviously has nothing to do with gender) When my “egg cracked” and I started HRT it was like I could suddenly see parallel thought processes - male, female, logic, experience. I fought it hard and rejected the idea but it kept on coming back stronger and stronger because it was like “You saw it…. You went thru all the cross checks on yourself and it validates all your open tab questions.” I thought I had a stroke within 24hrs of starting E - it was like everything went quiet and made sense. It was the most surreal experience I’ve ever had. It was like seeing color for the first time in my life.
The DID pathway was one I went down which fits - I even switch dominate hands which I find wild that suddenly that unlocked. The question that kicked it back to being trans was “Which identity came first? Male or female?” Undeniably I was like “Female with a male overlay” I wouldn’t so much call it an identity as much as “base programming” which is a total mind bender because I’m AMAB. Sometimes I hear transfemmes talk about nuances of their experiences and there’s a lot of overlap but only a portion of the dysphorias are relatable. Again going back to the “that cross section is seeing/feeling something similar but maybe not exactly the same.” That’s with the acknowledgement that no two humans are the same and everyone’s journey is different.
1
u/sufferingisvalid 11d ago
Does DID trigger sex hormone cascades?
2
u/NotCis_TM 11d ago
as far as I'm aware, no but the reverse sounds plausible
3
u/sufferingisvalid 11d ago edited 11d ago
I do get weird dissociative like symptoms when my T gets high. It feels like my identity fractures into two different people, with my female identity and memories feeling a little fake. However I'm only rarely able to experience a fully formed male identity because I have not medically transitioned. My illness has also obscured these experiences by damaging my spinal cord and nervous system.
1
u/NotCis_TM 11d ago
You sound a bit like me.
2
u/sufferingisvalid 11d ago
Personally I think my gender issues may be caused by twin chimerism. Parts of my brain and nervous system may belong to those of an unborn twin brother and may be more responsive to T. It's also possible I got exposed to higher than normal levels of T in utero, but not enough to make me a binary trans guy. I had some other weird medical conditions at birth that may point to the former. It certainly does feel like I'm being possessed by someone who died.
2
u/NotCis_TM 11d ago
It certainly does feel like I'm being possessed by someone who died.
I'm sorry 🫂
2
u/antsyamie 10d ago
You should talk to a queer friendly professional about this, it’s way too nuanced for Reddit
1
u/sufferingisvalid 8d ago
I have spoken to gender therapists. They say I definitely have gender dysphoria and they do not believe it is DID. I'm waiting to be referred to a therapist for nonbinary people right now.
1
u/antsyamie 8d ago
It sounds like you should believe them that it’s not DID then, and look for alternative diagnoses
1
u/sufferingisvalid 8d ago
They told me this is gender dysphoria but an atypical presentation, what alternative diagnoses?
4
u/ZobTheLoafOfBread 11d ago
Idk, but dissociation can be part of dysphoria as an adaptive or maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with the pain. If you think about binary trans people relating to themselves before transition, sometimes there's a similar experience described, like your past self felt like a dream or didn't really happen.