To my mind, the trans writer Andrea Long Chu expresses it more accurately: ‘Dysphoria,’ she says, ‘can feel like heartbreak.’3 Heartbreak, its incapacitating grief and the sense of absence and loss which activate the same parts of the brain as physical pain, can be so all-consuming it interferes with your everyday life. So, too, dysphoria. For me, at least, this is a much richer way of describing how many trans people experience distress with their bodies – indeed, how I felt until I medically transitioned.
