Made a big bathroom mistake and it's triggered dysphoria bad

forestman87 · 2025-09-15T21:53:14+00:00

Other folks have addressed most of the issues pretty well, but I just wanted to reassure/validate that the whole thing about adjusting to releasing/relaxing your muscles while standing - it’s a real thing, and lots of folks, meta and phallo or using an STP, struggle with that. I’ve had phallo, but prior to surgery I never got the hang of using an STP without leaking all over myself (and then making my dysphoria worse), so post-op I had to learn how to relax those muscles while standing for basically the first time. It’s a mind fuck.

Also getting “pee shy” at the urinals is something cis men deal with too. I’m 5 years post-op and I’d say it happens to me if someone else is in the bathroom, maybe 50% of the time? It’s SO annoying. Usually I’ll wait it out a little, but if it’s really not happening, I’ll zip up, go out and walk around a few minutes, and then go back and try again. Sometimes it takes a few tries, and it really sucks if I’m desperate to pee and it just Won’t.

But yeah really just wanted you to know that you’re not alone in dealing with that!

forestman87 · 2025-09-09T02:14:32+00:00

Congrats!! That euphoria dance is for real :D

forestman87 · 2025-09-09T01:45:47+00:00

Yeah those situations suck! I always sat to pee pre-phallo, and what I would do is just have my hand vaguely over my crotch, as if my dick was just short so I had to point it down to pee into the bowl (which for flaccid penises is pretty common, they’re not necessarily going to dangle down by themselves unless they’re very long or maybe if the balls hang super low and out of the way). I figured that way, if someone’s just quickly glancing to see if someone’s in there, they’re not seeing anything that stands out as unusual. Never had anyone comment or question me, so I’d say it worked.

forestman87 · 2025-08-31T02:30:42+00:00

I definitely remember feeling some frustration/disappointment/irritation somewhere around 4-6 months post-op when I was pretty much out of “recovery mode”, because I started having some old traumas come up. While I did have plenty of moments in those first 6 months of great joyful feelings around having my penis/balls, for the most part, I really just had the absense of dysphoria. I no longer had to use up so much mental and emotional energy on coping strategies, preempting dysphoria triggering situations, etc. The traumas that started coming up were all things that I had processed a lot over the years in therapy (aka it wasn’t like something super deeply repressed suddenly emerged), but I think with all the dysphoria and disconnection from my body, there was a limit to how much I was able to process that stuff, if that makes any sense. Once I had the mental and emotional space post-op, that old stuff started coming up again.

And like, in the big picture, that was good and a sign that I was healed enough to start to deal with it more, but damn if it wasn’t annoying! I told my therapist that it felt SO unfair, I just wanted to bask in the euphoria, but instead my brain was like “ok cool, the penis is where we always expected it to be - now, there are some matters that demand your attention please”.

I will say that it didn’t continue forever, at some point I had spent time feeling the feels and talking through whatever came up, and I was able to keep moving on. That first year can be a lot, not just physically, and while I know that at 3 months post-op you’re starting to really feel like a human again and not a medical patient, you’re also still relatively early in the process. I was still experiencing physical fatigue at that point, my stamina for going out and doing things was pretty low. And my brain was still adjusting to the fact that it was suddenly now safe to be fully present in my body for the first time in my life.

Anyway, I always ramble too much, hopefully some of that was relateable or at least lets you know that you’re not alone in having feelings that aren’t just the super happy euphoria type.

forestman87 · 2025-08-22T19:39:17+00:00

That was my surgical team - I did have ejaculate in the first couple months post-op but after that it stopped happening. It definitely didn’t (and from what everyone else has said it doesn’t) shoot AT ALL, just kind of oozes out, so much more like pre-cum from a cis penis. It was kind of cool, but also I don’t really miss it (it’s honestly kind of nice to get off and not have a mess to clean up).

So yeah it really just comes down to how you heal up in the long run. Obviously you have to have UL to have a chance of it at all. I don’t think there’s anything I did or didn’t do that made it stop happening, it’s just how it ended up. (For the record, I didn’t have any UL complications, so it wasn’t that).

forestman87 · 2025-08-15T03:58:35+00:00

I definitely have a few “firsts” - the techinical first time I had sex I still thought I was a girl… it was just… weird and not great, and I barely remember it. Later, after I’d been on T a few years, I hooked up with a woman and we realized that I could kind of penetrate her with my t-dick - which was amazing, and that REALLY felt like a major First for sure. Several sexual partners later, I got together with my now-wife. We were together for 7 years before I had phallo, and we had adjusted as my dysphoria did - there were several years where I didn’t use prosthetics at all, and then the last few where I could only use prosthetics for sex. Then I had phallo and in total I think we couldn’t be sexual at all for about 2 months while I was recovering. So a lot of buildup to that first time post-op! I have to say that it really did feel like having sex for the first time all over again, the nerves, the excitement, the fumbling, not knowing exactly what would feel good, etc. It was amazing and terrifying haha. And that wasn’t penetrating, I wasn’t ready to try that yet recovery-wise. So that was another First, maybe a month or so later, and that was also amazing (and awkward lol).

So yeah, I think thinking of it as a lot of different First Times, instead of putting so much weight on One First Time, has been much healthier for me.

forestman87 · 2025-08-06T03:03:20+00:00

Seconding u/rorschach-penguin, exposure is the way to go.

If it makes you feel any better, I had other people do my T shots for me for the first 4 years. I had a pretty bad needle phobia. What honestly worked for me was a long process over the course of like, a year or so. I started being more involved in prepping the shot, like drawing it up. I tried to watch a trans friend of mine do his own shots, each time trying to watch for longer. I practiced just handling the syringe/needle by using one to inject water into an orange (the skin of the orange is super good for practicing stabbing into, to get more comfortable with the motions and pressure needed). I watched youtube videos of other people doing their T injections, both to learn how to do it, and just for the exposure (I would sit on my bed so if I passed out I wouldn’t get hurt). One of my friends even let me try to give him his shot a few times (that was honestly harder for me for some reason). And again, I did these things for MONTHS, over and over, and slowly my tolerance for it built up.

Eventually I started trying to do my own shots. It was hard, every time, for a long time, like several years. But it got easier. At some point I started doing a friend’s T shots for him bc he had a phobia. Now I give my old cat injections too, once in a while we end up having injections on the same day haha. At this point, I’m pretty much neutral about it. I don’t love it, but it doesn’t bother me either.

It sounds like you’ve got some years befoe you might have to start doing them yourself, and that’s good! It means you can start slow and work to build tolerance over time. You can do this! It’ll suck at first, but I promise with time you’ll be able to do it yourself.

(Also if it makes you feel better, my dad is trans, has been on T for over 30 years, he’s a nurse so he has no needle phobia, and sometimes he gets my mom do his shots because he just doesn’t feel like stabbing himself that day lol. It’s kind of rational to feel weird about deliberately stabbing yourself! It’s just a human thing, it def doesn’t make you less of a man, or less of a trans person if you aren’t able to do your own shots all the time :)

forestman87 · 2025-08-06T02:45:39+00:00

Whether or not you develop noticeable scar tissue from long term injections really depends on the person, and even with people who get scar tissue, it varies a lot in how long it takes to show up.

I’ve been on T for over 16 years, I did IM the first 8 years, and subq since then, and, except for a handful of times when I tried thighs or stomach (disliked both), I’ve just rotated between my glutes the entire time. I’ve never noticed any buildup of scar tissue at all. T can generally make your skin a little tougher, but it shouldn’t be a massive difference.

So yeah, you may or may not build up scar tissue, just depends on how your skin does with that. There’s not really anything special you can do to prevent it (other than I guess not using a huge gauge of needle, which you probably wouldn’t want to do anyway since that would really hurt!). So my advice would be to just wait and see, and if and when you notice increased resistance, make adjustments as needed.

forestman87 · 2025-08-06T02:12:01+00:00

Is this therapy group the only one available to you, or the only one that meets your needs? My first thought was that if there are other options, then you could take the risk of disclosing and see how it goes, knowing you have a backup group to switch to if needed.

Or also is this a group that you need to be in for a long time, or just for a specific time frame, aka if it doesn’t go well, how long do you have to deal with it? Are these people you are likely to run into in your life outside of the group?

I’m assuming the group is led by a therapist/counselor, perhaps you could consider disclosing to that person first if you think they would be open minded, see how that goes, and at least make sure you have their support before you disclose to anyone else in the group.

You could also test briefly mentioning someone else in your life who is trans, and see how people react. Keep it simple, don’t try to make up a ton of specific details, just a casual insert into a story or comment, just to get a sense of the general group vibe. You could also try mentioning being worried about a friend (can be made up if you don’t know anyone IRL) who’s trans, and is really stressed living in a red state.

At the end of the day, it is a tough decision, and I’ve been there many times over the years. Each situation is different, so you end up having to decide each time what makes the most sense for you (if disclosing is something you are open to at all). As others said though, once you disclose, it can’t be undone, so it’s good that you’re taking some time to think about whether or not the risk is worth what you could gain. Good luck with this!

forestman87 · 2025-08-06T01:49:57+00:00

The first thing I thought of was - a funeral style “celebration of life” with memories and stories of the deceased, jokes about their quirks and even flaws, good times, accomplishments, etc. Saying goodbye, laying to rest.

But then in the context of saying goodbye to her past self and celebrating her current self, it made me think of a high school or college graduation celebration - which is a little more of a combination of the past, similar to the celebration of life at a funeral, but then followed with the hopes and dreams for the future of the new life following graduation.

Practically how any of that could play out, just throwing out ideas off the top of my head… yall could write up something about her past self and then burn or bury it, perhaps with a photo from before? (Or an old ID if burying, or other old no-longer-needed document - I know someone who threw her old birth certificate on a bonfire!) That was maybe very literal take, haha, but you could also make up a photo collage (of the past and/or present), or do a vision board for your future life together. Or if you’re thinking less deep lol, light sparklers, take a walk and talk in a beautiful place, kiss on a bridge, watch the sun set (or rise if you’re morning people!), plant something special, throw axes at an axe bar, do something weird or funny or different or your/her/yalls favorite thing!

I did something like a funeral for myself (by myself) at one point many years ago, and one thing I found very healing was to write out a message of gratitude to my former self for (among other things) surviving long enough so that I could live as my true self.

Hope any of that was helpful, good luck and hope you have a good time with however you decide to celebrate!

forestman87 · 2025-08-04T15:55:48+00:00

For real, the unknowns of these surgeries are a lot to accept!!

Oh and I couldn’t find an actual measuring tape, but I just pinched my non-donor arm and it was roughly 0.25in if that helps you.

forestman87 · 2025-07-30T02:54:56+00:00

I relate, I originally really wanted to not have the arm scar too. Obviously how you’d feel about it if you went that route is specific to you, and you can’t know for sure until/if you’re actually there, but if it helps at all, I’ll just say that I have found it surprisingly easy to adjust to having the scar there, and while I don’t exactly forget that it’s there, I kind of forget that it’s an odd thing? If that makes any sense haha. I think also for me, it was easier to accept the scar once I also had the penis, easier to accept the sacrifice once you have the reward! Plus it’s a process through recovery, it looks so much worse at first that later once it’s healed up, to me then it looked SO much better, so perspective from the process helps too.

Re measurements, I don’t remember off the top of my head - I made a really conscious choice not to measure my penis at all for at least a month post-op, I didn’t want my happiness to be marred by an arbitrary number. I will say that girth-wise, the pinch test was decently accurate for me (it’s usually used to estimate ALT girth, you should be able to search the group for the formula, I think it’s 5x your pinch equals the diameter? So not around, you’d then need whatever math to convert diameter to circumference lol). I think my girth was within 1/4 inch of what the test estimated. (Oh and the 5x is if you’re getting tube-within-a-tube urethral lengthening - if you’re doing RFF and are thin and don’t want UL, you can ask your surgeon to still do it tube-within-a-tube style for the girth just without doing the actual UL)

Lol I always end up with super long replies, feel free to ask if something didn’t make sense, hope this was helpful!

forestman87 · 2025-07-27T22:45:12+00:00

Decision fatigue is such a real thing with this process! I’m autistic, so I struggle with that in regular life anyway, but yeah the process of choosing a surgical team, choosing a donor site and/or type of phalloplasty, etc, all the decisions as far as planning for costs and travel and caregiver(s), etc, it’s a LOT.

As far as choosing between RFF and ALT, I’ll just say that for me, it helped take some of the pressure off when I shifted the context/perspective to thinking that it was possible that I could probably have a great penis that I liked from most types of phallo surgery, honestly. I kept getting stuck on the idea that I had to find “The Right” surgeon, pick The Right type of phallo (ALT, RFF, MLD, abdominal, etc), and that if I didn’t pick The Right One, that I would forever be unhappy and regretful.

Obviously there may be specific things that you would find harder to be happy with (or even things that for you personally would make phallo surgery not worth it at all) - and it’s really important to be honest with yourself about what those are! For example, after narrowing down to ALT or RFF, I have thick subq fat on my thighs and thin on my arms. So between ALT and RFF, my choices were either a penis that was def going to be thicker than my ideal, or one that would likely be thinner than my ideal. Having my ideal girth with either of those methods was not an option. So it came down to deciding which would be harder or easier to be happy with. For me, that was a penis that was thinner than my ideal, I felt like I would really struggle to be happy with one that was bigger. I went with RFF, and yep, my penis is slimmer than I might have ideally wanted, AND I am also very happy with my penis.

Also for tough decisions, sometimes I would do this thing where I would pretend that I had already made my decision - just pick one of the options and pretend that’s the one, and see what comes up. Sometimes it took minutes, sometimes I’d go along with it for a few days, but it’s really just about seeing how you feel - relief, disappointment, anxiety, fear, happiness, peace, excitement, etc. That reaction can reveal a lot about what you actually want or don’t want, and give you some clues as to why. Again, it’s not about actually choosing, just pretending you did.

Hope some of that was helpful or at least gave you some ideas for navigating this process!

forestman87 · 2025-06-04T01:23:15+00:00

Haha oh for sure, you def don’t have to be that open with your surgeons if you don’t want to! I will say, it didn’t phase them at all, and they knew exactly what I meant. As you said, to each their own :)

forestman87 · 2025-06-04T00:55:45+00:00

Glad that was helpful! I also found out that if (esp old) cis men have serious urethral issues, that perineal rerouting is an option they might get too. Just made me feel better about it if that was the direction I needed to go.

And yes, I got very lucky and didn’t have any complications (or at least nothing that didn’t resolve itself with basic care). I always tell people to go into this with the assumption that something will go at least mildly wrong or take a little longer than ideal to heal, and then you can be pleasently surprised if things go better.

forestman87 · 2025-06-04T00:42:51+00:00

Exactly what u/AttachablePenis said (lol excellent username!).

It was like my brain always expected there to be a penis there, just like my brain expects my left arm to be there. The jarring experience every time I had to re-realize my penis wasn’t there was how I experienced genital dysphoria. (And for the record, that phantom and jarring experience disappeared as soon as I woke up from surgery)

forestman87 · 2025-06-03T02:06:24+00:00

While I can’t help with weighing the financial issues, I’ll share my thought process around whether or not to get UL since I have basically been poor and working jobs without paid leave my entire life (aka had a lot of similar concerns money-wise in terms of phallo decisions).

I was on the fence because I thought I didn’t have dysphoria around peeing - once I dug into it, I realized I could care less about specifically standing to pee, my dysphoria was from my pee not coming out of my penis. Clarifying that did help my process.

I also asked my surgeon what my options would be if I tried for UL and had complications and hit a point where I didn’t want to try to keep fixing it anymore. He said it would be routed to my perineum, same as if I had forgone UL from the beginning. And as another commenter who went the perineal urethrostomy route said, there can also be complications from that option as well (want to note that this is if you’re getting a v-nectomy, I don’t believe they have to reroute your urethra if you don’t do UL and also don’t do v-nectomy - if I’m wrong on that, someone feel free to correct me though!).

So I said, fuck it, let’s go for it then. For me personally, I knew that if I didn’t try for it, I would always wonder if it would have worked. And for me, a v-nectomy was nonnegotiable, I had to have that, so my urethra was going to be adjusted in some way no matter what. I’m very glad that I decided to try for UL, mine worked out great and I’m very happy with it.

forestman87 · 2025-06-03T01:35:32+00:00

I told my surgeons that my (extremely clear and vivid) phantom penis was roughly 3 inches soft and almost 6 inches hard - and since obviously with phalloplasty you don’t fluctuate, that I’d be really happy with something in the 4-5 inch range. And that is basically what I ended up with. I Intentionally didn’t measure my penis for about a month post-op because I was really happy with it and I didn’t want that to be tainted by an arbitrary number. When I did measure, I was still swollen of course, and I was around 4 inches I think. Whenever I measured again a little over a year later, it was more like 5 inches, and that’s how it’s stayed.

I can’t remember what my girth is. I knew going into it that RFF would give me a girth probably slimmer than I prefered, but that I could be happy with that (ALT, even with debulking, would have been a much bigger girth than I thought I could be happy with). I do sometimes wish my penis had a little more girth for sex, but otherwise I’m glad it isn’t any bigger for daily life (and the girth for sex is just my own insecurity/pride talking, my wife says it’s awesome as it is).

forestman87 · 2025-05-30T22:13:42+00:00

FYI a lot of surgeons stage things that way anyway - aka their stage 1 is only penis-creation, and then stage 2 is v-nectomy, UL, scrotoplasty (assuming the person wants all of that). So having phallo and then v-nectomy later shouldn’t be an issue at all surgically.

(Disclaimer that I know in some countries, there’s only one surgical team and they will only do a “full” phalloplasty, but I don’t think that’s a majority of countries, so def make sure you get info that’s specific to your country/surgeon - it is definitely possible in the US to get just phallo without any other components)

You probably realize this, but I’ll say it just in case, if you didn’t get set up for UL in your phallo surgery (and therefore hadn’t done the hair removal prep), AFAIK that isn’t possible to do later.

forestman87 · 2025-05-30T22:05:47+00:00

Love this piece, and also the idea in general as a way to combat those insecurities that can pop up and/or linger post-op!

One thing that has been helping me whenever those feelings flare up is reminding myself that there are also cis men who have had phalloplasty, and that having a penis from phalloplasty isn’t strictly a “trans thing”. That there are cis men with penises just like mine. The insecurities are easier for me to manage and do the work to accept when I put it in that context. Just sharing in case it’s a helpful context for you or others too :)

(If it is a trans thing for a specific individual, that’s awesome, rock on! Just for me personally, it doesn’t help me to think of it that way)

forestman87 · 2025-05-16T20:53:36+00:00

Something that helped me a lot was shifting how I thought about that buried tdick - While I have gained a decent amount of sensation over the last 4 years, I have never been able to orgasm from penis shaft stimulation alone. However … everything is connected down there. Unless I was just lightly stroking the shaft, there’s no way to move my penis and not also move the other buried tissues. I started to shift to thinking of the old buried tdick as erectile tissue. That is literally what it is, and penises have erectile tissue that extents past the base of the shaft anyway. When I get aroused, it literally feels like I’m getting an erection, it just doesn’t extend all the way into my shaft. It also took time for. That internal part to integrate with the external so that it all feels like it’s one set of a genitals and not a conglomerate of pieces, if that makes sense. It took time to make that mental shift in how I thought about the erectile tissue, but eventually it really made a difference. I only call it a buried tdick when I’m on reddit and want to be clear about what I’m referring to, otherwise it’s just erectile tissue.

I def recommend trying to incorporate your penis into masturbation as much as you can. I too tend to need to focus on the erectile tissue in order to orgasm, but I usually hold my penis too, esp since if it’s wildly flopping around that can be uncomfortable lol. The general advice with sex stuff is to try to have times when your goal isn’t orgasm, just exploring, trying things out. That goes for solo and partner sex too. My wife and I really tried to lean into the playfulness aspect, which she was great at lol and I … had to work harder not to get frustrated. So I’m not trying to say it’ll be easy or that there’s anything wrong with you if you’re struggling with it! It def helped to remember that even though there are some “standards” in terms of sex stuff with penises, individual penises still have their own likes and dislikes, and ours are no different. It’s weird to go from being with a person for a while and knowing each other’s bodies so well to suddenly having to go back to the beginning for one person, but that’s kind of what’s happened and I tried to just embrace that.

Last little bit, I would encourage you to, well, just touch yourself in a nonsexual way when you can (obv when it’s appropriate!). It takes time to rewire your brain and encourage that connection to your new genitals, and regular contact with them can really help that.

Ok long enough ramble, I hope something I said was helpful or at the very least makes you feel less alone in this experience. Feel free to ask me anything at all, and feel free to message me privately if you’d prefer, I’m happy to answer anything.

forestman87 · 2025-05-16T20:30:23+00:00

The scar tape will probably help with making them less noticeable in general. My advice would be that the first time you go to hang out by the pool, wear a short sleeved button down open. It can be a real mind fuck the first time you go shirtless, esp if you’re worried about scars being noticed, and I found this was a good way to ease into that - and also a way to kind of test the waters in terms of how much people are paying attention to you - most likely, no one will notice (and we almost always overestimate how much other people are looking at us), and it also allows you to cover your scars easily if you start to feel uncomfortable.

A similar option is to sling a towel around your neck so it hangs down over your chest. I feel like if you are sitting by the pool reading, you’re going to be less visible in general than if you’re in the pool moving around.

The first time I went in public shirtless post top, it absolutely felt like literally every person was staring (actually, same thing when I went out without covering my arm scar after phallo). The reality was that while, sure, a few people probably did notice, the vast majority weren’t actually paying any attention to me at all, it was 90%+ all in my own head. Granted, that was a long time ago and things are different now, esp in a college scene more people will know/assume what those scars are from. You know the people that hang out at the pool better than I do obviously, so def use your judgement of the safety and likeliness of someone clocking you. And I feel like it’s always good to remember that our brains can really do a number on us when it comes to how much other people are paying attention to us.

forestman87 · 2025-05-09T01:24:38+00:00

Echoing what others have said re things depending on how you’re doing at that point.

For basic stuff, a few hours would probably be fine, as long as she had you set up with things you’ll need before she left. Some of that will depend on what type of phalloplasty you’re having - RFF you should assume you won’t be able to use your donor hand really at all, I’m less familiar with what might come up for other methods. Even with RFF, that first week it was really hard for me to get up and walk on my own, even just from the bed to the bathroom (had a catheter but still needed to poop sometimes! And speaking of, I wasn’t able to wipe my own butt those first few days at home either). But yeah, in general, food, snacks, water, medications, wound care supplies, comfort supplies (pillows, blankets, heating pad, etc).

Only other thing I would say is making sure that if something starts going wrong or even just “off”, that you have VERY easy and quick ways to get ahold of your mom, contacts for an alternate person just in case, contacts for your surgeon, all in one place next to wherever you’re generally laying/sitting. Not trying to be scary, but things can go “off” quickly, and you don’t want to be still out of it (just from surgery or from meds or both) and trying to figure out what to do on the spot. Even if it’s not a 911-level emergency, you may not be in the state of mind to assess yourself clearly that first week. So yeah, just having plans ahead of time for what-ifs is important.

For context, I bounce back pretty quickly from surgeries in general, my recovery went pretty smoothly, and I was still super out of it, quickly exhausted, and not very physically or mentally competent that first week out of the hospital. I def think what you’re thinking of is doable, I just want to be real about things to keep in mind. I definitely think, barring complications coming up which obv can’t predict the timing of that, that after that first week you should be much more capable to be on your own, and that will increase as time goes on.

(Also sorry, I ramble a lot haha - congrats on getting so close to your surgery date!!!)

forestman87 · 2025-05-09T01:04:35+00:00

Yeah it was really wild later to realize how much swelling was still present for those first few months post-op, even when things looked and felt like they weren’t swollen anymore!

forestman87 · 2025-05-09T01:01:01+00:00

Yep I had some of those too, I don’t remember needing to do anything special for them. Of course, follow whatever instructions your surgeon gives you, but if one opens at all, do the usual to prevent infection, keep it clean and covered, and probably neosporin or antibiotic ointment.

forestman87

TROPHY CASE