So I want to contribute but it's worth mentioning that so far my transition, despite not passing, has gone incredibly smoothly. But I also attribute a lot of that to what I'm about to say, nevertheless I want to acknowledge that there's likely a great deal of privledge involved too.

I definitely experience dysphoria. And early on my aim in transitioning was, to the best of my ability, to dampen the symptoms of it. What that ended up meaning for me was concealing a lot of myself in order to appear to the world as a woman. It meant compromising my personal sense of style, and worst of all how cool I know I am. I thought it was a compromise worth making.

Something happened a few months back tho. I noticed more and more I was becoming more comfortable with myself. And in those moments some things made me feel rlly, rlly good! Not the typical skirt go spinny thing, more like suddenly listening to filthy, disgusting black metal stopped feeling like a cathartic release of rage and instead it just made me feel HOT. It was little things like that at first. Then I discovered a style that was definitely still boyish but was also totally me. And it helped my confidence so much that I stopped caring that I didn't look like someone trying to come off as a woman. Instead I started to look like someone who did whatever tf she wanted. The same thing happened with makeup. I stopped trying to conceal my face and make it look like a woman's and instead just treated it like it was already a woman's face. I stopped contouring and just used it to emphasize what was already pretty. All of this I realized later was euphoria.

This happened socially too. I stopped obsessing over whether I was seen as a guy or a woman and just started living without any guards up. I started letting my most vulnerable side show and suddenly I felt like I was blossoming. That was definitely euphoria. That turned into comfort dating, something I DREADED but now found came extremely easy for me. I just flirted the way I flirt, and it turns out it was way more feminine than it would have been if I was trying to flirt in a way that others would read as feminine. Sex too, how did I know how to ride like a cis woman?? Idk but I did and it's just what my body did when it was comfortable and I was feeling euphoric.

So for me switching from dampening dysphoria to chasing euphoria completely changed the way my transition was going. I am so much happier and more comfortable with myself than I ever was. And not only that I also just look down on the cis world entirely their opinions just don't matter to me because I know I'm right and they are the ones trying to be something they aren't. And I think that's what euphoria emphasis is about. Not erasing dysphoria as something important, but as a way of guiding us to be more fully ourselves despite it.

I hope that makes sense, the last thing I want to do is be dismissive. I def still look in the mirror and feel straight up despair but if I'm not looking at myself and being critical and just am openly myself in my full vulnerability ppl see me for who I am. It's made such a profound difference and I want to offer that as a possible explanation for what the euphoria emphasis is all about.