Dysphoria, in the words of people who have lived through it, is less a tidy medical label and more a storm of visceral self-revulsion.
Several detransitioned women say the feeling goes far beyond normal teen embarrassment: “It wasn’t that I was embarrassed about something specific about my breasts – it just made me feel sick to my stomach to have them… Imagine that your hair disgusted you, made you feel itchy… and the mere existence of it on your body prevented you from living a regular life.” – trialeterror source [citation:32d1449a-adca-42a1-b13f-29cebfc45d63]
Another woman adds, “I’m entirely repulsed by my sex characteristics… It is like I am constantly wrapped in an electric fence.” – Possible-Skirt source [citation:18240566-ff19-455c-994c-9004aee0a57b]
They stress that this is not the same as wishing a feature looked better; it is wanting the feature to not exist at all.

Because the word “dysphoria” simply means “profound unease,” many desisters argue it is being stretched to cover ordinary growing pains.
One mother who watched her child nearly transition writes, “Every single teen girl on the face of the planet is uncomfortable with her breasts and periods… Every person who experiences puberty will experience what we now call ‘dysphoria’. But every person who experiences puberty is most definitely NOT trans.” – sara7147 source [citation:933751f6-39c6-4040-9774-c1e27bafa8eb]
She warns that calling normal discomfort by a clinical name “is exactly like disguising heroin as Skittles.”

People who desisted often reframe the experience as an intense but treatable mental-health crisis rather than proof of an inborn gender identity.
One man who once planned to end his life over dysphoria now says flatly, “Dysphoria isn’t some kind of indicator of one’s True Trans status… Dysphoria is a psychological malady.” – [deleted] source [citation:8482d5a7-690e-4efd-9c62-cf867f3aac0f]
Another woman concludes, “Dysphoria is a mental illness which is as real as any other… That, at least, is not a deception.” – Dissposabletag source [citation:2b50bcd1-531d-45b6-a4cd-617178ceabae]

Take-away:
The accounts agree that severe gender dysphoria is an overwhelming, body-focused anguish, but they reject the idea that the feeling itself confirms an innate “gender identity.” They describe it as a psychological storm that can lift with therapy, self-acceptance, and time spent living comfortably in the body you already have.