As a Genderfluid/flux tran who with autism and ARFID, I was initially planning on commenting how much I relate to eating struggle and how glad I am that you're getting the help you need. Then you did that amazing read of Swiss Army Man (which I love and rewatch all the time!) and made that really moving statement about what Covid is doing create generational trauma that's pushing us into our worst habits. (eating struggle is one of mine for sure) I cathartically sobbed; I had no idea how badly I needed to hear this from someone with so much identity/experience overlap.Now I just want to thank you for all of it. Thank you for seeking and accepting the help you need, and thank you for articulating relatable stories and sentiments many of us so badly need to hear. I'm dealing with so much of my struggle with the support of only a few people, because getting the diagnosis I need for treatment in my small rust belt town is such a long battle. My apologies if this is rambling, I'm real full of feelings right now.

Hey Dylan, I check back on this channel every now and then, to see if you'll upload something new... Your content has always spoke to me quite a lot. I miss it sometimes... I hope you're doing well.

I wish you the best Dylan.. As you can see in the comments a bunch of people are rooting for you and we hope you can get the surgery you need and you are eating better... I've dealt with anorexia since i was 12. Take all the time you need..your audience ain't going anywhere Hopefully videos like this will help spread awareness about how eating disorders impact the trans community.

i wish you the best, hopefully you can get your surgery soon - swiss army man is such a good movie

Take your time. 💜 Wonderful prose.

I hope you are ok, it's been so long since we last heard from you. Just a little reminder that we the viewers are still thinking of you and sending you love and support 💝💜💙💚💛🧡

I (cisman) had an eating disorder in highschool, where I ended up in a rehabilitation center. It was the closest experience I could draw on when my trans- friends would describe their own dysmorphia/dysphoria. Best wishes, Dylan. I realize there's no clearcut point of being "cured", but it sounds like you have a mature, responsible perspective on things; so I things only get better from here.

I can't imagine how frustrating and discouraging your situation must be. I got your back bro, You have my support. If you ever need a friend, I can walk my lazy ass across the hall to at least lend an ear.

I've been checking your channel for months!! So delighted to see you safe and well!

I'm so glad to hear you're making progress against your ED. Sending lots of love to you and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your videos in the future. Kick that EDs butt man❤️

thank you for sending us an update, we wish you good things

I'm glad to see you are ok! Hope it stays that way, good luck!

it's beautiful to see you giving this message

I know it's been a while, but take care of yourself man~~~ take as long as you need to keep yourself safe and healthy. We'd rather you be happy more than anything else

Thank you so much for being so open.

This really hit hard for me. Thank you for this and hope your recovery goes well ❤️

Hope you're still fighting the good fight. Still getting a ton of perspective and insight from your work and appreciate everything you've done.

Thank you for being so open and honest. I enjoy hearing your perspective.

Your vids were so amazing for me to find a few years ago back when I was in the earlier stages of questioning things. Thanks again for making them, I hope you're hangin on out there.

Im so sorry you have to go through this

My girlfriend is trans and she has an eating disorder, she said that she got it kinda as a "missfire" of her dysphoria. She would look at pretty Goth girls online, back then she didn't know she was trans but she wanted to look like them. Those girls happened to be skinny and my girlfriend just figured she felt bad about herself and wanted to be like those girls because she wanted to be skinny, missing the whole gender thing. Even though she knows that now, she still has trouble eating sometimes. Thankfully I never got an eating disorder, but it's just pure luck. I remember searching up how to pass at 15 and the first result was a long post telling you what to wear and not to wear so you don't look ugly, and also telling you to lose weight, and the article said something like "if anyone told a girl to lose that much weight they'd be horrible, but you're not a regular girl, you're a guy and you need to lose weight to lose those hips, breasts and face fat". I remember trying to lose weight after that, but thankfully I gave up. I am already underweight, it's scary that I even had that thought.

I really love the way you tell stories

I hope that your recovery continues to go well, I have experienced a lot of mental health relapses myself and can empathize a lot. Your videos have helped to urge me and give me the confidence to start my own transition, and I am sure you have so much more goodness in you to share. Good luck with your hysterectomy

All the love and support to you, Dylan.

You have a unique wonderful way of looking at the world better yet you have a wonderful way of breaking down the world to people I'm looking forward to many many videos of you doing just that

Always here for you

Thank you for taking care of yourself. Your voice is needed.

Love your videos man, I'm glad to hear you're taking this time to heal and be more patient with yourself. I've had a lot of friends struggle with EDs and never quite made the connection you mention here; I always assumed it was about feeling a lack of control on a base level but never realized how intertwined it could be with gender dysphoria as well. Thank you for taking the time to talk about it, I'll be passing it on to someone close to me

Thank you for this. I feel so seen and understood.

Thank you for making this video, I really needed to hear all of it right now.

Hey Dylan, I just wanted you to know that your thoughts on gender and transness are really helpful to me. Thank you for helping me navigate. I've learned a lot from you and still am. Thinking and rooting for you.

I wish you the best with your recovery and surgery! I loved Swiss army man so much when I saw it in the cinema. I haven't seen it again bc that first watch was so special but I think I will watch it again soon. I'm glad it got you through some difficult times. take all the time you need to focus on yourself before focusing on this channel. good luck with it all x

Good luck in recovery and best wishes for your surgery, I hope you become happier after and continue to grow.

Glad to see you're feeling better! I hope your recovery continues to go well! Excited to see you again once you're ready to be back 100%

Been watching your content for only a few weeks now. Your breath-taking honesty is stunning, honestly. So grateful to you for sharing your life and experiences-- they are endlessly valuable. And so are you. Thanks for this one.

I was just thinking about you after your last video. I'm glad you are doing okay and taking time to heal 💜

Thank you so much for this video, and your others (Men's Gynecology, Dorian Electra's album breakdown.) I hope you continue to make content. Best wishes

I'm glad you're working towards healing, endometriosis fucking sucks and that's speaking as a cis woman. I can't imagine dealing with it on top of gender dysphoria.

This was a beautiful video, and I've really got to watch swiss army man now. Wish you all the best and good luck with surgery!

I'm so glad you are back and better, you are so strong, you got this💜💜

Wishing you the best! And thank you for this video.

i will be back sometime to write a more in depth comment about what this video meant to me but i am in too fragile a state to compose my thoughts. i wanted to thank you again for posting the videos that you do, i really enjoy your content. i hope to see something from you soon and hear about how recovery is going, you've inspired me to open up about more things i have been through, i hope you are well, and until next time!

Thank you for speaking on this. I know it must be hard to talk about but no doubt you are helping others. Hope you’re doing well!!!

💕

I wish you the best! Sorry to hear about it

Wishing you only the best. Sending you love.

So much love Dylan I'm so proud of you!

Hey I hope you're doing better. I think your analysis on Flamboyant was spot on. It had it's part in my queer awakening. I'm checking from time to time if you dove in the newer albums or sent some signs of life. Take care and wishing you well from Poland. Cheers Dylan

Hi Dylan, I didn’t finish this video just because of my own ED history and wanted to avoid potential triggers of mine. Sending you much love 💕 and deep understanding of some of what you’re going through. I’m really grateful for your videos and for you sharing about your experience right now. Wishing you the best in getting the medical treatment you need. I know advocating for yourself with doctors and insurance is a l o t.

Thank you so much for talking about this subject during this pandemic. You are very awesome. :)

fuck yeah, my partners and I watched Swiss Army Man this year and i love your insight into it. idk 2020 feels like the "existential crisis or bust" year for everyone i think. so many people are just on the fringes of surviving, so anything you can do to be, get, or stay well is good!

as someone who is struggling with this right now, thank you, and i hope everything works out

We love you, Dylan!!! Wishing you the best.

💜 glad you're doing well Dylan, hope you get your surgery soon

Please post more videos, it is important for the community to know what you were and are still going through.

Glad to have an update from you, even if it took a while. And that fact that so many trans people statistically struggle with EDs - I never really considered it before, but now that it’s sinking in I can easily correlate it to my friends’ and even my own disordered eating habits over the years. Something to think about... Thank you so much for your content, Dylan, and take care of yourself.

Sorry you've been going through a tough time. You're awesome! Be healthy, be well, and be here when you can.

Hey Dillan, I've just discovered your channel. First of all I'm sorry to hear about your disorder and I hope you get better soon. But I'm sure you will as you have demonstrated to be a strong man. Just wanted to say, keep up the good work, keep up posting film reviews deconstructing all those clichés and traditions that the system wants us to believe. I know we are a long way to be a perfect world, but we are going in the right direction thanks to a lot of anonymous heroes. Let's keep fighting fella, for us, for those who are not with us any longer, for the future generations.

Thank you for sharing this with us. We will be thinking about you, and wishing you well. You're a cool person with a cool channel, and whenever you're ready, your viewers will be here. Get well, dude. You deserve all the good things.

I hope you are still alive and possibly getting better.

thank you thank you thank you

TW/ disordered eating habits mindset in a personal form, dysphoria, the beginnings of dysmorphia, how my ADHD-i executive dysfunction plays into it as well, suicidal ideation and vague mention of attempts, all in all really a big messy vent dump. I... feel like I have disordered eating but it is hard to call it an ED because it manifests a bit differently and I do technically eat every day. The source is different as it is more sourced from, perhaps a mix of dysphoria and ADHD (executive dysfunction), and then increasingly depression. It wasn't until someone said that ED is about control that I started to see a connection with myself... but it's hard. I eat fine when decent food is in front of me... but making it and feeling like I deserve to get up and give it to myself is difficult. A lot of it ties in with the executive dysfunction, the inability to get up, and the self-hatred that comes with that and having been undiagnosed for my whole life. The way that feeds into everything else. Although weirdly, it seems like I gain more weight when I eat less because of starvation mode, which should be motivation to eat more. I'm definitely "skinny" and always have been, and I hate to admit that now that I have gained even the littlest bit of weight there is hidden within me this fatphobia as well as face dysphoria towards it. Specially from having a beloved fat parent struggle for as long as I can remember with bouncing between diets. You sort of learn that fat is not okay. But also mocked for being too thin. Its this weird tightrope. Because my weight never changed, it didn't seem like it affected me much. As well as not yet knowing I'm trans, these features I already had as a skinny person seemed immutable and were also unknowingly gender affirming to me. But suddenly I weight a tiny bit more than I ever have before, my face is a bit round now. I have a genetic double chin (there is a genetic basis for having a slight chin sag as a thin person that increases noticability when you gain weight. To combat this budding concern with my chin, I feel lucky to be able to have found its a genetic factor and convince myself I can't/shouldn't do much about it (other than hope testosterone will help square my face, and look to guys I look up to who seem happy and have slightly rounded faces as much as I look at square jawed trans and cis men and desperately hope to achieve something close to that). Again, I am what I would consider still objectively skinny, and yet I'm seeing patterns in myself that I can only describe as disordered and slowly increasing into full on eating disorder if it is not already. Which is difficult to even explain when I eat really well if someone gives me food, yet only eat one meal a day or less at my worst). Its like ED-Lite, which is why I just call it disordered eating in general, cause its not quite the same. I have a shit ton of other issues and this for myself, feels like one of those ones that will go away as I start to recover from those, but it is a bit scary to start to notice this is a thing for myself, to actually start to admit it. To be more self aware in the past few years than ever. I will say one thing, and it's that I'm glad I realized I'm trans *right before* I started gaining weight fully. Like, I gained a tiny bit and this started to happen, then I realized I'm trans, my eating habits have gotten a lot worse in the past few months, and my body has stored emergency fat, leading me to realize all this about myself. When I hadn't known dysphoria was part of this, I felt even worse self-shame. What can you do when you know you are within skinny range, according to BMI finally out of your naturally "underweight" placement and into "healthy" placement (BMI is terrible, but that's another story, this is just my thought process using that as an unfortunate guide since it was forced upon many of us as kids as the beacon of health marker when its not) but it was still right that my weight is not a problem, I guess it was wrong in that what I'm doing is actually not healthy for me, fluctuating eating intensely throughout the day (i.e. eat one meal, don't eat for like 12 hours, and then eat a tiny snack, knowing this is not how you're supposed to eat). I'm feeling in a fragile vent mood because this past week it has gotten very extreme in that I am eating snack amounts throughout the day, not even a full proper meal, and only got myself to eat one full meal about two of the past 5 days or so, the rest being snacks. I don't know what to even say when I can see very clearly in front of me many of the things I'm doing and even understand and learn where they stem from more and more over time, yet feel like I'm just watching myself do it, unable to stop, unable to pull myself out of it when depression hits and tells me "you are too stressed and overwhelmed to eat. You can do it later. It's too much effort." And at its worst "you don't deserve to eat, you deserve to feel the pain and suffer. You control this pain and you want to feel it because its familiar" which, that second section of thoughts only started last year (as far as I can remember, maybe I was doing it before without realizing it too, cause it was only recently I considered this could be a problem and started to mentally track the pattern). I dont know what I want by writing this, I just feel like getting it out. Cause it seems so weird and difficult, and nothing at all like the common "calorie counting". I dont weigh myself, I dont weigh my food, but I do "challenge" myself to go longer periods without eating since I already have too much trouble feeding myself. Its like it became too hard so I turned the destruction into a game. How far can I go before the pain forces me to eat. Sometimes feeling weak makes me feel like I have a more legitimate reason to feel bad, since mental health professionals harmed me by not taking me seriously last year, which seems to have made this fluctuating eating thing worse and more complex than before. This sort of "if I'm physically sick, I will be taken seriously" which is..... an eating disorder type of mindset. I don't like that this part was created by my negative interactions with the mental health professionals that were supposed to help me. I dont like that by not taking me seriously, they have told the worst part of my mind that logically/illogically that means that the only way I would he taken seriously is if my attempts on my life lead to injury, or lead to emergency. Because I have told them I have made two almost-attempts on my life, but stopped myself before I actually did it, or checked myself in to get help because the rational side of me can SEE it unfold. I have these multi layers of awareness. I see it but I can't stop it, I see why I feel these horrible ways but I see where they are of course, wrong. My current therapist told me that we are not a bunch of diagnoses, rather, all of these different labels are descriptions of our experience that all mix together and affect each other. Which I feel like helps cause that's how it feels for me too. Its not separate things, it's things that all cause and amplify each other in ways that can be very different from the book. It's.... an organized mess. I want to say a mess, but after the past couple of years of very intense introspection, and this learning that never ends, I have this spiderweb diagram of myself. Pattern recognition. If I look at it with the right labels that give me the missing information (adhd, trans, autistic, ocd) these things have helped me recognize stuff I have long overlooked. And then I see the symptoms I dismissed as normal, or quirky, or personality traits/flaws, and the actual underlying symptoms are given proper priority and recognition, and suddenly it all makes so much sense, I see how this overlooked behavior or thought pattern affects this one, how that behavior changes this one, etc.. Which has in some ways been such a fun beautiful journey of self-descovery, yet also overwhelming at how much more "broken" I am than I thought (several years ago I thought I aged out of my childhood as a perfectly well-adjusted neurotypical *lazy piece of shit* . Didn't even think I had anxiety problems. Boy was I wrong). But yeah, it's also quite overwhelming learning this stuff about myself, creating the diagram. Holy crap I have fifty-hundred problems that all make worryingly perfect sense and play into each other. Now the question lands on me, what the fuck do I do with all of this? Why do I even bother when each day is so hard? I'm too stressed to eat! Don't feed yourself Ollie! Don't even bother! I'm here with the map, but no energy to follow it. No group to help carry the supplies or keep up morale. It's too lonely a journey that makes the fabled treasure feel impossible to reach, and likely diminished value as the journey feels like it will break me. Sorry for the vent.

How are you now?

Man i miss this guy ...

important video love you

Wish you the best❤️

missed you alot. glad to hear from you. not alone. promise, L

I have a super severe eating disorder. It has taken over my life to a large extent. I just hate the life that I have to live right now and this is how I get through it. I won't be able to actually start transition for years most likely, but I'm still holding out hope. Going outside, talking, existing in any form is maddening as I am, though. It's hard to be expected to function as if everything is okay when there's so much turmoil inside that you know is not going to be gone tomorrow or after the therapy appointment. I'm not excusing it, but I feel I almost need some controlled dysfunction to get through this time.

I hope you are okay

❤️

sendin so much love and support your way 💖💖💖

As a pansexual ciswoman, i really wish you the best. I can't imagine how you are feeling... I'm new at the channel but i really hope you are feeling better from now to the rest of your life. One of my friends had eating disorders and being the friend is so hard... So, I hope with all my heart you're okay. You are not alone. You deserve the best. 💕💕

I am transgender, and I’ve been struggling with an ED for 11 years, I’ve had it since I was 15, i am now 26

I hope youre okay

Hey

i know i am late to the party here, i must have missed when this got uploaded. still, i only just recently came to terms with my own eating disorder. mine is so intrinsically tied to my dysphoria, and my transition is so intrinsically tied with my recovery, that it has been life changing to experience all of it at once. but it would be a lie to say it hasnt been hard.... honestly if anyone else out there is reading this and seeing this video and relates, i wish you the very best cause this shit is absolutely No Joke, and recovery has been so freeing so far in spite of its challenges.... best wishes to all

Thank you for giving an insight of these issues. I am really not very familiar with trans/ body-dysphoria ect. and I cannot imagine how difficult it has to be to cope with all that. You certainly seem eager to work on yourself and improve your situation and IMO one can always progress with that attitude in mind. I wonder about one thing: The 21st century is the first time in human history where transsexuality is openly acknowledged and where, mainly through the internet, trans people have a platform where they can find like-minded people and form a community so to say. Now this obviously made the whole concept of being trans known to a whole lot of people, so it might seem like people like you simply did not exist before because of course they were mostly not allowed to exist before. Say you were born a woman on a small farm in 1721; you may feel the same things about your body but you are not even familiar with the concept "trans" and it is very clear that nobody will accept you in any other role than that of a female/mother/housewife. So you lead your (propably very unhappy) life and it ether ends naturally or you end it prematurely because you feel horrible and might not even really understand why. In any case, propably nobody thought of you as a transsexual. So If you would have surveyed every person on earth on their sexual Identity 200 years ago and now, it would seem like the number of people to report feelings of dysphoria had grown drastically. . This crazy spike in human developement in the last 100 years, Industrialisation and gobalisation having altered the lifes of people in 1st world countries so much, removed them so far from their "animalistic" way of life. I wonder if there still might be a correlation between people feeling generally more confused and lost in their modern lifes and more people experiencing gender dysmorphia. I guess that really is the question I had in mind: Do you feel like the numbers of trans people are rising and does our "modern world" somehow play a role in that?

Sarah Z sent me.

for the one person that disliked this video literally hmu i'm tryna fight....

So, you're a girl, right?