Answer

What If I Feel Like I'm in the Wrong Body?

The distress you are describing is real, and nothing here starts by disputing it. If your body and your sense of yourself do not match, that is a heavy thing to carry, and it is heavier when you suspect that saying so out loud will cost you something.

The restored gospel teaches that your identity as male or female began before this life and continues after it, and that the body you received belongs within God’s purposes for you rather than being an error in the delivery. Both things are meant to be held at once: the feelings are genuine, and the body is not a mistake. Most of the pain in this question comes from being told to drop one of them.

Eternal Truths

Your spirit and your body belong together. The Lord taught that the spirit and the body are the soul of man (Doctrine and Covenants 88:15-16). The body is not a container the real you was placed inside. It is part of you, which is why “wrong body” is a frame the doctrine cannot adopt even while taking the distress seriously.

Gender is described as eternal, not assigned at birth by accident. The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches that gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal and eternal identity and purpose. That claim is about who you have always been, which means it does not depend on how today went.

You are to be met with love while that is being said. The Church instructs members that those who identify as transgender, and their families and friends, are to be treated with Christlike love (Transgender). Doctrine stated without that is not the Church’s teaching either.

What Can Make This Confusing?

Feelings are real information about your experience and they are not a complete account of who you are. That distinction is hard to hold when the surrounding culture treats a strong feeling as the final word on identity, and treats any qualification of it as rejection of the person. No feeling, however strong or persistent, is load-bearing enough to carry an eternal identity on its own.

Questions to Think About

• What do I actually want, underneath the distress, and have I said it to anyone?
• Who is still close to me, and what would it take to tell them the truth?
• What would it mean to hold a question open rather than settle it under pressure?

What You Can Do

Get help, because distress this deep usually needs more than doctrine. Talk to your bishop, and ask about a competent therapist. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland counselled those who are struggling to seek the advice of reputable people with certified training, professional skills and good values (“Like a Broken Vessel”). If you love someone in this, stay close and stay honest, in that order. The essay behind this answer goes further.

Jesus Christ knows exactly who you were before this life, and He can hold you steady while the rest of it is being worked out.