F1nn5ter: Coming out

As a topic of discussion, I guess I'll ask, for those of you on HRT, how did it affect your mental health?

Been on hormones for 4 years. Getting rid of my body's testosterone and getting onto etrogen was like curing a cancerous growth or something. It was poison to me. I've already written one long comment on Tildes today so apologies for not doing another long one, but my mental health has changed so much..! I still have many problems, and the worst years of my life have actually been after transitioning but that is down to a ton of things, one of which is to do with the struggles of being transgender in general, not specifically hormonal problems. But I'm a whole other - better - person now.

Hormones can be really shifty to mess with, but research your options and make sure you talk to someone qualified before jumping into any sort of hormone therapy. It can completely fuck you up mentally if you get the wrong balance.

Separately from my other reply:

made a living as a crossdresser on twitch

I notice that, while I emphatically Do Not Get This in a "how can people possibly make money from streaming" sort of way, it's not nearly the same sort of strong negative feeling I get from drag. I was vaguely indescribably uncomfortable with drag before transition, and later realized that it feels (to me) like they're mocking trans people. But it seems like these are both in the same sort of category, something like "dressing up as a different gender with the primary goal of performing it as a show for others".

I wonder why one feels so much worse to me than the other. I'll be thinking about this all night now.

Oh heck yes.

I was not a good person on testosterone. I was a stubborn asshole toward my friends. I was a creep toward any woman I found attractive. When I was younger I'd get angry easily and start throwing things, though I managed to suppress that as I matured by swinging hard the other way into full stoic. I held values that were the opposite of those things, but it was a constant struggle to make myself align my actions with those values, like something was trying to make me a different sort of person than I wanted to be. And now that voice telling me to be a terrible person is just gone. I consider this the single most important thing I got out of HRT.

Also, I can cry now. I physically could not do that before, as far as I could tell. Sometimes that's what I need to reset myself out of a bad headspace.

I have a hormone imbalance that produces way too much testosterone. Like, maxing out the blood tests. I only found this out when I took pre-HRT blood tests, and who knows how long I've lived with it.

There's a bit of difficulty answering your question though, I feel, because my experience with testosterone is going to be very different than a cis man's. I'd imagine that sans my dysphoria I wouldn't really mind the condition, but I'd be such a different person that it might manifest differently.

I recall being much, much more aggressive, unstable, creepy, obsessive... Just pick any toxic trait you can imagine. It was really hard to keep under wraps especially since I'd only really connected with girls - but having platonic connections with women also taught me how not to be an asshat really early on, which helped a lot.

A year into HRT and the best analogy I can use is that it's as if someone is gradually plugging things into the right place in my brain. I would describe the experience as the opposite of dissociation episodes, as I'm starting to get periods where I'm actually fully grounded - an experience I'd never had before starting treatment.

All of this said, HRT only really made me aware of myself. It isn't going to fix the rest of my issues, even if a lot of them were indirectly caused by living with dysphoria.

(Also, really happy that F1nn felt comfortable enough to make this announcement. I was always worried that the constant speculation in their community would put pressure/expectations on his identity)

Before transitioning I got diagnosed with secondary hypogonadism, which it sounds like you might have. I did about a year of TRT before swapping to HRT. Just a few thoughts on how my brain ran on low testosterone, normal testosterone, and on estrogen.

Low T:

• Energy tanked in the afternoon especially, older I got the more I relied on afternoon coffee
• Occasional hot flashes

High T:

• Plentiful energy and ability to jump into high energy activities with no warmup
• Way more horny and had even greater difficulty distracting myself from being horny without finding time to masturbate or resolve sexual tension
• Sexual desire feels like an on/off switch, it's either there and really present or it's not
• No more hot flashes

Estrogen:

• Took maybe six months to a year to get used to how energy now worked in my body... I was exhausted for a long time until I realized that I wasn't actually exhausted, it's just that I needed to start doing something to realize I had energy to do it - it was necessary to warm my body up to 'feel' energetic
• My sense of smell got way better - I notice more smells and can detect them from further away than pre-transition
• I'm not entirely certain if this was due to estrogen or just the process of transitioning, but I found myself much less critical of certain parts of my body that I used to be very critical about - for example stomach fat and whether my abs were visible stopped being a strong signal to diet/starve myself
• It felt possible to hold space for multiple emotions at the same time. When I ran on testosterone if I felt both angry and upset at something it was like I was constantly switching between the two, but on estrogen I can feel both simultaneously and it can make identifying emotions more difficult at times
• Sexual desire is much more variable depending on the factors present - it's not just an on/off switch, but can accelerate or decelerate depending on what's going on
• Very easy to distract myself or move from a state of horny to other activities

Things that remained constant despite hormones changing:

• Did not meaningfully impact my depression
• Did not change how often or how many emotions I felt, nor my outward expression of these emotions
• I was never an angry person, even when running on testosterone
• Outside of a shift on how I perceived energy and sexual desire, the end state after being on said hormone for >= 1yr was the same amount of total energy and sexual desire

Things that changed that I'm not sure I can attribute to hormones:

• I'm generally a softer person more concerned with the emotions of others than I was in the past. I've been on this trajectory most of my adult life, so it's hard to say if hormones contributed to a change in the pitch of that trajectory or not
• I recognize my own need for physical touch much better now, but that also comes alongside a prioritization of the somatic experiences and having more opportunity to evaluate my own mental state with regards to changes in the amount of physical touch I am getting
• My authenticity has gone up a lot since transitioning but I don't know how much is due to hormones and how much is simply due to a choice to live more authentically

I've been on feminising hormones for a little under a year aaaaaand it's amazing. I never really allowed myself to believe that HRT would be the silver bullet to my mental health problems, and it hasn't been. I still experience anxiety and suffer constantly from rejection sensitivity dysphoria. But the fog of depression has been lifted, and my brain feels like it's working normally again. Passing sadness is far more temporary than ever it was before, and the highs of happiness are just that much higher. I just feel content. Life is no less materially difficult than it was a year ago, but I feel much better equipped to deal with that now. Oestrogen has unlocked emotions that I didn't know I had, or was suppressing, and has enabled me to feel familiar ones much more intensely. Tears come more easily to me now, for better and worse. In short, it's been the best year of my life, and I think the hormones are a significant portion of that.

That was a great question to ask, imperialismus! The replies have been so interesting and illuminating for me.

A big thank you to everyone here that has shared their experiences with HRT with us.