Hormones for emotional relief, not physical feminization

[Paige]

AnonyMs
I thought I wrote your post. My depression got so bad I had to do something and it effects the family. And I found out the hard way. So many of us go through the same thing. You think you are protecting your family but you're not.
Melanie

Hi Melanie,

Could you explain this a bit?  I'm pretty well in the same boat.  I always think what will happen to my family.  What do you mean by "You think you are protecting your family but you're not."

Thanks so much,
Paige

[Melanie CT]

Hi Paige
What I meant you think you're protecting the family from the experiences of transitioning by hiding and holding back but the depression and anger that builds up inside caused by hiding yourself effects the family but you think it's not.

I was very depressed and angry inside and thought I was hiding it well but I wasn't. I had to come out more to my wife and fully to my daughters in order to stop the depression and anger inside of me. I also went on a low dose of estrogen which helped tremendously.

Been on the estrogen for two months with an appointment with my endocrinologist on Tuesday. I believe what a lot of the girls say that you'll probably end up increasing the dose but so far so good. I will if the dysphoria comes back. I'm just going slow now.

Melanie


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[HughE]

I know this is something of a YMMV question, but I'm wondering if there is a hormone option/combination available which could provide me with emotional relief from my dysphoria, but without any (or much) physical feminization.

Estriol and progesterone hormone creams. They're marketed for relief of symptoms in menopausal women. They're not strong enough to work for transgender HRT, but they'll give you some of the psychological effects of female hormones without having much feminizing effect. You can buy them online without a prescription from places like Amazon.

[Jenna Marie]

One word of warning - there's no guarantee about the effects of HRT *in either direction.* Some people are disappointed by the results, but some get results they weren't expecting or faster than they expected. I was on super low dose HRT (low enough that I've seen other trans women say there's no way it could have any physical effects) and transitioned fully that way; my endo intended to ramp up the dose, but when I started showing liver damage on a low dose, she cut it in half instead. I was a 42C at the 3-month checkup, and that hurried my plans to transition at work. If I'd been counting on super low dose = mental calm and no physical signs, I would have been in deep trouble. My situation is uncommon, but that's the main reason I tell the story : so people know that while "very low dose won't make other people notice" and "changes in the first six months are reversible" is the *typical* result, it's possible to have neither be true.

It's important to have a fallback plan for if HRT behaves unpredictably (good or bad) in  your own body.

[Martine A.]

Hi Lora,

Yes, this is a very ymmv thing. I can tell you what I am doing.

I am far from actual hrt. So I have time to play with other stuff. Recently I learned flax seed are really potent with phytoestrogens. So if I was to feel what they are doing, it would be from flax seed. Warn - they should be digested broken. I take 20 tea spoons a day. Ten every 12 hours.

It has been some time since I started.

1) The first thing I felt is enhanced sense of smell. I already have/had very strong sense of smell, so I was afraid hrt would augment that. And unfortunately that will happen. I just can smell much more than before. And I gag on things like a simple cut orange as a consequence.

2) With time, it gave me calmness not unlike one described as an effect of hrt. I have so much patience for everything and it is much harder for me to get annoyed. If I am, I just don't feel like reacting aggressively.

3) It also got my wee wee sleeping. It is like wow; that took effect quick. Genetic material still builds up in my balls, and I can wank, but it is different. It is like I am getting disconnected from wish to actually do it and from the joy felt before. I already enjoy more in a nice smell of my shampoo. It also got harder to get to an orgasm. That might cool down further, but I am not hopeful of that without T blockers.

So I will continue to use, but will eventually stop, because it is annoying to eat that much flax seed!! I'd sooner try birth control pills if I could get my paws on a perm* supply.

* - I can't get them in the Netherlands without impeccably passing.

[translora]

I'm curious to hear more about OTC menopause creams. As I mentioned above, I've done some reading on them, because they appear to be hormone equivalents, but way below the threshold of prescription strength. The conventional wisdom seems to be that they are ineffective for physical changes in transwomen, but that's exactly what I'm looking for, as long as there is a psychological benefit (even if it's just placebo).

At the same time, I'm fully aware of the many warnings about self-medication. I'm generally not one to "go rogue" on things anyway. I'm pretty much a rule-follower in many practical aspects of life (while often being a rule-breaker in my creative life, an odd dichotomy).

So, does anyone else have first-hand experience?

Lora

[BirlPower]

2) With time, it gave me calmness not unlike one described as an effect of hrt. I have so much patience for everything and it is much harder for me to get annoyed. If I am, I just don't feel like reacting aggressively.

I've learned here that this is a common side effect of hormones. If I could have this without any other effect, I'd would be keen to try it. Perhaps a small lowering of my overactive male libido would also be useful. Getting annoyed too easily is my no.1 thing I liike least about myself. It is only since coming here that I've learned it might be a part of my transness.

@michellemartine. Am I reading you correctly that all this effect is just from Flax seeds? Would it work just as well with Flax seed oil do you think? I used flax seeds many years ago for improved skin. I've got terrible psoriasis on my hands. I did notice my moods were a little better but I put that down to just eating more healthily. I was eating about quarter of that amount. Had to leave them floating in water for 12 hours 'til they just sprouted and then drink the water with the seeds. I'm excited to try this. Experience suggests it should be safe enough. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Jenna Maries' warning is most compelling.

[JoanneB]

I'm hearing more or less what I feared: Low dose hormones work for a while, but eventually you need more and more, to the point that physical feminization is unavoidable. Basically, ANY level of hormones is a step on the road to full transition, and there's no way station where you can just hang out -- dysphoria-free, yet still socially male -- for a few years.

I once told my therapist, when she offered me a referral to an endocrinologist, that I'm staying as far away from hormones as possible because I have a pretty good idea that I would love them, and that would make me want to go ALL IN on transition.

On the one hand, that's probably where I'm headed eventually, and I love the idea. But practically, I have young children and a beloved spouse to consider. My life is really great, except in this one area...

Looks like I need to stick with the "this, too, shall pass" approach and cross my fingers, at least for the time being.

Lora

30 Years or so I think is a long haul. That is about how long I had been doing on/off low dose. The drive to a "Normal" guy always rose to the top (primarily when things started not to rise  ) and I stopped. I felt better. Didn't totally hate being me. Could carry on.

Even on full doses of HRT I doubt anyone is "dysphoria free". After 6 years of full dose I am FAR from dysphoria free. While doing part-time I sure was not. I doubt with full-time I won't be. HRT, like any other intervention helps to manage, to minimize the dysphoria. Perhaps minimized to the point it is a fleeting distant memory. But never gone.

BUT.... As AnonyMiss said, how you "Survive" has a great affect on yourself and others in your immediate life. Just ask my wife what sort of a person I became over those 30 years! I know now just how much of a lifeless, soulless machine I was was no hope of anything beyond surviving and "Doing what was expected". No Hope. No Wishes. No Dreams, bar one given up on many decades earlier. Then ask her how she feels about me today. Yes, the "bumps on the chest" thingy bothers her as well as the very real possibility of me going full time after the more likely going part-time when circumstances again allow me to.

[Paige]

Hi Paige
What I meant you think you're protecting the family from the experiences of transitioning by hiding and holding back but the depression and anger that builds up inside caused by hiding yourself effects the family but you think it's not.

I was very depressed and angry inside and thought I was hiding it well but I wasn't. I had to come out more to my wife and fully to my daughters in order to stop the depression and anger inside of me. I also went on a low dose of estrogen which helped tremendously.

Been on the estrogen for two months with an appointment with my endocrinologist on Tuesday. I believe what a lot of the girls say that you'll probably end up increasing the dose but so far so good. I will if the dysphoria comes back. I'm just going slow now.

Melanie


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Thanks Melaine,

I think that could be true for some, but for me rocking the boat just seems like it will cause too much pain and anger right now.  I don't think I could handle it.

Take care,
Paige

[Martine A.]

...

Unfortunately for me, I don't have access to hrt yet. Eating healthy anyway. The effect of flax seed was quick on me. Smell was there on day two, numbness down there on day three. I noticed the mood flattening about day four. I am at a quite stressful period at work so a mood flattener is something to give a try anyway.

I haven't tried flax oil. Googled 'flax seed vs flax oil' and there are some hits. Maybe worth a read. Be careful what you trust from the web though.

I decided to give those a try because before I was eating soy beans without knowing they might have such effect. It was just a daily snack. And I got nipples enlarged and painful on touch. It faded away when I stopped eating them. Flax seed seem to be way more potent than soy, so that is probably why I got those beautiful effects so quickly. But interestingly, the nipples didn't react to flax seed... yet. There are probably multiple different phytos out there.

Will finish with ymmv.

I was on super low dose HRT (low enough that I've seen other trans women say there's no way it could have any physical effects) and transitioned fully that way; my endo intended to ramp up the dose, but when I started showing liver damage on a low dose, she cut it in half instead.
...
so people know that while "very low dose won't make other people notice" and "changes in the first six months are reversible" is the *typical* result, it's possible to have neither be true.

Thanks for sharing this. I was not keen on sharing what flax seed did for me because it might have sounded unreal.

Because of the strong effects I am already feeling, I will actually cut flax seed two weeks sooner than I planned, just in case some damage is being done somewhere. Will do research first.

But judging from the effects of phytos, it looks like I might get quick reaction to hrt as well. Got to say, regarding breast size my worst fear is getting cup D. I would like to get cup B or so.

[Eva Marie]

Several years ago I was experiencing intense bouts of Gender Dysphoria but I really liked my male life and didn't want to feminize. It was pointed out to me by a friend that the DSM talks about a low dose HRT regimen as being effective at reducing GD and it was attractive to me since I would feminize glacially slow so I tried it and it worked fabulously.

For about 4 years.

After that I was back to experiencing severe GD again, and the next step up from where I was on HRT put me squarely into a transitioning level dose of HRT. Whoops.

A warning - low dose HRT may stop the GD, but it may also put you on a high speed ride into transitioning. For me it was the latter - you can look at my avatar picture and see how that worked out for me 

Low dose HRT can help with GD, but you won't know the effect on you until you get on it. After that it may involve a lot more than you bargained for, or it may not. There is no way to know before you start on it.

[AnonyMs]

I've done everything I can not to transition, and its a truly hopeless battle. If it was just a matter of being unhappy I'd do it, but I've got to the point of being seriously depressed and unable to work, and I need to work to look after my family. Its also affected the way I interact with my family, being constantly withdrawn, angry, and hiding in my work. That's no way to be a partner or a parent.

The tricky thing is that I didn't suddenly wake up one day like this. I'd have noticed. It starts gradually and you get used to it, not really appreciating how bad things are getting. About a year ago I was seeing a therapist and I explained how important my family was to me and how I'd do anything to look after them. No doubt he's seen it all before (and he's really good), and he pointed out transitioning and getting divorced are not the worst thing you can do to your family.  Somehow I'd never realized that before, and its stuck with me ever since. It's a very hard truth.

Sometimes I think I'm manufacturing all of this in my head -- that I've just worked myself into a supposed state of heightened dysphoria and could just as easily work myself down from it. Most of the time it feels like an overlay onto a life which is totally great in almost every other way.

I've been though this as well, and come to the realization that it doesn't matter. I don't even care. I know what makes it go away, and that's what matters.

And sometimes I think that if my home-based business were just a little more busy, I would be distracted enough that I wouldn't have as much time to think about all of this and it wouldn't even be a factor. Lord knows that distraction has worked in the past. Unfortunately, that level of busyness is, to a certain degree, beyond my control, though the need to keep busy (mostly just to tamp down the dysphoria) has me considering full-time employment elsewhere for the first time in over 20 years.

Working from home it sounds like you may have an ideal opportunity to start HRT without anyone outside your family noticing. If you don't need to interact with people constantly and can dress how you please you can hide the physical effects much more easily. I've hidden my breasts for years and I just wear comfortable lose clothing. If you can hide breasts then having facial stubble hides everything else - not one ever sees past that to any other changes. Luckily I don't get any significant dysphoria from it.

I've always been leery of using chemicals to solve problems which can be solved another way, but I've started to wonder if there even really is another way this time.

I was in a bad way a year ago, and decided to go from lose dose to normal transitioning HRT and see a psych. The psych offered me medication a number of times, and I wasn't suicidal so refused each time. I was afraid that if I got better then I wouldn't know why. Well, I did get better and now I know for sure it was HRT and some other things I decided to do to move things along that made the difference, not some psychiatric medication. I'm not against the medication in principal, but I don't think its a long term solution and I didn't want to cause more problems than I had already. I suspect that if you're trans then going on long term psychiatric medication instead of HRT would be a big mistake.

I've got to the point where I've done everything I can except social transition. I've not done electrolysis because HRT would be way more obvious if I did that, and I need to keep my wife happy. I'd like long hair, but last time I tried that my wife chased me around the house with a pair of scissors, and not in an amusing way. I wish I could get a BA, but my breasts are on the edge of being too difficult to hide already so that's right out.

I know I'm not living as full a life as I might, but I'm feeling good at the moment. I'm worried about what I'll need to do if I start to get depressed again. The only thing left is social transition and I'm only doing that if I'm forced into it. In that case I'm half expecting that everything will turn out really well, and I'll seriously regret not doing it years earlier. That seems to be another common story.

[Chloe]

So, does anyone else have first-hand experience?

Lora

Lora if you desire to reduce "the masculine" without turning wholly feminine check out the  testosterone analogue bicalutamide ( Calutide ). Having been on it for almost five years in the past, it's akin to an orchiectomy but without the radical side effects. All body hair (legs, chest, underarms) has since stopped growing completely (very weird) while protecting head hair loss HAS WORKED GREAT FOR ME!!

Have always distrusted the so-called "experts" find them "patronizing" without really knowing what we are going through.

Bicalutamide in Calutide 50 acts as a testosterone analogue, as it is similar in structure to testosterone, and binds to the same receptor in prostate cells but without activating any normal testosterone actions

( inhousepharmacy.vu/p-98-calutide-50mg-tablets-bicalutamide.aspx )

[Jenna Marie]

Michelle : Yes, I think it's wise to be concerned; that sort of responsiveness is a good sign, but it does correlate with higher risk of damage (as my endo explained it, people who are very very sensitive to E will see great results but also can "overdose" much more easily, and I'd assume the same is true for herbals).

I can't give doses, obviously, but mine was at that point substantially lower than the maximum amount given to menopausal cis women. Which is why no one thinks it can work; it's at the minimal "helps with menopause symptoms" level.

[translora]

Thanks to all. Your responses have been helpful and clarifying.

I'm hearing several things loud and clear:

1. There's probably no such thing as "dysphoria-free." I'm stuck with this, at least pre-transition.

2. Untreated dysphoria has real consequences. Gritting my teeth and trying to stay strong is not a good plan.

3. Hormones (and, by extension, supplements) are unpredictable. Until you try, you cannot know.

4. Any hormone intake is a step in transition. Once the ball starts rolling, it will happen.

Anyone care to take issue with these?

So I'm seeing that my next step is really to work through the life conditions which are inhibiting me from transitioning. (It's totally a spousal thing. I think I'm actually ready for whatever the rest of the world may have in store for me, but she is not.)

Basically, I have to lay the groundwork for a full transition. Then I can at least try and make it gradual, starting with hormones at a level just to mitigate my dysphoria. I'll have to prepare for the virtual certainty that at some point I'll need higher doses, and also that a certain unpredictable degree of bodily feminization is inevitable. I won't know how my body will react, or what the pace will be, until I'm into it.

*deep breath*

Lora

[AnonyMs]

That sounds about right.

You can take it slowly if you want to, but don't take it too slowly, whatever that means to you.

I found it very helpful to have my wife speak to my psych by herself one time. I don't know what they said, but it made an enormous difference. She still hates it, but that's a big improvement on before.

[JoanneB]

The only thing in your synopsis I take issue with is "Lay the groundwork for a full transition". Being trans does equate to having to fully transition. This seems to be your mindset since taking any sort of HRT is a sort of Life Sentence, a sentence to transition. While many of us have similar journeys, we are all unique, and so are the ways we find to managing our dysphoria. There is broad spectrum between cis-female and cis-male.

As you sort out where you currently reside in that spectrum, various interventions can buy you quality time. Not just the sort of time you get by hoping that through the shear force of will you can stuff the trans aspect of yourself. Little things such as what undies, or shaving a beard, can do wonders. It can also open the floodgates, or slam the cell door shut. YMMV. I've had plenty of my WTF am I doing meltdowns these past 6 years. I know now I need to be out in the real world as the real me more then I am now and not the less then I was a couple of years ago when I had the freedom to live part-time. 

Life is a constant juggling act balancing all our needs wants and desires. How they are all weighted and rated is also in a state of flux.  Your SO is, by default (assuming she does not jump ship) is also on this same ride doing her own juggling act. My wife would rather see me happy then dead. How she feels about me fully transitioning has and is changing.

[Autrement]

I also started HRT, 10 days ago, for a 6 month test, to confirm what I believe is a Gender Dysphoria (I recognised many of the symptoms described by Anne Vitale in her book The Gender Self). If I keep feeling well on it, I will continue as a therapy. But I have no plan to transition to a different gender social role. I do not feel a need for it and I do want to avoid issues to my wife and family.

Like someone with a bad sight one day decides to wear glasses for more comfort, I just hope an improved psychological life. I have good support from an endo and some from psychologist (although more difficult to be understood so far).


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[AnonyMs]

Like someone with a bad sight one day decides to wear glasses for more comfort, I just hope an improved psychological life. I have good support from an endo and some from psychologist (although more difficult to be understood so far).

I'm not sure I should day this, but that's a really good analogy. Speaking from experience its really hard to go without glasses when you discover you can finally see the world clearly, and my eyesight just keeps getting worse over the years. I don't like wearing glasses, but there's always surgery...

I wish you good luck with it though. I've been were you are and its difficult.

[Autrement]

Many thanks. I have to say that may people in this forum helped me by just telling their stories and points of view.


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