I knew HRT was for me the day I started.
However, about three months in, I had to come off it for a month because [my life is a dumpster fire].
During that month, I felt worse than I did pre-T, because not only did I lose the chemistry that made my brain function optimally; I tasted what feeling normal and happy and at home in my body had felt like, and then had to endure it physically disappearing from within me. My guy smell disappeared (oddly, my AFAB smell has been a huge source of dysphoria my entire life), my voice cracked and went up, a ton of other changes I had - many of which I expected to feel neutral about - reversed quickly, and I was devastated. I never once thought about dying since I started T, and once it was out of me, I felt like I was being mentally strangled by a black tentacle monster made of smoke that told me to kill myself for no reason. That was my old norm on estrogen, I just didn't realize how abnormal and horrible I felt until that awful noise went out of my head with the right hormones.
Stopping made me completely. Devastated.
I told myself the silver lining in that episode was now that (not that I had any doubts, but) if I were to enter a doubting spell, I know absolutely, unequivocally, one million percent that HRT is for me.
I also realized how imperative a hysterectomy is because any organs that make me feel that way do not belong inside my body, full stop. What a nightmare.
Anyway, I'm back on T and finally catching up to some of the progress I lost.
You could *theoretically* stop to do some soul searching, but if you felt worse pre-HRT, don't expect stopping to make you feel better. And I would never in a million years suggest that experiment unless you have a massive support network.
I understand now, from this experience, how people who take antidepressants feel great, decide they feel so great that they don't need meds anymore, and then...

It's not like the hormones are creating some kind of false high, it's more like congratulations, you are finally high on life. It's the difference between filling your car's gas tank with grape soda, and actual proper gasoline. It feels amazing if you have been driving on grape soda your entire life.