So I have yet to start therapy and I always hear talk about the physical changes of a hormone therapy, but I rarely here psychological changes. Lately I have been really anxious and I have a very difficult time focusing on anything. Ive heard people say that they became more calm is this common? what I am curious about is whether or not you had any psychological struggles before hormones and how the hormones affected that?

I haven't started HRT yet but I wouldn't be surprised if it helps psychologically. The wait and the want to see your body change is definitely stressful. My mind is pretty much occupied by this gender stuff 24/7 and I really want to begin hormone therapy too but there's a whole lot more to it than just that so I try not to worry too much. Sorry I can't give you more information but I'm sure there are people here who are more experienced to answer your questions.

Psychological changes come first and are the most important change, at least for me. It has a calming effect on my brain, on them I actually feel better about myself, I can look in the mirror and not hate me, I can express myself better emotionally, and all thoughts of suicide are gone, never have I ever contemplated even hurting myself while on the hormones. Its quite amazing how drastically they affect me this way, the effect is almost instantaneous too, one moment I'll be kind of down such as during times when dose in the body is running low, then next with fresh estrogen running through me again, doing a little jig and singing, all full of life, so happy. I've been off of them several times too, once on them I tell you this, you think you got it bad now, don't ever go off of them for long because you'll feel much worst than before ever taking them. But then maybe its just me, that the male side of me is an unstable train wreck and that feeling like a girl just makes me so right with myself that anything taking that away my mind becomes crippled and starts falling apart.

After my first hit of E, the sh*tstorm in my head went away.
After I got my HRT cranked up to a transitioning level, I no longer wanted to kill sh*t and found out what "happy" was.
Now that I'm rocking the orchi, I just want to hug everyone. 

I'm still the same person with the same interests, but I think I'm a lot more pleasant to be around now.

Quote from: Jill F on July 16, 2014, 08:26:47 PM
After my first hit of E, the sh*tstorm in my head went away.
After I got my HRT cranked up to a transitioning level, I no longer wanted to kill sh*t and found out what "happy" was.
Now that I'm rocking the orchi, I just want to hug everyone. 

I'm still the same person with the same interests, but I think I'm a lot more pleasant to be around now.

This. This is exactly what I'm hoping for, my mind just won't cooperate and shut up right now so I can function!

Hormones can certainly have an effect on your emotional state, some ways good and some ways not so good. Certainly I have been feeling great on HRT this time around, during my first attempt at transition it was less effective in terms of easing my dysphoria. Hard to say what the difference was...different HRT drugs perhaps, different delivery method, but also during that time I was much younger and not really able to cope with my feelings and thoughts and the world in general - I didn't have much support in terms of counselling and mental health professionals. Twenty years later, after a lot of psychotherapy my approach to life is much different. Starting on HRT again I was worried that the emotional roller coaster would start again, but it hasn't. You see some people on the forum have clear sailing, for others there are many rocky moments. So I guess your mileage may vary.

I'm now more able to express emotion.  I'm happy yay hug,  I'm upset I want to cry, I'm angry give me a blunt object to swing.  And when I'm really angry I start leaning on that famous red button

im excited to start. im sure it will have its ups and downs. I seriously could use the calming effect lol. and i think that the "expressing emotions better" beneficial to me as well.

I had a good reaction to it all (at first). But after a month, the finasteride that I was taking was making me severely depressed and highly suicidal. Once I got off of it, after a hellish 21 months with that drug in the mix, I felt much better. But it was pretty bad at the very end of the time that I was on it. I gave up on eating and started sleeping 18 hours a day. Luckily I discovered, through pure luck since the manufacturer screwed up a shipment, what the problem was and I stayed the hell away from that stuff. Had I known what it was going to do to me, I never would have taken that and just did the E and spiro.

so after what laura said i though im wondering if certain hormones are more likely to cause depression. i have read here and there that hormones can. i guess that is a question to ask the doctor. Are there any that are more likely to cause depression does anyone know

Quote from: amber roskamp on July 16, 2014, 09:50:28 PM
so after what laura said i though im wondering if certain hormones are more likely to cause depression. i have read here and there that hormones can. i guess that is a question to ask the doctor. Are there any that are more likely to cause depression does anyone know

Well, in the case of Finasteride, I had read somewhere before I started all of this in October of 07, that it was roughly %20 of the people that were on that specific drug that had this problem. But then again, I've talked to a couple of people via the chat here on the forum that had these issues as well, but it was with Estrace. I've been taking that the entire time and had no such issues. Different drugs affect people differently.

Since starting HRT I've never been happier.  My range of positive emotion is greater than it used to be.  I also don't get angry much at all .  All in all I enjoy life a lot more.  I do emote a bit more and have a harder time not getting teary eyed during some movies or situations but these are good girl things.
In other words, yes it affects you mentally. 

Obvious public service announcement, you should pay attention if it makes you depressed and work that out with the doctor. 

Before T I was permanently angry, anxious, bursting into tears at any strong emotion, focusing on anything was impossible because of "brain fog" as I called it.

After T....aaah bliss....the brain fog is gone, it's all gone really. I'm happy, calm, content, focused, motivated and about 500% more confident.

When I forget to take my hormones, I notice the person staring back at me in the mirror looks different, and not in a good way.  Nobody else can tell the difference

Quote from: Jeatyn on July 17, 2014, 04:48:35 AM
Before T I was permanently angry, anxious, bursting into tears at any strong emotion, focusing on anything was impossible because of "brain fog" as I called it.

After T....aaah bliss....the brain fog is gone, it's all gone really. I'm happy, calm, content, focused, motivated and about 500% more confident.

^ Crazy weird how it affects us the same that way but opposite treatments. That's how you know its right for you because you feel right. I would think if it wasn't then it'd have a negative effect, making you feel even worst about yourself (maybe?). Testosterone in me causes nothing but negativity while estrogen is positive, but for you its the other way around.

Before I was sad, morose, and was drunk most of the time to escape from myself and the world around me. I hated my life, and I saw no reason to keep living. I took absolutely no pleasure in anything, and I isolated myself away from people as much as possible. My world had absolutely no color except for shades of gray. If I had died that would have been perfectly OK with me.

Now its a complete flip flop. I am happy, not drunk, and I engage my world instead of avoiding it. I find the world a colorful, neat place now and I am excited to go out into it. I even like going to work 

HRT didn't fix every issue in my life and I wasn't expecting it to. But now that I am mentally stable I am better able to deal with what the world throws at me.

...and I engage my world instead of avoiding it. I find the world a colorful, neat place now and I am excited to go out into it. I even like going to work 

Damn, I wish it did that for me.  I'm still the same with the world, but at least I'm right with myself. 

I find hormones to be a pretty powerful mood elevator, and I am certainly more industrious on them. I also have this vague hard to pinpoint feeling, of things being more "right" on HRT.

I can't really say that they had the massive sorts of impact on me that others have mentioned. I mean, I wasn't going to make it thru a sad movie without crying before, and I still can't lol.

Before T I wasnt really living, I was just existing. I was extremely quiet, didn't like to talk to the vast majority of people. I had friends but no social life to speak of because I never went out with them. I spent hours playing computer games in my room, watching movies, reading books. I had no drive or ambition to get a job or go to college. I had no idea what to do with my life because everytime I tried to think of the future I just felt hopeless. Nothing was going to change no matter what job I got or where I lived etc. I couldnt escape my misery and I felt it would be with me forever.

After T im still relatively quiet but in comparison you cant shut me up. I like going places, even if its just to the shops, I like to be out and about and making the most of my day. I have close friends I visit often, a mountain of hobbies i want to get into and plans for the future. I've been to college, im off to uni, I want to move to australia at some point. LIFE IS EXCITING, its an adventure I cannot WAIT for the future and all the things I can do. I want to learn to scuba, to mountain climb, to experience a BBQ on the beach. People who knew me before say repeatedly that I am so much more confident and even a little cheeky  and you know sometimes I even look in the mirror and smile.

This has been very much on my mind for the last couple of months.  I have been told by someone that I might possibly try hormones for 6 months or so and see how they work for me.  Does that sound right to others?

Also, I take it by some of the comments, that it is taken in a much lower dosage to start with.  Is that correct?

I have seen a therapist a few times and he already has hinted at this but I haven't asked him too many direct questions but I think I'm getting very near that point where I will have to move in this direction.  I know I would be so grateful for a little more peace.  My mind is talking to me non-stop about how I feel about being a different gender than I appear and it's really tiring.  It also takes away from so many other things that I should/need be concerned with.