Hello, I have a few questions about the inner machinations of the minds of transsexual women.

Will estrogen ever make me think like a girl?

It's a question that I want to know before I start taking estrogen.  Here are some more questions... Will it change my personality, for the better?  Will I develop female interests like shopping etc?

All these things would be perfect.

I really want to be a girl inside and out and hopefully estrogen will help me achieve what I want to achieve.

Thanks!

"The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma" Patrick Star

Quote from: Maribeth12 on January 07, 2015, 09:39:00 PM
Hello, I have a few questions about the inner machinations of the minds of transsexual women.

Will estrogen ever make me think like a girl?

It's a question that I want to know before I start taking estrogen.  Here are some more questions... Will it change my personality, for the better?  Will I develop female interests like shopping etc?

All these things would be perfect.

I really want to be a girl inside and out and hopefully estrogen will help me achieve what I want to achieve.

Thanks!

"The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma" Patrick Star

Interesting question, I feel like I've always thought like a girl, I'm pre hrt myself though I don't imagine estrogen will make you want to go shopping.  I assume it would be nor of a mood ordeal maybe it will calm you down from all the testosterone (poison) in the body allowing clear focus finally... I can't wait to see what the women on here have to say

Hi Maribeth,

A lot will depend on your brain structure. In a recent paper delivered at the recent WPATH conference, some Dutch Neuroscientist in Holland have proven the theory of the male and female brain.

Having said that; what you may well find, once you start HT, depending on the format, dosage etc, that you will start to feed atrophied Estrogen receptors in your brain gat may start a "wake-up" process in your brain to respond to more feminine aspects of your environment. The more you accept this neural transition the more you will change.

Huggs
Catherine 

I've been on HRT since 31 August and there have been changes in my thought processes and things I fancy. A few examples:

- I have a very hard time relating to my gaming group these days as eight out of the 11 are male. There are times I feel as if they're talking in another language and I cannot follow the conversation or understand the allure it has.

- A corollary to that is I find the combined odour of the males in the group to be offensive.

- This Christmas I was filled with the desire to send out Christmas cards. I have HATED sending out cards since I was a child but this year I simply had to so I went to Wal Mart at a silly hour, bought an address book and box of cards, and started messaging everyone I wanted to send a card to. So some 18 people got a card from me for the first time ever.

- I find myself enjoying the little touches women are more inclined to make, hugs hello and goodbye and do so myself with certain people. This comes after years of really not liking to be touched.

- After years of being pretty much asexual and not really attracted to anyone, I find myself utterly captivated by Tom Mison, the actor who plays Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow. There was a scene where he was sitting on the ground with his hair around his shoulders and I said to myself, "Good god, that man is gorgeous and that Surrey accent is like silk to my ears. I think the issue of my sexual orientation is getting settled.

So there you have it - a few examples of what HRT has done for me.

HrT has affected my mind in a few ways. For instance I use to be Bi but when I started HrT I lost complete interest in woman and now I only think about men. Also I have become way more emotional and care about other peoples feelings more. So estrogen indeed will most likely change yours too.

I'm not sure that HRT is responsible, only that there are changes. For myself, I suspect that we always thought in a feminine way, but denied it, acting out a stereotyped male role to a lesser or greater degree.

HRT didn't change me or my interests at all. I thought they did at first, but it turned out to more be a simple rejection of activities that would lean me towards a masculine side. Once I was accepted as female and nothing but female in society, all of my interests returned.

I am a little bit more intolerant of things that bug me now, there is a little less filter for when I will say something that someone doesn't want to hear. That could also be a part of getting older, but it could also be an emotional effect I suppose.

I don't think it's anything to worry about, that is for sure. You should feel like you and nothing but you for the rest of your life. Chances are you will see some significant shifts in activities, interests, interactions with others, you name it really. If you start HRT and you feel crazy then something is definitely not right. HRT is given to us as medication to feel better mentally.. that is the whole point

Quote from: Jennygirl on January 07, 2015, 11:14:56 PM
HRT didn't change me or my interests at all. I thought they did at first, but it turned out to more be a simple rejection of activities that would lean me towards a masculine side. Once I was accepted as female and nothing but female in society, all of my interests returned.

I am a little bit more intolerant of things that bug me now, there is a little less filter for when I will say something that someone doesn't want to hear. That could also be a part of getting older, but it could also be an emotional effect I suppose.

I don't think it's anything to worry about, that is for sure. You should feel like you and nothing but you for the rest of your life. Chances are you will see some significant shifts in activities, interests, interactions with others, you name it really. If you start HRT and you feel crazy then something is definitely not right. HRT is given to us as medication to feel better mentally.. that is the whole point

A thousand times this! It's certainly helped to tone down my depression and dysphoria.

What happened with me is that being on HRT has allowed me to accept and be myself much more than I did when I simply accepted myself as trans but was pre-transition.  Now where I am at mid-transition having come out to all my family and being able to act and be myself, tearing down the walls I built around myself I am more able to be me. I had been running self censorship for almost 20 years before I got to this point. I have always wanted to do and admit liking things but I didn't let myself, now I can. To someone not inside my head they might think these things are all new, when the truth is, this is how I have always been.

For me I feel like my whole thought process has changed to the extent I have difficulty remembering how I used to think a year ago. Its also been noticed by people around me. I get scared when I'm alone in places now when I never used to, I do indeed love shopping for clothes, shoes, makeup etc. when before I just tossed on jeans and a tee/hoodie. I've also noticed I interact differently with my son recently, I've been acting a lot more motherly then fatherly. This is just my experience its always said around here YMMV. For all I know some of this could be coupled on to me also having borderline personality disorder.

Not all women like shopping or other activities that might be considered girly. A lot of men like shopping and activities that might be considered girly. Hormones aren't the core reason for behaviour. There is probably nothing that is specifically thinking like a girl or thinking like a boy.

What the HRT does though is give you permission to be yourself. I loathed clothes/shoe shopping before HRT - and now I love it. But it wasn't the HRT that caused that it was the fact I'm shopping for stuff that I love to buy and I want to wear...which definitely wasn't the case when I was shopping as a man. Likewise I enjoy taking a bit of extra time to look nice and dress nice before I go out the door whereas before I couldn't give a stuff - again, it was nothing to do with the HRT just that I was finally able to feel I looked like the person I was.

So don't expect HRT and transition to change your thinking but it sure may change your behaviour as you become free.

FYI: I'm IS.

For me, nothing changed.  Everything I ever was interested in, I still am.  I still think and act the same.

Of course, I've been on hormones my whole life.

I think it changed how my mind works, yeah.  Or at least transition, on the whole, did.  There is a confluence of change going on there all at once and it's hard to parse the cause of any one thing. 

But I do believe my mind has changed, mainly just cuz when I read old things I have written I don't recognize that person, and the thought processes going on in the writing seem so foreign.  It actually makes me feel very uncomfortable cognitive dissonance to do that so I avoid it at all costs.

I had a lot of interests change, some stayed the same.  It's all a part of my evolution, which every person, cis or trans, evolves over time.  I embrace the things that stayed the same cuz those things that survived the gauntlet must be genuinely me.  Why did I transition other than to be genuinely me?

The new things?  Well there may be lots of reasons why I might find new interests given how much my life has changed.  No clue if hrt played any role.  I find female led music resonates more with me than before, but I am fairly certain that is due to life change and not because of hrt. I get female struggle now, so much more than before I lived it.  I also get female triumph and how that feels.  Um...I always loved shopping, so that isn't a new thing.  Idk...

I wouldn't hope for certain changes.  i would just try to become the best version of yourself you can be.  For trans people, transition is usually going to be a part of getting there.   Once you have transitioned you find out just what kind of woman you are.   Some women have a masculine bent, and it doesn't make them men.

It definitely has an impact on how you think.  I'm told that if you are not really transgender then these changes will cause a lot of stress and freak you the heck out.
For my part it's been fantastic and I'll never not be on them. 
I am a much happier person, more emotional, have a lot more in common with other women and have increased disgust with typical male behavior.  My emotions are not too extreme.  I sometimes want to cry about things, but normally don't.  I am afraid now and I wasn't really before.  The fear is more akin to the standard female worry about things you can't do anything about. 
The other real odd thing is I have a conscience again.  When I was a kid my father used to guilt trip me like crazy.  I prided myself that as I got older that I killed my conscience so that others could not make me feel guilty.  I was moral, but couldn't be guilt tripped.  Yea... that's gone.  I think it must have been due to T somehow rather than any act of will. 
My greatest gain though is that I am now happy.  I really am. 

I think the now enjoy shopping thing is that now it doesn't make me upset to go out shopping because now I can get stuff for me too! Yea!

Not everything changes though.  I still will tell puns (I'm so ashamed).  I still like girls.  (My wife calls me lesbo with a smile and I love hearing that)  I can tell that a guy is attractive, but I still don't want them. 

I used to think that I thought like a girl but I now realize I didn't.  Not really.  I thought like a guy that wanted to be a girl.  There is a difference.  I can't quite describe it but it's pretty big really.  Now that I can see it I would say that even now that while I am a lot closer, I still have more mental changes to come.

Best of luck sweetie.  Please make sure you do it all right.  Get a doc.  Check your blood.  Don't smoke.  Watch your weight.  and of course assuming you really are trans, enjoy the ride.  :-)

I'm still not sure what it means to think like a girl.

I figure in ways I was already. Pre-transition, other guys seemed to pick that I wasn't quite like them, and excluded me from man-talk. By contrast, girls felt relaxed around me, and I found myself trusted and included in girl-talk.
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I would say that HRT has liberated the way I feel and express myself, but it hasn't made those changes in itself. I have come to the surface over time, because I now feel able to do so.

My experience before vs into transition were a bit like a submarine.

Before I presented as a periscope escaping the waves. I kinda lived and navigated the world through a very select lens.

Now I'm a fully exposed vessel, laying bare for all the world to see that I am *indeed* a submarine  :~)

I feel like I'm in a weird situation emotionally. I know I either do not fit in with men or feel like I am acting when I do "fit in." I think I know how I should feel and how should think and feel as a woman, and its kind of difficult for me to put into words. I wish I could be more emotionally expressive, be more social (in a feminine way), laugh more, and smile more like many other women do, but its hard to laugh and smile when feeling dysphoric and depressed and difficult to be more emotionally expressive and social when you have been somewhat reserved, quiet, and shy for most of your life. I am pre-HRT and I am really really hoping that it actually helps mentally and emotionally.

An interesting thing is that I think a lot of people at work can somehow sense that I'm not "one the guys", but I have to dress like one, haven't gone through voice training yet, haven't gone through laser/electrolysis yet, and don't wear makeup yet, and haven't taken a single dose of spiro and E.

I don't think it's productive to be fixated on "thinking like a girl". That just tends to encompass societal and cultural stereotypes which provides only a limited perspective on gender identity and transition. I've often seen people mid-transition become almost obsessed with the differences between "male behaviour" and "female behaviour", but most of the time, this isn't really about authenticity (which is what I think the whole point of transition is), and more about a limited cultural lens of what is labelled as masculine and feminine.

Think of yourself as an authentic person, first and foremost, and build your identity from there. While your body will certainly start transforming from male to female with hormones, the mind doesn't necessarily work that way. I used to also worry a lot about whether I "felt like a girl" or not, but 8 years on, I don't "feel male" or "feel female", I just feel like me, and that's it - and from what I know from cis people's experience, most of them do not "feel male" or "female" but see their sex as something merely incidental, like having blue eyes or black skin (which is probably why they find the trans experience so hard to understand, without education!)

Interesting question....

No definitely HRT has not made me think like a girl, however because I am becoming more womanly (HRT has helped me no end there) I have started to think, shop and behave more womanly... in fact I have become so much more emotional than before.... blub at sad and so happy things.

In my pretend world (as a man) I was always a bit of a loner, never really got into the manly thing, like drinking sessions after work, sexual discussions, especially over last 10 years.... it felt a) awkward and b) very chauvinistic and sexist... I have always got on far better with women than men, striking long term friendships; also was a bit of "dear diary" to them too....

So have I changed yes more focal, did HRT do it, No it just liberated me 

L Katy 

I don't feel my HRT has really changed anything for me in terms of thinking like a female would, I have always been more feminine then male.

Like katrinaw I have never really been into too manly things, so honestly I feel it has changed very little upstairs for me.