A couple of questions to ask yourself. Is the reason you think you should be a guy because of shame? If so, that would be a problem accepting yourself. If you flip back and forth because you are comfortable in both identities, that would suggest gender fluid or bigender. From your past posting I have the feeling that that shame is the issue. I don't think it's a mental illness as I have seen no signs that you are anything other than transgender.

Many of us start with a full transition dose instead of ramping up to minimize the effects it has. This mean suppressed testosterone and at least a half transition dose of estradiol. Your doctor is taking a more conservative approach with you and it may take a few adjustments until the correct dosage is reached.

I ask myself those questions all the time. I am unable to come up with an answer. Sometimes I think it's just shame from a lifetime of being told "those people are sick". Other times when I am having a good day and just feel content with myself (which does t seem to be very often or for long periods of time), I wonder what is causing me to be happy, if I am trans then I should never have moments of being happy as a guy. I find it all very confusing.

As far as my medication goes, I believe that I am currently on a high dose of Estradiol, pretty much a full transition dose. I am a little confused with what my dr has told me though. Lots of things I have read say that the anti androgens are what eases the dysphoria and the E is what causes physical changes. My dr says it's the other way around. I don't want to go against his advice. He seems to be the only dr I hear mentioned for treating trans patients here in Sydney, and people speak very highly of him. I'm just really confused and disappointed with the complete lack of effects the hormones are having on me.

It appears your doctor is using the testosterone to block the feminizing effects of the estrogen. This is something I don't have much knowledge about as most people want all the effects they can get. This is why I am going to learn from your treatment. At high levels estrogen seems to have desirable emotional effects but the levels are way above what I have ever experienced. My levels at best guess have never exceeded 50 pg/pm and the emotional effects seem to start somewhere above 200 pg/ml.

At least with me, my libido and transgender urge were intertwined. Removing testosterone pretty well eliminated both however remember that I am asexual and libido is tied to things other than sex hormones alone.

Quote from: Jayne01 on July 29, 2017, 03:24:08 PM
, if I am trans then I should never have moments of being happy as a guy. I find it all very confusing.

I think this is the wrong way to view it.  Before gender, and before anything else, you are an empathetic human being.  So of course some things are going to make you happy as a human being.  Being gender dysphoria doesn't mean you are unhappy all the time.  Rather it means your mental identity doesn't match its physical embodiment and that this mismatch causes stress.  But while this stress can be very severe it is not necessarily constant.  In my experience it always faded very much to the background as long as my mind was laser focused on something else.  And I found happiness and pride in what some would consider male accomplishments; but not because they reinforced maleness but because I "the human being" accomplished something difficult.



Conform and be dull. —James Frank Dobie, The Voice of the Coyote

Deborah, what you say makes sense. It doesn't explain why the hormones are having zero effect on my mental state. I am feeling nothing at all. Long ago when I first joined this forum with a since deleted account, I kept asking the question how do I know I am trans. Many people responded by telling me I should try hormones. If I am trans, then the hormones would make me feel better, if I'm not trans, they would make me feel worse. I am. It feeling anything, not better and not worse. NOTHING!!!!! What does that make me? I am neither trans or non-trans. I do not understand.

I have no doubt the few good days I had last week were a placebo effect. I had such high hopes that the new higher dosage I was out on would work that I must have somehow faked the good feeling. But because it was just a placebo effect and the hormones are not actually doing anything, the same old crap has come to the surface again. I want to beat my head against the wall, scream and yell and have a tantrum. I want the noise to stop, by any means possible. If I had a gun I would shoot myself in the head. Not because I am suicidal. I don't want to die. But just to make the noise and distress go away.

My blood tests indicate that my body is accepting the hormones. The levels are all shifting to a more female range but my mind is not responding at all. Not a damn thing is changing psychologically. I feel like just giving up. Throwing away my medication and just disappear and die in a hole somewhere.

Less prone to anger, more prone to tears. More clear headed -- and this was seriously verified when I tried going off HRT at 7 months and the return of difficult habits of mind was my strongest sign I needed to stay in HRT.

Have your levels been checked yet? Usually oral estrogen doesn't much suppress testosterone.

My E was in the female range and my T had dropped slightly but still in the upper male range at my last blood test. I have been using a transdermal gel for the past week as well as continuing with the pills. I'm not expecting big changes right away, but I was expecting something, anything.

As I understand it testosterone in anything like masculine ranges  predominates in effect over estrogen -- E.g. natal women with elevated T levels will see masculine development and only complete removal of T will allow breast development.

I think the changes you say you've seen are consistent with your levels

Quote from: SadieBlake on July 30, 2017, 08:58:57 AM
I think the changes you say you've seen are consistent with your levels

I'm confused, what changes are you referring to? I have not felt any changes.

Besides, my endocrinologist told me that estrogen is what will ease my dysphoria and my levels are now well within the female range.

Quote from: Jayne01 on July 30, 2017, 07:32:16 AM
My E was in the female range and my T had dropped slightly but still in the upper male range at my last blood test. I have been using a transdermal gel for the past week as well as continuing with the pills. I'm not expecting big changes right away, but I was expecting something, anything.

Oh!  This is a little unusual compared to the experience of most.  Being on estradiol without suppressing testosterone is something most of us haven't experienced.  In my case I was on a testosterone blocker for about a month prior to starting estradiol, and my labs show a very definite decline in T levels that directly correlate with my sensations of the mental 'fog' and 'noise' fading away.  The effect was marked and definitely present before I started estradiol.

I had a very slow ramp-up courtesy of age, a complication, and a very conservative endocrinologist.  I started spiro back on June 9, 2016.  After 11 days in,I started noticing mental changes for the better. 

On July 18 I got the green light for estradiol via patch at a fractional dosage.  By July 26 I was noticing some additional changes.  By August 20 I was seeing incredible emotional and sensory changes.  This is about when testosterone levels dropped below the normal male range, so not only was T being blocked, but production was significantly suppressed.

I'm just one example, and this is just anecdotal experience, but I suspect much of my improvement in mental health was from suppressing testosterone, and adding estradiol primarily served to restore my energy.  Running on 'no hormones' is a pretty bland experience; I was still tired much of the time in looking through my old notes, until after I had gotten on estradiol at a reasonable dose, bloodwork still less than 50 pg/mL, but a dosage appropriate for a post-menopausal cisfemale.

I get very confused when I talk to people on here. Almost everyone says that they go on some kind of blocker first and later introduce Estradiol. My doctor is doing it the other way around. He told me that the estrogen is what will ease my dysphoria. The blocker would only have the effect of speeding up feminization due to blocking the T.

Quote from: Jayne01 on July 30, 2017, 09:21:41 AM
I'm confused, what changes are you referring to? I have not felt any changes.

Besides, my endocrinologist told me that estrogen is what will ease my dysphoria and my levels are now well within the female range.

I was responding to this that you said in the first page of this thread --

Quote from: Jayne01What I am feeling is a sense of calm and clearer thinking. I don't seem to get as angry at other drivers on the road. (Anyone who has driven in Sydney traffic would know what I mean about bad drivers). It feels like a fog is lifting and the world is becoming a little brighter. What has not changed is the desire to be female. That seems as strong as it has ever been.

I think Deborah described it perfectly. I can very much relate to those words.

Quotefrom: Deborah on July 25, 2017, 08:23:13 pm

What I called dysphoria was the feeling of depression, despair, and hopelessness that were leading to a frequent desire to be dead.  HRT cured that.  It did not cure the underlying issue.  If being trans is what I believe it to be, an identity originating in the physicality of the brain, then HRT shouldn't be expected to erase that since it is simply who I was born to be.  What the HRT does is relieve the disconnect of the brain having to reside in a foreign testosterone rich environment.

Something strange also happened this morning at work. I went to the bathroom and I looked in the mirror as I was washing my hands and I almost liked what I saw. It was a foreign feeling for me, but a feeling I can get used to. I saw my therapist yesterday for the first time in about 4 weeks and she said that my face looks a little different. My endocrinologist said the same thing when I saw him a few days ago. I have not noticed anything and neither has my wife, but I see myself everyday. However, this morning in the mirror, I might have seen a tiny difference in my face and I liked what I saw.

I also experienced that people who saw me daily, myself included didn't notice the thinner, more translucent skin we get as a result of hormonal shifts however people who I saw infrequently or acquaintances who saw me after 3+ months on HRT all noticed.

And I can see your confusion, different doctors will take different approaches and results will definitely vary even just based on individual as well as in response to different treatment.

Quote from: Jayne01 on July 30, 2017, 10:26:41 AM
I get very confused when I talk to people on here. Almost everyone says that they go on some kind of blocker first and later introduce Estradiol. My doctor is doing it the other way around. He told me that the estrogen is what will ease my dysphoria. The blocker would only have the effect of speeding up feminization due to blocking the T.

Don't worry about that.  In fact, to the extent that it is possible, forget about HRT for 6-12 months.  Recognize that much of what you read about HRT on this site is textbook confirmation bias and triumphalism.  Journal, but don't write about your levels or try to ascribe any shift in mood to HRT.  At 12 months, take inventory of your mental state and figure out if your are, on balance, better off than you were when you started.  Consider the physical changes and consider whether you like them and hope for more, or if you feel weird about them and think you are disfiguring yourself.  Decide if you want to renew therapy for a second year.

Ignore people who say that estrogen blisses them out.  Do you really think that estrogen blisses out natal females?  Think about how long it takes to make a girl into a woman and how much this has to do with lived experience.  Distrust stereotypes.  If you want to be more empathetic, read novels and lose yourself in characters.  Don't force crying in hopes of feeling like a woman.

Embrace feminism.  Read about male privilege and learn to recognize it, especially in yourself.  Understand that whether you transition or not, male privilege absolutely, positively must go.

If you have aesthetic/artistic interest, pursue fashion.  Don't dress like a teenager unless you are one.  Wear clothes and makeup for you, not for anyone else.

Read great memoirs:  Gender Outlaw, Becoming a Visible Man.  Get to know 10-12 transpeople.  Make sure that some of them are transmen.  Figure out how you feel about them.  Realize that this is largely dependent on how you feel about yourself.  Cultivate compassion.

Examine your friends.  How many of them are just like you?  Fix that.

Take your time.  Take your time.  Take your time.

I agree with a lot of what rmaddy just said, confirmation bias and survivorship bias are huge in what you'll read here, as probably is placebo effect, so I certainly take accounts of women feeling very different after just a couple of days with some grains of salt.

On the other hand I will say that mood changes I saw inside of a couple of weeks seemed pretty solidly "real" and I absolutely saw my breasts increase in size within a surprisingly short 4 weeks.

The flip side is that some women will definitely be showing some irreversible physical changes at 6 months or even less such as breast growth. That's one of the reasons I wanted to decide whether to continue HRT within a couple of months and for me the emotional effects were clear and positive by then so that wasn't hard. As ever YMMV

Quote from: SadieBlake on July 30, 2017, 12:32:45 PM
I agree with a lot of what rmaddy just said, confirmation bias and survivorship bias are huge in what you'll read here, as probably is placebo effect, so I certainly take accounts of women feeling very different after just a couple of days with some grains of salt.

On the other hand I will say that mood changes I saw inside of a couple of weeks seemed pretty solidly "real" and I absolutely saw my breasts increase in size within a surprisingly short 4 weeks.

The flip side is that some women will definitely be showing some irreversible physical changes at 6 months or even less such as breast growth. That's one of the reasons I wanted to decide whether to continue HRT within a couple of months and for me the emotional effects were clear and positive by then so that wasn't hard. As ever YMMV

That was my hope too, but I don't think it can be done.  The physical changes definitely come first.

Quote from: debrferguson on July 26, 2017, 11:43:23 PM
At some point before any medical intervention, I made a scale to measure my distress and document in my journal. I would never call it depression or hopelessness. For me it was a physical distress that existed in different levels of intensity:

1 - I can't believe I ever felt that way. That's stupid. I'm cured! The world is clear, the fog is gone, harmony, no dissonance (happens after sex)
2 - Not thinking about it at all, when I do I'm indifferent.
3 - Its there, but in the background. If I think about it, like white noise hissing faintly in my ears.
4 - Occasionally in the foreground, but I can push it to the background.
5 - In the foreground, but I can work through it. A little edgy.
6 - Occasionally distracting, but if I focus on something else, I can ignore it. Fairly edgy.
7 - Distracting. I want to do something. I feel compelled, but sometimes I can get through it.
8 - I need to cope. My 'bright passenger' needs attention.
9 - Nothing else matters. I HAVE to do something. I can't concentrate. Almost debilitating. I'll find anything to cope. I can barely fake normalcy.
10 - Completely debilitated.

Hi Deb, sorry to hijack this thread and I know you wrote this 4 days ago but this is a great post. I made a post on the main transgender talk subforum but I saw this and had to respond.

In my life I have always been somewhere on that spectrum as well. I would say after college when I became independent in 2012 is when I began to have serious desires. But even a short 5 years ago the transgender communities online were not what they were today. In late 2013 was the first time I actually thought transitioning could be something for me. But I fought it every step of the way. I would try to satisfy it with crossdressing and it made things worse. I tried to satisfy it with being ultra masculine and lifting heavy weights and such but that didn't work. I tried therapy and counseling and it didn't work. There would be temporary lapses where I was at "0" on your scale and wondered how I ever felt that way and would hate myself for ever having felt that way, but I would always end up climbing up the scale eventually.

I would go from 0 to 1, then 1 to 2, and then eventually buy clothes and makeup to crossdress with, would get to "10" on the scale, crossdress a little more, then purge it all, shame myself, think I was cured and be back to 0, and would be there for a few months, do ultra masculine things like heavy weight lifting and picking up women at bars to make up for it, and the cycle would repeat.

QuoteThat's a great observation.  Gender Dysphoria has so many side effects.

I'd spent the previous decade plus trying to get healthy without meds. The result was that I had gotten a lot of the other junk out of my life and all that I had left was the chemistry problem.

i was a very reluctant traveler down this path. I loved my old life circumstances. I didn't want to upset them. So I fought really hard against going down this path.

Bingo. Took the words out of my mouth.

This time(after 4 or 5 expensive purge cycles in the past few years) I decided this isn't going away and its time to address it head on. Went to therapy, finally shed myself of the shame and guilt and realized for many years I have tried the natural, non medicine approach and it hasn't gotten me anywhere but out thousands of dollars from purging as well as endless anxiety and stress. I fought hard against going down the transition path but I am surrendering. I don't want to keep fighting that battle for the years to come with no end in sight. 

So I started HRT 3 days ago. Leading up to making that decision I was at an 8+ on the scale for a few weeks running. When I got prescribed my horomones it was a 10. I was accidentially prescribed testosterone at first so when I went to pick it up at the pharmacy I was given the wrong meds. So I had to wait an extra day until the right prescription could be called in and those 24 hours were extremely stressful, it sent my dysphoria into overdrive and I was well past 10 on your scale. Simply because I had to wait and extra day to begin. I figured if I was that stressed over a short delay on beginning my HRT that definitely meant this was the right choice.

But I started 3 days ago and like you I dropped on the scale all the way down to the lower numbers like 2 or 3(haven't hit 1 yet and don't think I ever will again). I doubt any effects of the horomones so far could contribute but I think it has more to do with the fact that its no longer a fantasy, but reality and I am trying to come to terms with it. It's one thing to dream, its another to do.

I'm always thinking to myself, acting out dialogues I'll have with people in the future - I want to learn more about peoples' thought processes, too; does everyone chat to themselves like that, or are their minds just tabula rosa - rosae?  Stupid Latin plurals.     Anyway, as far as I can remember, another feature of what goes on in my head is this voice that would chime in with some sarcastic criticism whenever I'd screw something up, even with something insignificant.  This was nothing that ever really bothered me, after 46 years you just ignore things like that, as if you're living next to a stinky paper mill or something.  What smell?

Thing is, after about a week of HRT this voice went away.  I'd check every way I could think to make it come back - nothing.  Was this just my imagination?

The other thing is, I had to go off hormones for about 3 weeks due to medical problems, which thankfully seem to be rectified.  And what do you know, but Mr. Snide made a reappearance.  Then I went back on HRT a few days ago - and he seems to be gone again.  This is really extraordinary to me; I wish there were a way of proving that it isn't just my imagination.  I'm not fervently worked up about going on HRT, it isn't the fulfillment of a lifelong dream like some - I had no idea I was TG until last year. 

What do molecules recepting to create softer skin, increased appetite, and redistribution of fat have to do with ones' innermost thoughts?   

Starting HRT way back in 2007 had no impact or effect on my transition. The thing that made the biggest impact was living full time...being out there...getting over my fears. First year I was always looking over my shoulder thinking someone was watching me or people were talking about me. It was total paranoia on my part.
Bottom line, HRT didn't make me who I am today or help me.

Best thing so far for me has been a new relationship with a kind of amazing man who's helping me accept myself and not be quite so afraid of the world...

But I must say that having just injected my first ever dose of estradiol into my thigh not 4 hours ago.... I feel lighter emotionally immediately. It's difficult to describe but I notice a sense of visceral relief at being able to feel my emotions with a little more clarity? Idk it's probably placebo.

Total non-sequitor, but there is a cat making the craziest noises outside in my neighborhood right now. Kitty!!!!

I'm so excited :x

First up their was the simple placebo effect of finally achieving a goal. Actual Physical effects started after a few weeks with slight increase in sensation and pain in my chest area. The mental calming effects started to really come in the 5th or 6th month. I know some experience this sooner but not for me.