The anticipation is welling up inside of me at the thought of finally getting started on HRT in about a week.. Can anyone tell me what its like? What to expect? How it makes you feel? A timeline of the manifestation of these feelings? I want to know everything notable about it.

HRT is very personal. In my case, I take it to maintain my appearance and for health reasons. I feel little difference between taking estrogen and not taking it. The one thing that makes a big difference is the blocker as it reduces the dysphoria that you may feel. Funny thing about it is that you may not notice the difference until you think back about how you felt before starting HRT. When I transitioned, we didn't use blockers and as the result, my blocker was surgery. I had so many problems to deal with because of my surgery, that I didn't have time to realize my dysphoria was gone and when I did, I though it was due the the surgery and not the removal of testosterone. As always, what you feel may be different.

This will vary from person to person and dosage to dosage.  I'm on the low level of estrogen and Spiro and besides a few changes there hasn't been much.  Granted I'm on day 22 right now.  My skin is clearer and softer and I think my butt is getting bigger but I'm losing a little bit of weight.  As for mental my head seems clearer as well.  I don't have a background voice in my head yelling at me like I used to.  I honestly can't say which medication is responsible for this.  My T was already low to begin with. 

Most changes are so subtle that you don't realize it until someone says something to you.

The most profound thing it did was make me feel normal; as in the dysphoria was gone.  This began almost immediately which may have been some placebo effect at first.  But this feeling of normality has continued.  The inner voice that constantly screamed "wrongness" is rarely heard anymore.  I'm not sure if the mental changes were due to the estrogen or the lowered testosterone from the blocker but I suspect it was mostly the estrogen in my case.  Some illicit DIY experimentation in past years lead me to that conclusion.

Other changes, besides the obvious ones, are that my upper body strength has tanked while my lower body strength has remained fairly constant.  My aerobic capacity has also declined around ten percent.  Building strength and endurance is still possible but it takes a little longer.


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Hopefully you are in for a very enjoyable journey. As has been mentioned before, each of us experience the changes differently and many of the changes you won't notice until much later and suddenly realize that some feeling or other has been gone for a while.

I can attribute to several emotional and physical changes to the hormones directly while others may have been placebo or just the opportunity to live my life openly and freely. Regardless, I have enjoyed them all.

You asked for a timeline. I can tell of my journey but each is different. I started hrt with both Spiro and E at the same time. Within the first few days I was finding more joy in my life (had to be solid placebo effect). Within the first two or three weeks my skin changed; softer, less oily, entirely different smell, less oily hair. At that point I needed to use lotion once or twice a day because of dry skin (live in a dry climate). Not much else happened until about the three month mark when my breasts became sensitive (actually sore, they hurt!) and my emotions kicked in. In the past fifty years I may have cried two or three times, that third month I probably cried thirty or forty times (real gushers). The ten or so months following added breast development and some fat redistribution, a lot of upper body mass reduction (I could never wear sleeveless dresses before, now I love them). During that same ten month time frame I noticed a change in my relational nature. I had always been a solo loner introvert, now, while still introverted I fully partake in conversations with others, particularly women. I just love sharing life events and emotional connections with the many new friends that have entered my partner's and my life along this path. The only downside is that I have totally lost the ability to put up with mansplaining and idiot guys in power telling me why something won't work......arg!!!! But that is a small price to pay.

Your journey will be different and I hope that you will be able to enjoy it as much as we have.  - Anne

Everyone's experience is different.

I didn't feel the mental/emotional effects as strongly as some do.  I did, over time, notice that a lot of my "mental static" had gone.  It wasn't overnight, so I didn't notice a sudden change.  As Dena described, it was noticeable only in hindsight.

Physically, I felt my nipples tingling within a couple of weeks.  Over the first two or three months, my breasts started growing.  (Don't get your hopes up too soon.  They slowed right down after that, though they are still SLOWLY growing.)  My skin got softer and the texture of my hair changed.  My body hair got finer, sparser and blonde and it slowed its growth rate a lot.  My lips changed shape all of a sudden at about six weeks.  That change happened in the space of one week.  I was putting on lipstick for my weekly outing and noticed, "Hey, that's different!"  There have been other subtle changes in my face, though I can't quite pinpoint what is different.  And I have a tiny bit of new fat on my hips, just enough to make me a little bit curvier.