but i am so sensitive to other people's emotions that i really can't stand being in any emotional setting, or around many people for a long time, and i end up unable to relate to people instead of becoming more sympathetic. and that's not really the person i am inside

I was just going to say that!

I even do that here. I hate it, the spiro has helped quite a bit with that. That letting go of the underlying rage.

Ativan

To the issue of my eyes...I have far from perfect vision...my ewe have been bad since I was in the 3rd grade. However my buskin hadn't shifted much for many many yeas and then suddenly they shifted again recently. So I find that odd.
I'm not sure what to say about your sensitivities...other than that I get it. Somewhat.
I had accepted it as part of my personality and didn't expect it to shift at all...then over time the gushing open, raw river sealed over with ice. Still there, still rushing and accessible (though as cyndi quoted menfrom private conversations, it is more difficult to access) and I find it much more tolerable to be there for others. It doesn't effect me like it used to.
I also want to out slot of importance on dosing. While I won't (can't) speak to specifics I think that dosingfor androgyns can't be stressed enough. It needs monitoring because it's not necessarily right for each person to be fully hormonally in line with the binary. For me, while I'm definitly well within male hormonal levels I have to watch it because it can become too much for me and I get agitated and aggressive (for me...not sure it would even qualify as such by someone else's radar...) that's why I can't say good enough things about daily gel and my ability to monitor it.
Since I'm healing from surgery we gave me a shot that lasts a week rather than doing my normal daily gel because I can't properly shower right now and the gel goes on my chest...so I needed something different while healing. Which sucks cuz I do like my gel but I'm so glad to have the flexibility

I just wanted to butt my head in and say thanks for discussing this. I used to identify as neutrois, but I'm more of a gender-neutral FtM (I tend to have issues with the "gyn" in "androgyn"). I just recently started on hormones, and I wanted to second the mood thing. I am so much calmer and less dysphoric now. It's amazing. I've been suicidal for as long as I can remember (I mean, it was practically an ingrained part of my personality) but now...that's just gone. It's been gone since I gave myself permission to consider T, and it's stayed gone since I started. I don't feel aimless or hopeless anymore. I really do feel it saved my life.

Quote from: ZaidaZadkiel on October 16, 2011, 09:42:20 AM
about 2 and half years ago, I commited a sort of suicide, in which I left everything and lived homeless for a few months.
it changed basically every way I see things.
I still am myself and so, and the disphoria was there all the time. So when I managed to return, it was just like, obvious that I would be doing mones, somehow.
Every day I feel if I'm already dead, so I dont have to worry about /that/ anymore lol

Respect for writing that.

Have been somewhere similar myself.

As a transitioning M2A or as I'm more likely to say M2WtF It took  a bit of work finding medical assistance to get hormones and a supportive shrink  I'm also single and don't like what I have "down there" If I miss taking my night time tablets 2 times i  row then my boy bits will be happy to "jump into action" even though I don't want them to.  In the early days I'd sometimes see if I could still get it hard and while it wasn't as hard as before it was always able to work
I take spiro and the pill + Estrogen and some herbal feminisation stuff
most of the stuff I take 2 times a day but only take spiro & the pill at night

I frustrate myself. This is something that could really help me. Hell, I've been feeling better even since I started letting myself consider HRT.

I've just got these stupid hang-ups. My dad started going grey and losing hair when he was my age, or even younger. I seem to have inherited his hair genes; we have similar color and texture, and I'm already greying. I don't want to lose my hair. I'm acne-prone and don't have the smoothest skin, even on supplemental estrogen. My vanity's already holding me back.

And I don't want to face the possibility of losing my wonderful partner because of this. I already have a much higher sex drive than him, which makes things frustrating and tricky, and he likes me a lot as a female.

I understand Julian. My vanity almost stopped me...I take fenestride to keep me from losing hair because I don't want that either. Yes, it's vain but...couldn't we look at anything we do to our physical self as "vanity"?

vanity?
it's science.
Just pure unadultered science.

At no time in the past had humanity been able to do so many crazy things with magic pillz (or shots)
So, I for one, crave to do More things with chemicals. See how far can this rabbit hole go, right ?

But whatever. I just had my E shot today. Had to wait in a queue with people with actual medical conditions.

all i know is that my dysphoria actually went down when i was on the contraceptive pill. but i also felt it was changing my mind, my personality (and my body -- larger breasts, smaller shoulders, less hairy (lol?)). after two years that it had changed who i was, my personality, was more important than anything positive i might have got out of the pill, so I stopped taking it.

i just worried if i took any other hormones, even if they made my body more like i feel it should be, it would change my mind as well and this thread just confirms that in some way. I couldn't stand to go through that again i think. 

still working on getting my body back to pre-pill days, but i don't think it's going to happen. oh well. maybe i just need to work out more though and eat less pizza. 

My dysphoria is the same as it was, The dysphoria/suicidal ideation has changed, in that it is almost a distant memory.
More of what is my personality has come out, but it hasn't changed it for the worse.
Without the changes in how my hormones are treated, I most certainly would have or would be very close to, taking my own life.
For some of us it is the literal difference between life and death.

Ativan

Would agree with you there, Ativan. Would probably be dead by now if I hadn't gone on estrogen: drugs, suicide, road traffic accident, fight or my brain would simply have exploded.

If one looks out of the car or bus window and notices the facial expression and body language of women and men walking down the pavement/sidewalk there is a massive difference in general between their apparent levels of happiness. On the whole women appear happier than men, rarely does one see a man smiling to himself.

Anyone else noticed that?

i smile happily all the time, but it's totally fake. i never smile as much when i'm actually happy, because i don't have the same need to pretend everything is fine