As someone who has been on HRT for ~10 months now this was an interesting read. I’ve had various trouble in the form of tiredness (perhaps caused by blockers, not by estrogen) that we’re trying to adjust for with my doctor but it’s an open question in my head that how bad negative effects I would tolerate for HRT.
Part of the difficulty is that many of the “gains” of HRT do subjectively feel like gains from lowering my testosterone rather than raising the estrogen levels. (Might be related to what the estrogen levels are, and eventually I’ll probably need to try injections if pills just don’t do it.) I have less “anxious / tireless energy” that has been problematic in the past. But I also have lower energy to solve problems that cause me stress.
(And in general, what most scared me re: hormones is the possibility of small but difficult to deal with or harmful small psychological changes, basically same thing that made / makes me anxious about SSRIs.)
I don’t really know much about cismen who have AGP and don’t actively identify as trans women, but at least subjectively I would probably have wondered “if I should have done it” forever if I didn’t try HRT.
(Also, probably unsurprisingly, Eneasz Brodski’s “Eventually, one can experience The Best Feeling In The World.” argument doesn’t seem very emotionally convincing to me either.)
As someone who has been on HRT for ~10 months now this was an interesting read. I’ve had various trouble in the form of tiredness (perhaps caused by blockers, not by estrogen) that we’re trying to adjust for with my doctor but it’s an open question in my head that how bad negative effects I would tolerate for HRT.
Part of the difficulty is that many of the “gains” of HRT do subjectively feel like gains from lowering my testosterone rather than raising the estrogen levels. (Might be related to what the estrogen levels are, and eventually I’ll probably need to try injections if pills just don’t do it.) I have less “anxious / tireless energy” that has been problematic in the past. But I also have lower energy to solve problems that cause me stress.
(And in general, what most scared me re: hormones is the possibility of small but difficult to deal with or harmful small psychological changes, basically same thing that made / makes me anxious about SSRIs.)
I don’t really know much about cismen who have AGP and don’t actively identify as trans women, but at least subjectively I would probably have wondered “if I should have done it” forever if I didn’t try HRT.
(Also, probably unsurprisingly, Eneasz Brodski’s “Eventually, one can experience The Best Feeling In The World.” argument doesn’t seem very emotionally convincing to me either.)
Not sure what you’re on, but “You might listen to an idiot doctor that puts you on spiro” is definitely a real transition downside