/feels/ - personal experiences

>>669
Your well being or a formal education, It's up to you. You could try have both, but then you'll risk losing them both.

Whatever strategy you come up with, please think rationally, and I'd like to hear about it.

>>670
I attended the local "LGBTQ+" club meeting at my uni, apparently they actually have a licensed therapist in-house who is able and willing to write a letter (and presumably would be able to recommend a doctor willing to convert it to scripts), included with the other counseling services for anxiety/depression/etc included in tuition. (Hence kicking myself, if I'd just waited till January that would have been a completely viable path forward without even having to risk DIY in any capacity)

My current doctor wants to retest my T levels after being "clean" for 3 months.
I'm not sure if he has a plan or if he's just buying time because he knows the final stages of the damage are finishing up over the next few years, at which point I'll be mostly finished growing and it won't even matter if I've "gotten over it", it'll be too late.

For now,
the next 3 months, the rest of the semester,
my plan is just to "lie low". Triple down on effort, diet+exercise, study habits, etc.
KEEP MY GRADES UP, most importantly.
Let the doctor prescribe whatever the fuck he's going to.
(Perhaps he'll prescribe something that works to quiet the screaming in my head for the next semester, even: "tide me over" until I can get on proper HRT with medical supervision)

There's no way I can finagle my way out, just too many eyes on me at this _particular_ moment.
(With school being hard, still adapting to college life, etc- I don't want to try to manage midterms AND literally running away at the same time. I have neither the money (yet) nor a plan prepared. It would be terrible to have to come back "with my tail between my legs".)

Interestingly, staying in Uni is basically one of my best possible routes currently towards keeping any degree of autonomy. So it's not so much "have my cake and eat it" as it is trying to succeed on a scale from
worst-case|0
>college dropout resentful of parents who won't buy him titty skittles
to best-case|10
>family can't tell my gender when they show up for my graduation

If I can keep my scholarship, and use my job to pay the extra fees as well as possibly residence costs for next semester, then that's an actually viable method to begin "low-key" cutting ties and dropping off their radar.
I could be "out of the house" but still on insurance,etc
(the LGBT Club actually had a speaker who mentioned it's specifically possible to remain closeted to the primary insurance payer if you know the right forms to fill out)

Are you interested because you're in a similar position?
Were in a similar position?
(Know someone in a similar position?
(Do you think you might know me?))
Or just here on the net to observe humanity?

>>672
>Or just here on the net to observe humanity?
I'm probably one of the least qualified people here to help you, but I'd like you to share your plans in case someone more qualified or familiar with your situation (which I know this place is full of) stumbles on your thread. You seem less emotional since yesterday so that's good. Emotional decisions turn into regrets real quick.

Just keep cool, don't stress, and you'll get out of this pickle eventually. Post progress, I'm sure your situation isn't unique and your course of action might help someone.

>>669
everybody has their soykaf. if this is your path then you should walk it.

when I was 15 years old I was addicted to oxymorphone, dilauded, fentanyl and heroin. i spent $14,000 on dope in 12 months.

if you really think what you've done is a setback imagine working really hard at nothing but getting money for three years to end up a skinny junkie fuck with nothing to show for it except chemical dependence and problems feeling any kind of intensity.

just calm down before you make any stupid irreversible choices about your body, you've lived this long in it so just stick through it.

it'll all be over before you even realize it happened anyways. good luck on your journey

by banking on an idea of repressing my GD i lost my 3 years of education, job and a long-lasting relationship. i'm back at uni now but who know whether i mess it up again.

if education is your key to independence then sure, go for it

Well
It's been <however long since I started this thread>

Found out that (at least in part) the reason I was able to think so much more clearly while on hormones was the lack of screaming in my head 24/7;
it turns out, stress / threat prep, even low-level, if it's continuous, significantly tanks cognitive performance, particularly learning.

That said, I still need to find a way to continue forward from here. "Oh, part of the reason this works is it cures anxiety" doesn't invalidate a cure.

And I get the gut feeling that just being doped up on antidepressants+antianxiety meds to "fix" the "chemical imbalance in my brain" that is being stressed the fuck out from watching my body get rotted and poisoned, knowing there's something I could be doing to stop it, isn't a real solution.

I'm finally out of the swamp on school; it looks like I will neither fail out nor lose my scholarship this semester, thankfully.

Haven't contacted the "trans-friendly" counselor yet, though.

Pastor has been stuck playing phone tag with the traditionalist counselor, which I don't know how I feel about. On one hand, I have very little confidence it's going to do any good; but on the other hand, I mean, technically it's worth a shot, but also

My thoughts are, perhaps, (and this is nearly arbitrary) to get an appointment scheduled with the transition therapist at around the same time (within a few weeks) of the first appointment for the conversion therapist:

Give the conversion therapy 3 months (like a "race against" the competing ideology), can I be "snapped out of it" before I get a letter
If it works, then life becomes simpler for at least the next 10 or 20 years;
if it doesn't work, I'll be well into school, probably living on my own at that point (well, with a roommate; the parents are leaving), and I'll have the letter and be in the clear, able to start whatever without anyone breathing down my neck.

Idk what I'm going to have to end up telling my doctor..
>Yeah, I made it in school so no need for ADHD meds..
>as for depression/anxiety…umm….yeah I'm fine
>so fine don't bother making another appointment, in fact
>I found another solution, talking to a..specialist about it right now

Of course, if I fuck up and end up not qualifying as TruTrans in this therapist's eyes, it's game over
At least I have the email of a person who knows this counselor and said I can ask for advice

>>769
Well if you think therapy is going to "snap you out of it" than you're going to be severely disappointed. Not as disappointed as if you transitioned thinking it would solve your problems would be, but disappointed nonetheless.

There's no cure for GD. No treatment that will make it go away. No therapy, no hormones and certainly no surgery is going to fix it. The best thing you can do is go to the therapist and try to learn to cope with your condition. That's all you can hope for, whether you go for the traditional therapist or the pro-trans counselor. It's your choice - the book or the scalpel.

Just make sure you know what you're getting into. Don't let yourself fall prey to the sweet words of a counselor who has money on the line to lose if you don't transition. You tell them what they want to hear and they will write you up a recommendation without batting an eye. All they have to do is convince you that transition is the only solution and they know you'll say whatever you need to say in order to get it.

No matter what you decide, both options are nothing more than methods of coping with an incurable condition. Both require you to be open-minded and willing, but only one of them means mutilation and poison. Before you go to the next meeting, look up the exact procedures and explicit photos of the end results of those surgeries. Body horror is real and it has lead countless people to suicide - if you can't handle looking at it on someone else you most certainly won't handle it when you see yourself in the mirror. Not looking at those photos and getting into something you are not equipped to handle does nothing but put you in the highest risk percentile of potential suicides among post-op patients.

>>784
>mutilation and poison
Personally, I don't believe it's a poison. I have GD as well, though I don't take any hormones or anything.
Honestly, the best way to cope is to lie to myself. I usually take the easy route and pretend that I look like a cute anime girl.
I'm sure that's unhealthy, though.

>>784
>Be wary of surgery, which is proven to lead almost inevitably to Bad End; don't ostrich yourself into it by just refusing to Google images of the obscene end products until it sounds like a promising possibility
will do; genital mutilation is not even on the table.
Even if, being as nonfunctional as it is currently, it still looked appealing, the numbers speak for themselves..just not an option, unless I were suicidal and trying to find a way to push myself over the edge

>treatments don't work; all you can ultimately do is learn to cope
I think I agree with this statement pretty much

Plans are currently to hormonally-only transition,
and then from there the world's pretty much my oyster.
Finish degree, keep working on career, perhapes find even wife although this will be admittedly at least +8 difficulty (thankfully I am slightly beautiful)
Most likely I will transition to SERMs before my breasts grow past A-cups or so

I guess I'm trying to "split the difference" between the Repress / Come to Terms route, and the Transition / Embrace the Solipsism route, since they both seem objectively crap and don't "work" by any real metric

try to live life without making Muh Gender Snowflake Issues my defining single personality facet (and in fact I hope never to be one of the Loud And Proud in any capacity)
but also realizing that odds are good that if I just keep on as I've been the past 6 years I'm going to end up snapping sooner or later..what >>801 does, I can't imagine being sustainable. Just being very slightly psychologically in cumulatively worse and worse positions every time the daydream ends, eyes are opened, time to see a mirror again…"worst o' both worlds" IMHO (but whatever floats your goat; although, I don't actually mind if you're "hijacking" this thread with similar requesting for feedback. We're all cool in this corner of the Wired)

>>829
As far as I'm aware breast growth isn't exactly the last side-effect of the estrogen, so if you stop at that you're just going to - pardon my bluntness - look like a sickly man with tiny breasts. But I could be wrong, I'm no expert. I'm just trying to make myself useful.

I'm just confused if you're trying to undergo the changes or if you want to keep them minimal in order to find that hypothetical wife one day. If you're not going to go through the hormonal transition then you should just get anxiety medicine, right? That's what was helping you with your education.

Just be smart, OP. Looks like you've got a solid head on your shoulders, so I'm not worried. I wish you the best on sorting this out. Advanced congratulations on the degree, too

>>831
>breast growth isn't exactly the last side-effect of the estrogen
>I'm just confused if you're trying to undergo the changes or if you want to keep them minimal
Yeah, like I mean
I could go without breasts entirely if need be
(I only opted for estradiol over raloxifene in the first place because #YOLO, basically.)

The biggest thing is just putting the brakes on this body getting any less androgynous
Bone structure,
muscles,
fat distribution,
(though, fertility will be something I'll have monitored)

and as for mental effects, I'm not really sure that I exactly like what T is going to do to my mind, either.

Just as the body is made more "powerful" by T, so is the mind fundamentally "savantized", based on my limited research.

(I've actually been building up a folder of research on how this is going to affect me, sorted roughly into "DO", "DO NOT", and "CONTEXT/INTERESTING" folders; one very handy part of Uni access is the academic article smörgåsbord, but I sadly can't dump it here since some of the documents are restricted-access and timestamped with my IP.
idk, maybe I'll make it my capstone thesis or something.
Although, whatever I do will certainly have to stand on the shoulders of these guys: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcte.2015.02.003 )

>>871
>I sadly can't dump it here since some of the documents are restricted-access and timestamped with my IP.
There is always sci-hub.cc, so the DOI is enough.

>>872
Ah, tru

Here are my articles with no particular sorting, the
>quotes
are my tl;dr which are brutal abbreviations of my interpretation of the articles and may very well have objective inaccuracies

Pro

>Some guys with PhDs review the available (2015) literature, come to the conclusion that it's safe if your doctor is on-board
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcte.2015.02.003 Journal of Clinical and Translational Endocrinology

>SERMs help rat brain cells learn+adapt better
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/309494 Neural Plasticity

>HRT complications are not The Problem; insufficient evidence for SRS efficacy; we need more data tho
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/aja.2012.89 Asian Journal of Andrology

Con

>Testosterone improves teens' speed at solving the Tower of Life puzzle, regardless of both sex and transness
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2015.03.007 Psychoneuroendocrinology

>Gender Dysphoria is a delusion that most trans kids grow out of anyway; why "lock them in" via puberty suppression
https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/gender-dysphoria-in-children American College of Pediatricians

Context/Interesting/Informational

(Many of these are written from a very clearly "one-sided" perspective and do not advance an "argument" other than the implicit presupposed Left premise, but do provide useful history, context, and what is (to me) just plain useful info)

>We need to be careful about how to approach HRT, but it has seen positive outcomes
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beem.2015.01.004 Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism

>We don't know why everyone is trans today, but here's what we DO know so far and what the protocols are and have been
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.yapd.2016.04.018 Advances in Pediatrics

>Is HRT reversible? Also, let's discuss the effects of cultural normalization
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.11.031 Social Science and Medicine

>Here is what's involved in transitioning
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2015.11.028 The Journal for Nurse Practitioners

>Bone density monitoring is vital during HRT because dat soykaf affects your growth
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bone.2016.11.008 Bone

>Estrogen helps you LEARN; Testosterone helps you DO
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2015.06.017 Hormones and Behavior

>Be careful to watch trannies' pronouns; they probably have AIDS, too; here's some of the HRT protocols
http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/protocols Center of Excellence for Transgender Health (University of California, San Francisco)

>>669
good on you for getting on hrt.
bica is a good choice for selfmedding, as it is not nearly as destructive as cypro.
i wish i still had the choice of AA from before going official.

i know the feel of uni becoming harder because scatterbrained. i'm quite out of it myself as well.

it's one of the worse kinds of lives to have, but keep going.
you can do this.