I have no idea how to word the title in a way that both encapsulates what Im talking about and doesn't sound like something a tik tok-ass crystals person would say.

I started HRT in two phases, first came spiro and some months later came estrogen. The reasoning behind the multistage approach was ultimately very silly and totally irrelevant to this topic. However the experience of starting an antiandrogen and estrogen source seperately was very interesting.

Spiro was like waking up for the first time in over a decade. Estrogen had a myriad of more subtle cognitive, almost spiritual effects. I could feel the existence of an authentic self at my core in a way I hadn't been able to before. I described the feeling as "getting my body and my life back from someone who couldn't handle it anymore". This was well-prior to coming out and girlmoding fulltime.

Over time, many (but not all!) of the memories from before this began to feel like they belonged to someone else. Some felt like the recollection of stories I had been told, rather than events I had lived through. Some had a perspective shift, I was no longer the participant, but an observer, someone standing in the corner of the room or in the "backseat" of my own mind.

I've heard of a handful of similar experiences from other, equally transgender ladies but nothing quite like this. Some of my friends have suggested that what I'm describing are symptoms of an altogether more serious personality/disassociative disorder... but I dunno about that (my therapist had doubts too) and thats really scary anyways.

So like, can anyone else relate or am I just really really unwell?

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[–] 9 points 2 weeks ago

Haven't had something like that, but it's not really weird imo. In my experience, hormones and blockers can definitely affect your mood and change how emotional processes are balanced.

Above and beyond that though, I think that transitioning is a process that provides an extremely potent context in which one's experiences are framed. Transitioning is, necessary a potent assertion of one's agency against societal and/or biological assumptions. In day to day life, very few decisions are as actively consequential in how our lives play out as choosing to pursue transtion, and that means that your life isn't going with the flow, but is the product of your will.

Based on the combination of that and the exploration of new dimensions and depths of feeling, I could definitely see how that could lead to your current understanding of yourself being hard to emotionally relate to your past. Idk if this rings true to you but its my best assessment based on my own experiences.

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