The other aspect of this is how hard it is for friends and family, we may find it easy to discard the facade but most everyone around us bought into that facade and don't find it easy at all to just let it go.
The more elaborate the facade you built the harder your transition will be to cope with from those around you.
I adopted some coping mechanisms as an engineer that I began to let go of 2 years before going full-time, people started noticing things and I had feedback come back to me. I allowed them to see those things it was my way of subtly prepping everyone for what was to come.
Almost no one saw my transition coming but they weren't really shocked either.
It was more like "Oh that makes sense now" rather than "I just can't believe it".
In my opinion transition will be gentler if you start dropping the facade way before the big reveal.
