Considering Transition

[Maiko Newhalf]

I remember reading about some psychiatrists tried to use Testosterone on M2F transsexual patients to "cure" GD but got very bad results...

I'm aware of people saying the female and male brains are different but I'm not sure how much of it is innate and how much happens during the development of an individual. After all growing up as a boy or girl means the society has very different expectation/training on him/her, which perceivably affect one's brain development during adolescence. I can understand how HRT might affect the brain chemistry but I have a hard time believe that it actually change the brain construction of an adult, maybe possible to someone in his/her adolescence. Men tend to be more driven and rational but it could be simply because the Testosterone making them more aggressive and eager and less emotional. It may not have anything to do with man was born with a larger some part of the brain...

Another interesting thing is about sexuality (and how hormones change it)... my understanding is that sexuality not only means which sex one finds attractive but also has a lot to do with one's self-image. In that sense gender identity and sexuality are related. This is particularly true in the case of women (cis or trans). I can hard imagine a woman find even the most handsome man attractive if he thinks she looks hideous... The same applies to straight trans-woman. Some of them may not be interested in men at all prior to transition because they were perceived as guys. That does not necessarily mean HRT changed her sexuality -- I'd say transition helped them find their sexuality which was unclear due to gender issues...

[ReineD]

I can understand how HRT might affect the brain chemistry but I have a hard time believe that it actually change the brain construction of an adult ...

Well, if HRT can change the construction of an XY individual's body ... grow breasts, redistribute body fat, affect muscle mass, make the skin thinner and more translucent, etc, why wouldn't it have an affect on the brain as well? It's the chemical changes that I worry about. I can understand TSs wanting to change their male body to a female body, but why would they want to change their brain chemistry? Wouldn't this change their inner beings into someone they are not?

Or maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. I tend to look at the body being separate and distinct from the inner self, which is the way that most of us (I guess) look at it in this community: inner desires, gender identity, personality traits, etc, are separate and distinct from the appearance of the body. But, maybe they are not. Maybe our inner self is informed by the volume of chemical reactions in our brains?

Another interesting thing is about sexuality (and how hormones change it)... my understanding is that sexuality not only means which sex one finds attractive but also has a lot to do with one's self-image. In that sense gender identity and sexuality are related. This is particularly true in the case of women (cis or trans). I can hard imagine a woman find even the most handsome man attractive if he thinks she looks hideous... The same applies to straight trans-woman. Some of them may not be interested in men at all prior to transition because they were perceived as guys. That does not necessarily mean HRT changed her sexuality -- I'd say transition helped them find their sexuality which was unclear due to gender issues...

Others can chime in here (I hope), but one of the most enlightening posts that I've ever read in this section was about the idea that prior to HRT, the writer (due to having had male libido) had mistaken her attraction to women as friends and sisters for a sexual attraction to women and that as you say, there had been a sexual attraction to men all along. I wonder if the ebbing of male libido helped to orchestrate this change? I have read many times here that previously female-attracted TSs became male-attracted after transition even though the strength of their libido was different. At any rate it makes sense if only because transitioners now have the body parts to compliment male body parts in the love-making department. But on the other hand, I've read people swear up and down that their female-attracted sexual preferences wouldn't change an iota.

[Maiko Newhalf]

Dear Paula,

I'm only on estrogen for two weeks (a weak anti-androgen for 18 month though) so I'm a complete newbie on this. In my case, I didn't notice any difference psychologically or physically. There may be some placebo effects. I did notice less spontaneous erection during sleep and none for the next morning which is great.

As I said I'm a firm believer of taking baby steps. This is partially because I'm quite passive and cautious in nature and partially due to my culture background. I'm divorced now but I have not made up my mind on transitioning, although deep down I think I know... I still want to do the best for my child and my ex-wife. Just because the marriage failed doesn't mean that we stopped caring and considering for each other, especially when there's a child involved.

I guess I have gone through some of what described in this thread myself, although perhaps with much less intensity. At the very beginning of my journey on gender, I felt quite stressed because of my ex-wife's rejection. Some of the comments I remembered were along the line of being ugly/masculine, and yeah that's hurtful. But being a trans myself, I think I was given the gift of understanding women better than most genetic males. She said those things because she doesn't want to let you (as a guy) go... These days as I'm improving my presentation, she'll occasionally say that I look like a woman but I can see the sadness in her eyes. It is truly like watching someone you love or loved die. How long does it takes to mourn for that? Several months? A couple years? Ten years? A lifetime? It depends on how deep the love was...

As we are transitioning, people around us has to adjust as well. I don't think it is right to blame others who rejected us. Some of them disowned us because they don't care or just are too prejudice. However, others (especially family) may be doing this because they simple love the old us and unwilling to let us go despite how we hate being in the old gender role. Eventually they'll come around and accept us again. I think these people deserve time too to make the adjustment. I feel sympathetic for them because they are losing someone important in their lives and cannot do anything about it...

Anyways I feel much stronger and more stressed about gender when I first came out to my wife and start seeing my gender therapist. Sometime we'll find some things more severe after suppressing it for this long (and yes you do deserve credit for making these sacrifices over the years but your wife may not be able to see at least for now). But things are getting better. My transition strategy is to take a step, evaluate how I feel and decide whether to go forward. At the same time this give me the opportunity to enjoy the journey.

My best advice to you is to not get too hung up on HRT. Those are not magic pills and perhaps won't make you feel better immediately (especially if your source of GD is the male image you see in the mirror). The other link Reine share is helpful as well. There's a lot you can do without hormones. Both presentation and voice to take years to get better. Mannerism is even harder. Oh, and I don't think people on this site is arguing whether you are trans or not at all. Your therapist might and this is good because it is his/her responsibility to make sure you make the right decision. Your wife might do so because she want you as a man. The rest of us will only be supportive on what you decided to do.

Good luck with your journey and hope you find your own peace soon.

Mayiko

[mary something]

I think some of the stated difference in brain size that are noted between a male (testosterone) and female (estrogen) dominant brain environment has to do with the amount of the brain dedicated to spatial-visual skills. Estrogen dominant brains are usually about 10% smaller than male brains, which is why head size can be a limiting factor when it comes to "passing", males usually have bigger noggins.

This makes sense if we hypothesize that it is these visual spatial abilities that change, becuase the amount of "hardware" needed to map your environment in 3d and consider trajectories, displacement, etc is massive. In a conventional computer for example the part that will draw the most power and have the most transistors in a given die area is typically the video card, the part responsible for rendering the world in 3d. Perhaps this makes sense if we consider that from an evolutionary sense men are most likely to be hunters while women will have a more well developed communication and empathic capabilities in an estrogen dominant brain since they would share the child-rearing and other communal tasks more?

I suppose the best way to get some idea if this theory holds any water would to be to ask the girls who have been on hrt for at least a year or so if they have experienced any changes to their visual-spatial skills. Is it harder to parallel park a car now?

As far as sexual orientation changes I really don't know if one can simply blame it on estrogen. In the past homosexuality was attempted to be "cured" by administering hormones and had no effect.

Also as far as the effect of hrt on a genetic male a good place to find out what a typical man would experience is to visit support forums for men who are being treated for prostatic cancer with androgen blockers and estrogens. None of them decide they are women or change their sexual orientation. If we consider women who have had total hysterectomies and don't take hrt for health reasons one can also find support forums on the net for folks in this situation also and I have yet to find someone who reports it has changed their sexual orientation, although it is common for people to report that they lose much or most of thier libido in this situation. I'm sure their are always outliers though, because one of the most insatiable women I have ever known had already had a total hysterectomy. So who knows? Best to just say ymmv.

I wonder if the main benefit of hrt is simply allowing one's physical body to become more like the image that their brain has always expected to see in the mirror.

[Maiko Newhalf]

Reine,

I think I'm not qualified to argue one way or the other about your points. And yes it will be interesting to see what others think.

For me, I brought up the brain issue also because of practical concerns. I'm a engineer by trade. This is a very male dominated profession and conventional wisdom says guys are better at being analytical and logical and such. So should I consider a different career after HRT/transitioning? :-)

Cheers,
Maiko

[LeaP]

. If you are NOT - you will tend to feel anxious and depressed - as the hormones induce GD.

I've heard different versions of this. What my therapist has said is that she is had several patients who have started hormones and stopped. Some of them "didn't feel right." She said some of them were disturbed by the physical changes. Is this GD? I don't know. All of them thought themselves good candidates. She doesn't write letters unless she strongly believes them to be so. In the end, they were not.

I associate anxiousness and irritability with testosterone, not lack of estrogen. I would think that lowering testosterone in any male would calm them down. That's the effect on sex offenders when they treat them with anti-androgens. Estrogen, on the other hand, brings me clarity, presence, and a sense of being myself. When I started HRT, I was on anti-androgens alone at first. It did calm me down. It did not eliminate my experience of dissociation. That didn't happen until I was on estrogen for a period of time.

Regarding some of the comments on brain sex – whether or not the brain physically changes under the influence of hormones in adults, I don't know. It does during fetal development and later on in adolescence, but in adults? I recently posted a Journal of Clinical Endocrinology cite that mentioned one kind of dimorphic (sexed) adolescent brain development, in this case the "NKB system in the infundibular nucleus." This particular difference is driven by genetics, however, not by hormones, and having a female typical NKB system is characteristic of MtF transsexuals. To the extent that dimorphic differences in the brain are driven by hormones in adolescence, I suppose it's possible to have a partially masculinized, partially feminized brain.

[ReineD]

I'm a engineer by trade. This is a very male dominated profession and conventional wisdom says guys are better at being analytical and logical and such. So should I consider a different career after HRT/transitioning? :-)

No. :p I have a smaller brain size and I'm analytical to the point of having been criticized by my female peers (when I was younger), for thinking too much! lol. At the same time I'm empathetic and intuitive. I had an IQ test years ago and they determined that both my left and right brains are equal in strength, one does not dominate.

I think that general statements about male and female brain sizes, or analytical and spacial skills are just statements of averages. We all know that in actuality there are bell curves.

... besides, there are female engineers!

I associate anxiousness and irritability with testosterone, not lack of estrogen.

Leah, must anxiousness and irritability be tied to hormones? They are during adolescence, PMS, menopause and IMS, but lots of people both male and female are irritable and anxious outside of these times.

[Marleena]

I found a study on physical brain changes from use of cross-sex hormones. I sorta understand it says there are physical changes in size. Link:http://www.eje.org/content/155/suppl_1/S107.full.pdf

Don't shoot the messenger please!

[LeaP]

I suppose the best way to get some idea if this theory holds any water would to be to ask the girls who have been on hrt for at least a year or so if they have experienced any changes to their visual-spatial skills.

I'm 10 months in. At about 4-5 months I started experiencing changes to my depth perception and sense of perspective. The best way I can describe it is an enhanced sense of space, of dimensionality. It's still happening (or different), but I don't notice it so much anymore as I've become accustomed. It's subtle and hard to really tell if it's visual or perceptual or both. I also "feel" my surroundings more, which I attribute to reduced dissociation also.

I'm still a superb parallel parker!

[Lea], must anxiousness and irritability be tied to hormones? They are during adolescence, PMS, menopause and IMS, but lots of people both male and female are irritable and anxious outside of these times.

Reine, there's irritation and there's OH MY GOD, CATACLYSMIC, RUN FOR THE HILLS UNENDING SYSTEMIC IRRITATION (along with its best friends titanic anger and reactivity)! The first may not be hormonal, but the second sure was for me!

[Marleena]

There is very little written about the emotional effects from HRT but this is from WPATH if you like reading. http://www.wpath.org/journal/www.iia...o05no03_02.htm

[mary something]

I'm still a superb parallel parker!

thanks! How about balance and motion simultaneously? For example turning your head backwards to look behind while bike riding? Surfing, skiing?

I was guessing about the visual-spatial skills simply because those are some of the most taxing mathematical problems that the brain does, and would need more neurons for the job. It is anecdotal that sometimes ts women will say that their parking skills have diminished but certainly not evidence worthy of any kind of proof of correlation.

"The best way I can describe it is an enhanced sense of space, of dimensionality"
does it feel like your brain is using a different method of determing the space around you and how you occupy it? you used the word "feel", is it more of an emotional, intuitive, or logical type of thing?

[Badtranny]

but one of the most enlightening posts that I've ever read in this section was about the idea that prior to HRT, the writer (due to having had male libido) had mistaken her attraction to women as friends and sisters for a sexual attraction to women and that as you say, there had been a sexual attraction to men all along..

ahem,

it's okay to credit your source ya know. :-)

[LeaP]

It's hard to say, Mary. There is definitely a physical aspect – I feel in the space, part of it, where before I always felt like I was observing it, outside of myself. The perceptual parts I'm less sure of. On one hand, I notice perspective more. I notice diminishing perspective, distance, etc. Vistas that are complex, such as I'm looking at right now, can be breathtaking. I have seen amazing vistas all my life, of course. They never felt so organic, though. It's as if I apprehend motion and perspective and light and color all that once. Is that emotional? Intuitive? I don't know. I'm also startled more easily.

[mary something]

that sounds wonderful Lea . Sounds like you are much more present in the world almost, like you are sensing it more than perceiving it now? Did you happen to have taken the Briggs meyer personality inventory before hrt and if so have you taken it lately? If that's not tmi I think it would be very interesting to see how it might have changed?

[TeresaL]

Lea, I'm lagging behind your experiences by several months. I'm only four months on estrogen. My emotions are like Dorothy's when she went from black and white to technicolor. There really is a yellow brick road! My world is now right side up. (I'm trying to find words to describe it, but it is so hard to convey all the myriad rainbow of changes). Metaphors do not do it justice, let me tell ya. I'm still adjusting. Heck, I even tear up walking into a flower shop. Flowers sure are pretty. :-)

[LeaP]

So, getting back to Paula, therapy and hormones can help in some ways, but don't fix things for everyone or forever. Teresa and I have been describing some positives, but I have my share of hell going on, too. See Anne's latest thread for another view of the dark side. Will transition fix things? Maybe ... depending. If what ails you is truly GD or GEDAD (Anne Vitale), yes, as uniformly reported. If not, well, the post-ops just as uniformly say it doesn't make anything else in your life better and makes some things a whole lot worse.

I completely get the aspect of survival that you brought up. There's variation in that too, though. I don't need to determine if I will survive or not any longer. I need to figure out if I care if I don't.

I've been saying for a while now that I can't really distinguish want from need any longer, the preceding being one illustration. Do you really know what you need and what you want?

[PaulaQ]

Hi Lea, I am pretty sure I need to transition. I'm am pretty sure I want to as well. (Wanting to happened after much inner turmoil and kicking and screaming.)

So my wife met Paula for the first time today. So I have a LOT more freedom to express myself at home. This should help a lot. I'm going to try to delay HRT until my emotional state is more stable. If, despite continued medical intervention and therapy my GD worsens, I'll try HRT sooner. But hormones are volatile, and I'm going to talk to another therapist, and be as sure about this as I can be. Really, there is no doubt in my mind, but since I'm handicapped as well, I want to be double sure I don't have some other type of body dysphoria, caused by my physical condition.

In the meantime, time to start electrolysis and voice coaching.

I also need to address my physical situation - I simply can't transition safely where I live now, some redneck will kill me. So I have to work that out.

I plan to come out to my kids, then the rest of my family soon. (Like before the end of the month soon.)

Thanks all for your perspectives.

[LeaP]

... since I'm handicapped as well, I want to be double sure I don't have some other type of body dysphoria, caused by my physical condition. ...

That's an interesting twist I have not heard before. Is this something you fear in yourself, that a therapist brought up, or ?? Obviously such a concern needs to be addressed, so your approach sounds reasonable.

I'm not sure what you mean by hormones being "volatile."

[Marleena]

Paula why even consider divorce or transition at this point? Your wife allowing you to dress has worked wonders for you. Why not just enjoy the new acceptance?

[mary something]

Make your goal being happy! Physical transition will take a few years no matter what, as circumstances change stay flexible in case your needs change also

[PaulaQ]

Paula why even consider divorce or transition at this point?

1. I attempted suicide over the weekend - this shit is real.
2. There are financial reasons for the divorce - we need to reside in different states, and I don't want to pay extra state income taxes, this will cost me 10's of thousands of dollars. And, divorce is inevitable, and we'd rather do it while we're in an emotional state where we aren't angry with one another.
3. As I said - this shit is real, and I am certain this is going to happen. I'm out to a bunch of people, and I'll be out to my entire family soon.

Is this something you fear in yourself, that a therapist brought up, or ??
I'm not sure what you mean by hormones being "volatile."

I'm not really afraid of this - my handicap causing my dysphoria - I have always scape-goated it for this, before I understood GD. However, just about everyone I know that I'm out to has brought this up, so - I'll check it out. It certainly complicates things, anyway. It may never be possible to untangle where one ends, and the other begins, entirely. Worth a look though.

As for hormones being volatile - hell, I don't know. All non-trans people I know, my doc, my therapist, etc. tell me they are volatile. I'm getting told two different things depending on who I ask. Trying to figure out if they'll make me emotionally more volatile - that's what I mean. Your thoughts on that would be GREATLY appreciated.

I am really tired of GD trying to kill me.

[Marleena]

Okay I'm out, I'm just upsetting you. Best of luck.

[arbon]

please stop trying to kill yourself Paula,
please stop considering it as an option.
what you are going through is not hopeless, its not!!!
when it feels like it is I hope you will reach out and talk things through before acting on it. you know there are people out there that care about you and that you can talk to. you know you can call me anytime day or night.

When I was deep in the crap like you and killing myself seemed inevitable all I can say is that I am so incredibly grateful that I was wrong because I have a pretty amazing life today.

Weather the storm and have some faith that it will get better.

hormones - volatile - you may experience a greater range of emotion, you'll probably be able to cry more - do you cry now?

[PaulaQ]

It's really OK Marleena. I'm not upset. I'm just being blunt. I was upset enough over this stuff - I hadn't done any type of cross gender expression in a week - that I tried to kill myself. This is real. It isn't going away.

Hey look, it takes forever to transition. If I discover, "yup, not for me", I'll be tickled pink. I just feel I don't have much choice but to proceed as if I'm going to transition. There are a BUNCH of places where I can jump off the bus if it isn't right for me. I'm sure it is - but it'll be a couple of months, AT LEAST before I start HRT. I'm going to dress as much as I can. I'll keep in therapy, and I'll stay on anti-depressants. If I feel differently - I will not be ashamed to post "nope, changed my mind, I'm just a CD." In fact, I'll be delighted. I'll also cash in my powerball winning ticket at the same time...

The financial reasons for my divorce are real too. Sucks, but it is what it is. Even if I don't transition - I can already tell you that where I'm living is just too hostile a place for a transgendered person to live fulltime. I can try to pretend that's not true - but it is. EVERY person from this town who's transgendered has moved. (You hear stories.) There are good reasons they've moved - it is conservative, and fundamentalist here.

I'm just telling you - ashamed as I am of my behavior over the weekend, I can only conclude from it that - This. Shit. Is. Real.

[arbon]

Hey look, it takes forever to transition.

its your time frame, as fast or slow as you want to go.