Quote Originally Posted by Jane P View Post
I don't think that anyone is saying that estradiol is a phychoactive substance. From my point of view people are saying that that the hormone changes that take place in their body, that take place in their brain affect the way that they feel. Affects their emotional state of being. It doesn't seem too far fetched to believe that hormone changes can affect your brain or thought processes. To me it sounds better than antidepressants, in some cases it seems that it **is** the cure to what ails them.
Again, the anatomical changes to the brain take years to develop, if at all. The scientific attention paid to the phenomenon is currently at the point of, "Hey, look at this." Attributing emotional changes to a virtually undocumented phenomenon, especially changes that take place within days or months of the start of HRT, is not based on reality. More importantly, I believe such belief minimizes or ignores the powerful effect that the act of such a positive move has on us. A friend recently explained, when I recounted that I cry more easily (pain, emotional movie scenes, you name it), "You do that because you've given yourself permission to feel that way, the way women have always been allowed to feel." That explanation borders on the glib when considered against the complex web of changes that come with embracing our true gender identity, but I believe that it's a far more plausible explanation than some imagined effect of a well-studied drug.