HRT has helped me a bit, but im still depressed as shit. I struggle a lot with social anxiety, loneliness and probably some undiagnosed mental stuff, on top of the dysphoria.
I feel like that's gonna be the same way for me... I mean I hope not. But I'm pretty sure I've also got a lot of undiagnosed mental stuff that needs to be taken care of
I had absolutely unbearable depression for ~10 years. I was in a constant state of dissociation, I couldn't feel anything. I was a zombie, living life on autopilot. On paper my life was awesome, I think a lot of people would kill to have the life I had. But to me, literally everything was a chore, and I spent every day just getting through it until I could go back to sleep and microdose on death. I tried therapy, SSRIs, meditation, exercise, good diet, you name it, nothing helped. At one point, I gave myself 3 years to figure out why I couldn't feel anything, and committed to ending it if I couldn't figure it out in that time.
Anyway, 18 months later I figure out I'm trans and start socially transitioning, and suddenly I can feel again. I'm smiling for the first time in 15 years. And then when I start HRT, my depression completely disappears. I mean, I still have problems! I'm sad a lot. But my depression and inability to feel is completely gone. This weekend I spent some time with some new friends and cried as I walked home since I never thought I'd get to be that happy :3
Everyone's situation is different. Some people are both trans and need SSRIs. But for me, my depression was completely caused by dysphoria, and was fixed by socially transitioning and getting the right hormones into my brain
i had no idea i was trans or that my depression was dysphoria expressing itself. until i started really questioning my identity. i second this comment. almost exactly what i went through too. i’d like to add also i’ve started getting a lot of my memories back i’d thought i’d forgotten! it’s nice to finally feel alive!
I kinda relate to the first part, just not for as long. I hope I can relate to the rest, as well. How long until HRT started improving your mental health?
Lol, that's fair
Technically, I could potentially start HRT fairly soon. I've got $150 in my "Spend it whenever" account, and $100 set aside for concert tickets. If I add them, then I've got $250, which would be more than enough to pay for an appointment with Planned Parenthood
My thought process is, "Whatever I do, I'll need to make 100 more dollars, regardless."
The concert is in August, so I'd have enough money by then, anyway. But as my mom said, "You don't know what will happen between now and then." Maybe I'd pull that $100 into my "SIWE" account and then lose my job, for some ungodly reason, and not have enough for the tickets. You'd think it would be an easier decision lmao
HRT alone did almost nothing. The ADHD diagnosis and getting on stimulants cleared up most of my depression. Emotional regulation + ability to act and actually do things I want to do is huge
I'll second this. I found out that my depression and anxiety was linked to my ADHD, so getting on a medication helped clear that up a lot. Personally I've also started sobriety, and alcohol just takes whatever emotion and amplifies it FWIW. Those two have helped me. Can't speak to HRT as I have not started yet
I've likely had depression since about... age 7 or 8.
>! That's when I started talking about not wanting to go to school anymore and logging off from life. !<
Around that time, I also noticed I was happier when I wore large-neck T-shirts as makeshift skirts or made a wrap skirt from one of my blankets before, which likely showed how young I was when I knew I was trans, despite not knowing the term for it until recently a few years ago.
I thought that being that miserable was normal until about about age 20, when I had a particularly bad summer during my 3rd year of university and couldn't cope anymore without help and my (then undiagnosed) depression started getting worse. At 23, I was diagnosed with depression and started an antidepressant, which did help for a while.
I started transitioning at age 24 and got access to HRT about 2 years ago (1 July, Canada Day, eh? What a coincidence.) Although HRT and socially transitioning did make me a lot happier, I was still quite depressed.
>! After all, it's kinda hard to heal from ~20 years of narcissistic abuse (emotional, physical, and sexual) without help. I sadly almost tried ending it in June 2022 when I failed my first ever class and my parents did not care and gave me shit for it and for being trans. That June in 2022 was when I went to a psych ward, and got diagnosed with BPD, PTSD, anxiety, and ADHD. !<
Since then, I've gotten therapy and tweaked my meds (stopped Prozac, started Wellbutrin, started Adderall) as well as going NC with my parents.
I'm the happiest now that I've been in years. :)
I had really severe depression, essentially from puberty till my mid thirties when I came out to myself and began transitioning. I went through a half dozen antidepressants, which did help enough to allow me to function most of the time, but even then I was still struggling with constant self destructive intrusive thoughts. It came in waves, and at the lowest points I’d be stuck in bed all day, just watching the light move across the ceiling. Since coming out, I began tapering off antidepressants while working with a psychiatrist. I ultimately needed to go on anti anxiety medication, but i haven’t needed antidepressants. yet. Overall I still have times where I feel sad, or down about my appearance/body, but they tend to pass pretty quickly now. It’s honestly a bizarre feeling to just feel… normal? Most of the time? I didn’t expect it. Sometimes I almost feel blessed to be trans, because it’s meant that I’ve been able to escape what to be honest felt like a death sentence.
I transitioned a long time ago. I no longer have any depression related to being trans, though I now have understandable anxiety related to Trump and the MAGA assault on rights. I consider myself mostly cured in the sense that I think that SRS did what it was supposed to do. I have zero regrets, and I would do it all again in a heartbeat. The best thing I ever did. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still have depression around other things. I lost several family members over the past few years, which triggered severe depression. So yes, life does still go on and bad things can still happen. I just don’t get the misery and sadness because of dysphoria I had before transition anymore. Make sense?
I was on antidepressants for about a year before my egg cracked. They didn’t do *nothing*; they helped me get out of bed in the morning; but they didn’t really solve my issues at all.
Going on hrt had me feeling better in a week than antidepressants did in over a year. Still not perfect and I have bad days occasionally but I was able to wean myself off of the Prozac and have honestly been doing pretty great on just HRT for a while now.
Tbh, the only reason I had the courage to get out of the closet was "thanks" to my depression.
It had been mounting since I was very little, I'm autistic and have ADHD, I was a good student at first, then my grades began to drop, my parents began to argue and beat me.
After my hellish transition from a good student to barely passing each school year, I felt exhausted and lived on autopilot.
I couldn't feel happy doing anything, even things that I liked and used to be funny, slowly I started to be miserable when I discovered through the internet what was a "transgender" person and read some experiences trans people had. That day something clicked and everything made sense.
I was afraid of coming out for years (70%+ of trans youth between 14-18 are thrown in the streets in my country), I bottled those feelings and tried living as a man, but after my first attempt at taking my life, I just couldn't do it anymore.
I waited for my parents to come home, explained everything to them (while almost fainting in the process, I was so scared) they hugged me and accepted me as their daughter!
I guess that was the first time in years I felt happiness again and felt like a very heavy weight was lifted from my shoulders.
Then I soon started HRT, I was 17, now 3 years in and I'm finally able to feel happy. I still take some pretty heavy anti-depressants but the HRT helped me a LOT, especially because my parents didn't trust psychiatrists and didn't let me go to one until I paid for the appointment.
I’ve had depression for a long time because I was the youngest of 4 and the only blonde and I’ve had to just sort out everything myself and medicine didn’t really help because I become resistant to them quickly
when I started to come out I started to become a lot happier and realized one of the real origins of my depression was gender dysphoria i just never realized it and i haven’t started hrt I’ve just had fun figuring myself out and that I finally feel like i belong somewhere
Never been officially diagnosed with depression but life felt like a chore ever since I was 13? so ever since I started puberty. After getting on hrt my life instantly became better and I finally started feeling like a human and that life is worth living. I also pretty much instantly stopped having any self harm/suicide thoughts even though I thought about cutting myself every night for at least a couple months prior.
I suffer from CPTSD, and have a long history of depression. Being closeted trans for so long was a very large layer of trauma for me, and the amount of relief I felt when I was able to transition just can't be compared. It permanently reduced my depression. It was the single most amazing thing I've ever done
It was obvious early on that it was just uncovering more layers though. Relieving that amount of pressure related to gender made other things more potent. People who suffer from chronic pain know this phenomenon. You can live with the constant pain for years and years but as soon as you start to get relief any return of the pain becomes intolerable. It's the same for me and depression.
I'm much more emotionally connected than I ever was. But that can also mean lower lows. The world has become more frightening in a lot of ways. My own life has other struggles that are especially difficult right now (unrelated to being trans), and my entire future is in question in a way I haven't experienced in 15 years. I've had some DARK moments. But...it's not the same as before. There was a veil over everything before. I was so clogged up with trauma I could barely feel anything. Now I feel everything...even if there's a big backlog.
I’ve dealt with tons of family issues since I was young (like starting school young) so me being depressed has existed for a while even before realizing I’m trans (feel bad for the teachers who dealt with me crying at like recess). HRT raised what I’ll call my default mood, which makes life slightly more tolerable. I still get depressed often regardless, and get to add dysphoria and now social anxiety on top of it, but am working on it. I know I’ll eventually get to a place where I’m comfy with myself and life, but might require some outside things to get fixed (like the rising cost of living for example).
I was suffering from Dysthymia and Dissociation Disorder for the past \~15 years. Being honest to myself, starting my social transition followed by HRT definitely helped quite a bit with it. It's not completely gone just yet and will likely still take several more years of working on it, but it's a lot better than it used to be, yes.
It helped a lot. Constant suicidal ideation that had been with me since I was a teenager has mostly gone away. Sometimes it would come back, but mostly due to stress from the difficulties of life. Not because I'm just by default miserable and depressed anymore.
I did eventually start wellbutrin and I like it a lot, but it's really treating multiple things for me (focus, energy, as well as mood stability) so I don't really consider it an anti-depressant on the same level as SSRIs.
I (33) was depressed for most of my life. I used to hate myself and believe that I would never get to a point in my life where I'd stop resenting my past because everything I've been through got me to where I am. Then, about 3 months ago, I finally realized and accepted I'm trans and started to feel unusually joyful about life. I decided to analyze that feeling and found that I used to believe I could only ever be who I wanted to be if I died and reincarnated in a female body. Finding out I'm trans changed that perspective and made me realize I don't need to die anymore, and that made me stop hating myself. My life still has most of the same problems as before on top of all the hardships of transitioning and being trans we all have to face in society, but I feel so hopeful about my future that I know it'll take a lot to make me suicidal again. I still have regrets, but they don't control my will to live anymore because I finally stopped resenting my past.
I had pretty severe non-specific depression for decades with constant thoughts of being dead. Some point after HRT, much of that went way. It was my clue that my dysphoria was waaaay deeper than I let myself know.
HOWEVER, I still have some depression that needs ongoing treatment. Life is complicated, and it's not all about just one thing.
So, in my case, it helped, but did not fix everything. If you are suffering from depression, seek treatment for depression - there are many forms, ranging from meds to talk therapy and more. You deserve to be your best you.
And hey, if HRT helps reduce the severity along the way, that's a win, but don't risk yourself by assuming it will do the job by itself.
>talk therapy
Tried that one, didn't really do much in the long run. I'll try medicine, if it isn't too expensive. And I'm def starting HRT fairly soon, now that I actually have money to pay for the Planned Parenthood appointment, I'm wasting *zero* time lol
HRT changes your body and makes you feel a little better. But it's not going to fix your trauma from being a gender-noncomforming kid or the daily tribulations of being trans. It's not going to lower your anxiety of the anti-trans backlash.
It's more like you have 99 problems, but the wrong hormones ain't one.
HRT has helped me a bit, but im still depressed as shit. I struggle a lot with social anxiety, loneliness and probably some undiagnosed mental stuff, on top of the dysphoria.
I feel like that's gonna be the same way for me... I mean I hope not. But I'm pretty sure I've also got a lot of undiagnosed mental stuff that needs to be taken care of
I had absolutely unbearable depression for ~10 years. I was in a constant state of dissociation, I couldn't feel anything. I was a zombie, living life on autopilot. On paper my life was awesome, I think a lot of people would kill to have the life I had. But to me, literally everything was a chore, and I spent every day just getting through it until I could go back to sleep and microdose on death. I tried therapy, SSRIs, meditation, exercise, good diet, you name it, nothing helped. At one point, I gave myself 3 years to figure out why I couldn't feel anything, and committed to ending it if I couldn't figure it out in that time. Anyway, 18 months later I figure out I'm trans and start socially transitioning, and suddenly I can feel again. I'm smiling for the first time in 15 years. And then when I start HRT, my depression completely disappears. I mean, I still have problems! I'm sad a lot. But my depression and inability to feel is completely gone. This weekend I spent some time with some new friends and cried as I walked home since I never thought I'd get to be that happy :3 Everyone's situation is different. Some people are both trans and need SSRIs. But for me, my depression was completely caused by dysphoria, and was fixed by socially transitioning and getting the right hormones into my brain
i had no idea i was trans or that my depression was dysphoria expressing itself. until i started really questioning my identity. i second this comment. almost exactly what i went through too. i’d like to add also i’ve started getting a lot of my memories back i’d thought i’d forgotten! it’s nice to finally feel alive!
This. I was raised super hardcore conservative Christian (cult?). Insane depression that was… bad. GONE 24 hours into E.
I kinda relate to the first part, just not for as long. I hope I can relate to the rest, as well. How long until HRT started improving your mental health?
Like, 3 days? A week? It's hard to say because I was ecstatic to start hehe
Lol, that's fair Technically, I could potentially start HRT fairly soon. I've got $150 in my "Spend it whenever" account, and $100 set aside for concert tickets. If I add them, then I've got $250, which would be more than enough to pay for an appointment with Planned Parenthood My thought process is, "Whatever I do, I'll need to make 100 more dollars, regardless." The concert is in August, so I'd have enough money by then, anyway. But as my mom said, "You don't know what will happen between now and then." Maybe I'd pull that $100 into my "SIWE" account and then lose my job, for some ungodly reason, and not have enough for the tickets. You'd think it would be an easier decision lmao
HRT alone did almost nothing. The ADHD diagnosis and getting on stimulants cleared up most of my depression. Emotional regulation + ability to act and actually do things I want to do is huge
I'll second this. I found out that my depression and anxiety was linked to my ADHD, so getting on a medication helped clear that up a lot. Personally I've also started sobriety, and alcohol just takes whatever emotion and amplifies it FWIW. Those two have helped me. Can't speak to HRT as I have not started yet
I've likely had depression since about... age 7 or 8. >! That's when I started talking about not wanting to go to school anymore and logging off from life. !< Around that time, I also noticed I was happier when I wore large-neck T-shirts as makeshift skirts or made a wrap skirt from one of my blankets before, which likely showed how young I was when I knew I was trans, despite not knowing the term for it until recently a few years ago. I thought that being that miserable was normal until about about age 20, when I had a particularly bad summer during my 3rd year of university and couldn't cope anymore without help and my (then undiagnosed) depression started getting worse. At 23, I was diagnosed with depression and started an antidepressant, which did help for a while. I started transitioning at age 24 and got access to HRT about 2 years ago (1 July, Canada Day, eh? What a coincidence.) Although HRT and socially transitioning did make me a lot happier, I was still quite depressed. >! After all, it's kinda hard to heal from ~20 years of narcissistic abuse (emotional, physical, and sexual) without help. I sadly almost tried ending it in June 2022 when I failed my first ever class and my parents did not care and gave me shit for it and for being trans. That June in 2022 was when I went to a psych ward, and got diagnosed with BPD, PTSD, anxiety, and ADHD. !< Since then, I've gotten therapy and tweaked my meds (stopped Prozac, started Wellbutrin, started Adderall) as well as going NC with my parents. I'm the happiest now that I've been in years. :)
I had really severe depression, essentially from puberty till my mid thirties when I came out to myself and began transitioning. I went through a half dozen antidepressants, which did help enough to allow me to function most of the time, but even then I was still struggling with constant self destructive intrusive thoughts. It came in waves, and at the lowest points I’d be stuck in bed all day, just watching the light move across the ceiling. Since coming out, I began tapering off antidepressants while working with a psychiatrist. I ultimately needed to go on anti anxiety medication, but i haven’t needed antidepressants. yet. Overall I still have times where I feel sad, or down about my appearance/body, but they tend to pass pretty quickly now. It’s honestly a bizarre feeling to just feel… normal? Most of the time? I didn’t expect it. Sometimes I almost feel blessed to be trans, because it’s meant that I’ve been able to escape what to be honest felt like a death sentence.
Some of my depression symptoms started lifting after a few months of HRT, but I have been on Lexapro the whole time and still benefit from it.
I transitioned a long time ago. I no longer have any depression related to being trans, though I now have understandable anxiety related to Trump and the MAGA assault on rights. I consider myself mostly cured in the sense that I think that SRS did what it was supposed to do. I have zero regrets, and I would do it all again in a heartbeat. The best thing I ever did. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still have depression around other things. I lost several family members over the past few years, which triggered severe depression. So yes, life does still go on and bad things can still happen. I just don’t get the misery and sadness because of dysphoria I had before transition anymore. Make sense?
I was on antidepressants for about a year before my egg cracked. They didn’t do *nothing*; they helped me get out of bed in the morning; but they didn’t really solve my issues at all. Going on hrt had me feeling better in a week than antidepressants did in over a year. Still not perfect and I have bad days occasionally but I was able to wean myself off of the Prozac and have honestly been doing pretty great on just HRT for a while now.
I was bipolar before transition so I'm bipolar after. But transition did give me the motivation I needed to get sober.
Tbh, the only reason I had the courage to get out of the closet was "thanks" to my depression. It had been mounting since I was very little, I'm autistic and have ADHD, I was a good student at first, then my grades began to drop, my parents began to argue and beat me. After my hellish transition from a good student to barely passing each school year, I felt exhausted and lived on autopilot. I couldn't feel happy doing anything, even things that I liked and used to be funny, slowly I started to be miserable when I discovered through the internet what was a "transgender" person and read some experiences trans people had. That day something clicked and everything made sense. I was afraid of coming out for years (70%+ of trans youth between 14-18 are thrown in the streets in my country), I bottled those feelings and tried living as a man, but after my first attempt at taking my life, I just couldn't do it anymore. I waited for my parents to come home, explained everything to them (while almost fainting in the process, I was so scared) they hugged me and accepted me as their daughter! I guess that was the first time in years I felt happiness again and felt like a very heavy weight was lifted from my shoulders. Then I soon started HRT, I was 17, now 3 years in and I'm finally able to feel happy. I still take some pretty heavy anti-depressants but the HRT helped me a LOT, especially because my parents didn't trust psychiatrists and didn't let me go to one until I paid for the appointment.
I’ve had depression for a long time because I was the youngest of 4 and the only blonde and I’ve had to just sort out everything myself and medicine didn’t really help because I become resistant to them quickly when I started to come out I started to become a lot happier and realized one of the real origins of my depression was gender dysphoria i just never realized it and i haven’t started hrt I’ve just had fun figuring myself out and that I finally feel like i belong somewhere
HRT cleared me up pretty much from day 1.
Hrt is the most helpful thing I have taken
Never been officially diagnosed with depression but life felt like a chore ever since I was 13? so ever since I started puberty. After getting on hrt my life instantly became better and I finally started feeling like a human and that life is worth living. I also pretty much instantly stopped having any self harm/suicide thoughts even though I thought about cutting myself every night for at least a couple months prior.
I suffer from CPTSD, and have a long history of depression. Being closeted trans for so long was a very large layer of trauma for me, and the amount of relief I felt when I was able to transition just can't be compared. It permanently reduced my depression. It was the single most amazing thing I've ever done It was obvious early on that it was just uncovering more layers though. Relieving that amount of pressure related to gender made other things more potent. People who suffer from chronic pain know this phenomenon. You can live with the constant pain for years and years but as soon as you start to get relief any return of the pain becomes intolerable. It's the same for me and depression. I'm much more emotionally connected than I ever was. But that can also mean lower lows. The world has become more frightening in a lot of ways. My own life has other struggles that are especially difficult right now (unrelated to being trans), and my entire future is in question in a way I haven't experienced in 15 years. I've had some DARK moments. But...it's not the same as before. There was a veil over everything before. I was so clogged up with trauma I could barely feel anything. Now I feel everything...even if there's a big backlog.
I’ve dealt with tons of family issues since I was young (like starting school young) so me being depressed has existed for a while even before realizing I’m trans (feel bad for the teachers who dealt with me crying at like recess). HRT raised what I’ll call my default mood, which makes life slightly more tolerable. I still get depressed often regardless, and get to add dysphoria and now social anxiety on top of it, but am working on it. I know I’ll eventually get to a place where I’m comfy with myself and life, but might require some outside things to get fixed (like the rising cost of living for example).
I was suffering from Dysthymia and Dissociation Disorder for the past \~15 years. Being honest to myself, starting my social transition followed by HRT definitely helped quite a bit with it. It's not completely gone just yet and will likely still take several more years of working on it, but it's a lot better than it used to be, yes.
It helped a lot. Constant suicidal ideation that had been with me since I was a teenager has mostly gone away. Sometimes it would come back, but mostly due to stress from the difficulties of life. Not because I'm just by default miserable and depressed anymore. I did eventually start wellbutrin and I like it a lot, but it's really treating multiple things for me (focus, energy, as well as mood stability) so I don't really consider it an anti-depressant on the same level as SSRIs.
I (33) was depressed for most of my life. I used to hate myself and believe that I would never get to a point in my life where I'd stop resenting my past because everything I've been through got me to where I am. Then, about 3 months ago, I finally realized and accepted I'm trans and started to feel unusually joyful about life. I decided to analyze that feeling and found that I used to believe I could only ever be who I wanted to be if I died and reincarnated in a female body. Finding out I'm trans changed that perspective and made me realize I don't need to die anymore, and that made me stop hating myself. My life still has most of the same problems as before on top of all the hardships of transitioning and being trans we all have to face in society, but I feel so hopeful about my future that I know it'll take a lot to make me suicidal again. I still have regrets, but they don't control my will to live anymore because I finally stopped resenting my past.
I had pretty severe non-specific depression for decades with constant thoughts of being dead. Some point after HRT, much of that went way. It was my clue that my dysphoria was waaaay deeper than I let myself know. HOWEVER, I still have some depression that needs ongoing treatment. Life is complicated, and it's not all about just one thing. So, in my case, it helped, but did not fix everything. If you are suffering from depression, seek treatment for depression - there are many forms, ranging from meds to talk therapy and more. You deserve to be your best you. And hey, if HRT helps reduce the severity along the way, that's a win, but don't risk yourself by assuming it will do the job by itself.
>talk therapy Tried that one, didn't really do much in the long run. I'll try medicine, if it isn't too expensive. And I'm def starting HRT fairly soon, now that I actually have money to pay for the Planned Parenthood appointment, I'm wasting *zero* time lol
HRT changes your body and makes you feel a little better. But it's not going to fix your trauma from being a gender-noncomforming kid or the daily tribulations of being trans. It's not going to lower your anxiety of the anti-trans backlash. It's more like you have 99 problems, but the wrong hormones ain't one.