I recently had an injection that seemed to go wrong (CW: blood, I inject EV subq and I hit something like a capillary, there was a lot of blood and it bruised badly afterwards). Within a couple days I felt unusually dysphoric as a result of what I assume was a failure for the oil to depot and slowly release over time.
I get these “dysphoric thoughts” that maybe the estrogen is causing the problems, that I don’t have objective proof that I’m trans, etc. Lots of doubt, paranoia, and increasing amounts of anxiety and irrational fear (about transition, but also in general, e.g. thinking spiders are in my bed), and I start to experience depression and anhedonia (things aren’t as pleasurable, everything feels pretty flat emotionally, I just feel “bad”).
Of course when I inject again and it goes well, I feel much better and I forget about these problems.
I was just wondering if anyone has advice on how to deal with dysphoria when there are gaps in the HRT. Obviously in the long term, surgery will fix the hormone issue and I suspect that will fix this problem. Until then, though, I am stuck in a rather fragile place where I feel normal (even good, even amazing) when my estrogen levels are high and suppressing my testosterone. Any small slip in that and I barely function as a person.
Before HRT I would just do whatever I could to increase mental well-being:
- physical exertion (aerobic exercise, weightlifting, etc.)
- going outside and getting sunshine
- keeping up with hydration
- keeping good sleep hygiene (sleeping enough, going to sleep at the same times, etc.)
- meditation every day
But now it feels harder for me to “bootstrap” when there are gaps in HRT and my hormones aren’t right, it’s like I’m no longer used to how hard it was before.
Anyway - any tips or thoughts, would like to hear other’s experiences.
Yes, I do think because I’m still only on month 3 of starting HRT that it seems like I slip back into testosterone production easily, and that seems to correlate with the mood issues. I have been careful and conservative with my estrogen doses until recently (I consider 5 mg EV injected every 4 days a rather large dose for that frequency).
I do live in an extremely conservative place, and I live in a city surrounded by rural areas and lots of people here come to the city to work their jobs but live in a rural place. I was raised here, and I have internalized a lot of transphobia. My father was also maybe repressed or closeted, we don’t know, but for whatever reason he was rather fragile about his masculinity and used violence to keep me from even doing normal gender exploring as a young child.
I think the dysphoria I feel in these gap periods seem to make it hard to connect with gender-euphoric thoughts, but I think it’s a good idea - maybe I can journal about all the times people have given me compliments or all the times I have been affirmed by people when I least expected it. The reality is that most people have been extremely supportive of me.
Thanks for the help!