Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"There is so much emphasis on gender dysphoria that it's easy to forget that gender euphoria is just as vital and present for us. If gender dysphoria is the dark cloud over our heads, gender euphoria is the sunbeams that warm our skin. It's the rosy light inside us that we feel when we are seen and loved. It's the invisible rainbow over our heads that glitters when we own our true selves. Gender euphoria is the psychological state of bliss and comfort that happens when our gender expression is aligned with our identity. (This is one of the reasons that Pride is so wonderful, especially for those of us who feel invisible or marginalized in other areas of our lives.)

[...]

"Some people say that gender euphoria, not gender dysphoria, should be the diagnostic requirement for transgender people. Not all of us experience the negative aspects of gender, but all of us know what it's like to feel 'right' in our bodies. All of us are free to try out different names, pronouns, gender expressions, and modifications on our journey. The 'click' when something feels authentic is the best-truly, a sense of coming home."

-- Plume blog, "What are Gender Dysphoria and Gender Euphoria?", 2021-09-22 [Plume appears to be a subscription-based provider of trans-related health care via telemedicine. Beyond having stumbled across the blog post I quoted from, I know very little about them.]

Ten years ago today, I started HRT (just estradiol and spironolactone at first -- I added progesterone later). It was going to be an experiment: "I don't have to make any permanent decisions; I'll try this until Easter and then evaluate how I feel about it." (I figured the day after my birthday would be an easy date to remember, plus it was Ash Wednesday, which made using Lent for timing kinda tidy.) At Western Easter, I said, "Um, I'll try this until Orthodox Easter." At Orthodox Easter I was like, "I'm not managing to fool myself about this still being an experiment. I feel more mentally 'together', more able to cope with all the stresses that are still there, with estrogen instead of testosterone dominant in my brain, and I'm looking forward to seeing outward physical changes. This is right for me." Before I started, my gender had shifted from the non-binary I used to be, dysphoria was increasing, and I knew I had to Do Something. So this was what I did. Ten years later, I still experience a lot of dysphoria, but less of it, and there's gender euphoria -- that feeling of rightness, not constant but reliable enough to know it'll come again -- that makes the dysphoria easier to handle.

These are life-saving medications. I did not wait until I was in crisis to start, because I knew what direction I was heading in (and because HRT was something I'd been contemplating and wondering about for a long time). Some trans folks don't start until they're feeling desperate. Some figure it out way earlier. And as that passage I quoted mentions, for some of us it doesn't have to be dire first. But it's worth noting that my one extended suicidal phase (not counting short medication-induced ones^[1] much later) was around the onset of male puberty. And a few years ago when a Medicaid glitch interrupted my supply of spironolactone (anti-androgen) was when those feelings came back (except this time I knew what they were, and I knew my situation was temporary and I just had to hold on for a month or so, so I wasn't actually suicidal, just feeling all the same things that had made me suicidal back in middle school). These are life-saving medications.

I wish I'd been told about twenty years earlier than I was, that one test for whether a patient should be on HRT or not ... is to start them on the hormones, and before long they'll either report that the hormones are making them dysphoric and stop^[2], or they'll go, "Oh, thank God." If I'd known that, I would have started much earlier. Anyhow, I'm glad I eventually found out for myself how much easier it is to smile when I've got the right mix of hormones.

[1] It turns out I have a paradoxical reaction to antidepressants. Which doctors kept trying to prescribe to help with sleep or fibromyalgia or both. What I didn't find out until last year when a therapy intern's supervisor was sitting in on a therapy session, is that a paradoxical reaction to antidepressants is as much of a sign of ADHD as a paradoxical reaction to stimulants. So gosh, I could have figured that out about myself a couple decades earlier if any of the many doctors I mentioned the paradoxical reaction to had connected the dots. Oh, and also benzodiazpines like Xanax make me angry. Apparently also a clue.

[2] In fact, not too long ago, a male cisgender doctor who mixes very small amounts of estrogen into a skin lotion as an anti-aging thing, made a mistake at some point and gave himself much more than his usual dose ... and basically gave himself dysphoria for a while.

[Oh, right, it's also George Washington's 290th birthday.]