I had the same thoughts after the first wave of euphoria post-egg-crack was over. They stayed with me for a very long time, I think even now they occasionally pop up. When I started HRT I even told myself I would constantly reexamine how I felt with the effects. But after a few weeks on hrt I just knew. For the first time I felt some sort of connection to my own body and from then on it only got better and the “goblins” got quieter and quieter.

I think it’s healthy to keep questioning to some degree, but the best way to deal with this is probably to just keep exploring. You can always stop if it doesn’t feel right anymore. And sometimes it just takes some time to get used to things, no need to panic if something feels weird at first.

Also, what I needed to realize was, that gender and gender presentation are a spectrum: You don’t have to be hyper feminine or gender conforming to be Trans. You’re allowed to have “masc” hobbies and interests, you’re allowed to dress masc or femme or neutral or both, you don’t have to like makeup. Only you decide and define what your gender is. For me it was also helpful to explore non-binary gender identities. In the end I still identified as a woman, but I found it helpful to free myself from expectations that come with that label for a while. Finding out what your gender is not, can help narrowing down what it actually is. And your decision doesn’t have to be final.

So I guess what I want to say is: it’s totally normal to have these thoughts, if you keep questioning yourself and do what feels right you will end up with the right result for you. But don’t let the doubts drive you crazy.

What if you’re wrong? No really, what would happen? Not much, probably. The stakes for being wrong are pretty low if you’re anything like me. You can always go back to before if you want. You can deal with that if and when it happens, it’s not a huge deal, so don’t let that stop you. Also yes, that worry is very common.

In some ways I was wrong about my transition. I’ve changed in ways I couldn’t have predicted before (e.g. being less binary trans than I initially was going for), but I couldn’t have known that without the journey and I don’t regret it. What got me started was reframing it from “am I right?” to “what can I do to make myself happier?”, which made transition suddenly an obvious move.

As others have said: Yes, this is absolutely normal. It’s totally healthy to introspect and investigate yourself—which is probably how your egg cracked in the first place.

Rather than worry about labels and whether you’re “worthy” of them, just focus on the specifics of your transition. What things bring you euphoria? What things don’t? Follow that and no matter where you end up on the gender spectrum, it will feel right to you. You don’t need to find the right box to fit in, you can make your own.

I struggle with this constantly. I really don’t have the dysphoria but I feel so much happier in girlmode. I question it alot, often wonder if I brainwashed myself somehow. But I try to remind myself I’ve felt this way for a long time.

I have often told others I believe we are all on a sliding gender and sexuality scale, and I’m pretty 50-50 male-female.I’m identifying as bigender for this reason, it’s also just easier to be honest. I don’t know, maybe I accept the male side because I’m used to it, because I don’t absolutely hate my meat suit. But then again, I’m super happy in girl mode and the more I see all the beautiful woman here and the before and after the more I wonder what I would look like. My mother obvi but still

I’m only out to my wife and a couple of friends, and can’t currently girlmode at all because of my living situation. Definitely not ready to leave the house, but I’ve picked out an outfit for exactly that occasion.

I say all this to let you know you’re not alone. It is normal to struggle and question. Just remember, would you have come here and asked the questions if it wasn’t real? Why would you choose the difficult and potentially dangerous path if it wasn’t real?

♡♡♡Nissa♡♡♡

Hey Nulliza! I’m going to write you an essay, i hope that’s okay.

Firstly, yes! Your experience is really really common. Like really really common. There is a great book that helped me called “Am I trans enough” by Alo Johnston. It really helped me when i was in your position. The author writes that imposter syndrome is so common to the trans experience it might as well be listed as a symptom of gender dysphoria.

I also highly recommend the gender dysphoria bible if you haven’t been there already. Apart from a lot of very useful facts, it contains several tweets from trans people, where you might see your experience being reflected.

The fact is, for most of us, we didn’t just “know”. There was no magic fact I could point to that made me sure. Every transition starts with a leap of faith. In fact, every day is another leap. My therapist told me that transitioning isn’t one decision, it’s thousands of decisions, you have to keep making them every day. You can stop at any time if you don’t like where you are going.

The popular story about “what it’s like to be trans” that we receive through the culture is often one of kids cross-dressing since they were toddlers, where there were obvious signs right from the beginning. I think that story persists because it’s palatable for cis people. They can point to that and clearly separate themselves from it so they don’t have to think too hard about their own gender. My experience is nothing like that.

I never recognised my experience as gender dysphoria, I just hated myself. I felt just total nothingness when i saw my masc self in the mirror. It was the euphoria of trying to feminise myself for the first time that made me start to recognise my previous baseline for what it was. You’ve already reached that part of your journey.

As time has gone forward, the “evidence” has just stacked up for me to the point that calling myself cis at this point just feels silly. It turns out that cis people are barely thinking about their gender at all, let alone googling “am I trans?” and writing in trans comms asking for advice about it. Cis people actually quite like being their gender. They don’t long to be another, they don’t feel giddy with joy when someone calls them by a pronoun other than the one they were trained to use from birth. They don’t feel a rush of intense euphoria when they break out of the prison of their assigned gender for a split second and taste free air for the first time.

When the doubts creep in, ask yourself “if i could just press a button and permanently switch gender, and there was no fuss, and everyone just called me by my new name and used my new pronouns as if I had always been that way”, would I press it?

Another good strat is to read through the effects of HRT and ask yourself if you want them? I remember once thinking to myself “if I’m wrong about being trans and I take hormones for no reason, at least I’d have a more femme body”. Yes that’s very cisgender thought Domi.

Nobody knows, nobody can decide for you, follow your joy. Wishing you the best.

Other people have given much better advice, I am recently out as well but I just want to chime in and say that you’re not alone there and I have felt this way as I have gone through my own journey, I think this feeling may grow with the amount of time it takes to make your realization, you said it was 15 years that is quite a long time living as a straight person or asexual person. There is a book I found at the library which might be of interest to you it’s called Finally Out: Letting go of Living Straight, and it’s written by a doctor who didn’t realize they were gay until later in life (40s) and it goes through a lot of these doubts, it’s not about being trans in particular but the advice is still very applicable for all LGBTQIA+ peoples I think. Love and luck

I went through that for years and even still felt like that 2 years after realizing I was trans and coming out to a couple people. For me, it was more useful to consider what I wanted to to with the knowledge that I’m bad at predicting how I’d feel about some things without just trying it and not worrying about the specifics of the labels. No clue when such thoughts became rare enough to say I never had them anymore.

cool you had the strength to be honest with yourself! :)

my instant help is to ask myself, how i’d feel if i decided now, that i would live the rest of my life as a guy/under the effects of testosterone.

that usually helps very quickly. at least i know, that i do not wantbto live that guy life.

Hmmm. I mean, what if you are “wrong” what is stopping you from just stop transitioning?

The effect that could be permanent is fertility ( probably not if only a few months, I haven’t seen a lot of things about that and for me it wasn’t a problem since I didn’t care) Well, also growing boobs. (In that case well surgery is a thing). Probably expensive depending where you live, then again it takes a bit of time to grow.

Don’t get me wrong I had the same questions and to be honest all of this stopped when I started HRT and could feel again. That’s the way I would put it.

And no, dysphoria isn’t only about not being enough dysphoric. I felt this way, and I felt empty too for a while. And when you’re getting used to this, low is you new standard. You know you can be lower so “it’s not that bad”, it’s not ok either and now I see it.

I would even say since I transitioned dysphoria amplified because I could foresee the changes that I couldn’t fathom as an egg.

I had a few good moments as “masc” (then again wouldn’t it have been better if I could transition before? There’s no way to compare).

When I transitioned a lot of things finally made sense in my past. I started working on my own traumas and mental health, my physical one too because I wanted to feel better too, to take care of myself finally.

Edit : I hope this message helps you! And congrats for putting words on your feelings too!