Welcome to this community, girl! What made you realize you are a woman? Something (recently?) changed, that made you even wanting you get to an appointment, right?

I’ve been in denial the past two decades, until I learned about some misunderstandings regarding what transgen means. When I get pangs of doubt, it had helped me to remind myself of what I’ve learned and to reflect it’s just my old, flawed way of thinking sneaking back.

I endorse the idea of using logical reasoning to support your transition. For me nothing about transition was based on feelings, it was always a logical conclusion. From what I heard it sounded like I should feel trans in some way, but no. In my experience gender doesn’t feel like anything. The hormones don’t feel like anything. I feel the same now as I always did. Dysphoria feels like depression in retrospect, but gender… no. Trust your logic, it is correct.

Denial and doubt is normal. You’ve spent your entire life being mislead about something pretty fundimential to your identity. Its only natural to believe falsehoods that are repeated enough. It takes considerable effort and courage to get past the denial, but I guess that’s part of the trans experience.

You got this girl!

You don’t need to answer if you’re trans or not. Do you think you’d feel better presenting differently? Try it. Think you’d feel better on HRT? Try it. Think you’d feel better going by another name? Try it. You can do all of that without addressing the big trans question; and if you’re not trans, well, maybe you still feel better presenting differently for instance, so trying’s still a net positive.

I told myself this to allow myself to do things, and eventually the trans question answered itself for me. But that didn’t really matter, because regardless of the answer I was better off for trying things and learning about myself.

So, you’ve undergone a lifetime of exposure to transphobia that makes it really hard to explore and accept who you are. It makes it hard to even understand who you are.

So what you can do, is let yourself accept that you don’t have to have all of the answers, you don’t have to have 100% certainty to explore. What you need to do isn’t to gatekeep yourself behind having all the answers, but rather, give yourself permission to explore what works for you, what fits, what doesn’t fit, and ultimately, find the things that give you the answers!

tl;dr - You don’t need all of the answers to start exploring. You can start exploring to find the answers

I’m pretty new to this as well 😅 so take these from a newbie

I like to journal whenever something happens that’s affirming/dysphoric so I can take a look back whenever I’m feeling that impostor syndrome come back on. whether it’s just writing on a document on my computer or looking back at my posts in this community it reminds me of what makes me upset and what makes me happy :3

I also love the “girl button” question, because the truth of knowing that cis people would stay far away from it, yet I still wanna press it after all this time is a great affirmation

I also had some doubt before my first appointment. But afterwards I was so happy and all that went away. It’s been like 3 years now and I’m still happy.

As someone who gave in once, I can tell you it usually doesn’t work out to deny.

I made an appointment for HRT, saw the Endocrinologist, and cancelled the follow up which I’d receive the meds the day before it happened. The entire time I kept telling myself that I’d still be “me” but doing HRT in secrecy from friends/family/society. I chopped my 3.5 years of hair off, grew my beard for the first time ever, then by 2/3 months later decided I hated that. Nearly a year later, I was back at a new DR appointment for HRT. I’ve been on HRT for over 3 years now, with bottom surgery just 3 weeks away.

Not saying this doesn’t guarantee someone could permanently back out, but it’s very unlikely that you’re capping to yourself if you’ve already got the appointments set up.

That can be rough, and I’ve seen a lot of trans folks express similar doubts. 🫂

First: HRT is completely reversible in the short term (some effects are permanent, but not usually until months in and even then they need time to grow/change). Remind yourself you can stop if you find it isn’t helping you. Stopping if your feelings turn out to be true here is simply just that… stopping. You’ll have lots of opportunities to figure out if you like the changes or not.

Second: I’ve had someone tell me, “if you do it when you’re alone, you’re not doing it for attention”. That was in response to similar feelings you’re expressing. I ride that question out every time I ask myself if I was right to transition. I’ve consistently found that I both do this while I’m alone and that I feel less and less unsure as time has gone on.

Try reminding yourself of that. Feeling doubt is feeling doubt, but does that doubt actually make you want to stop? Do you do it when you’re alone? Is it for you or someone else?

We’ve spent our lives hiding our real selves. It can feel really scary to finally be this vulnerable and it can be very appealing to hide again. I’m happy you’re giving yourself a chance.

ill usually just fall back to the age old “girl button” question, and every time without fail I would press a girl button. so that answers anything i neeed to hear to myself

I alsways tried to challenge the null-hypothesis, when I doubted my transness:

“Am I cis?”

Answering that with a resounding NOOOOOOOO was always easier :)

get a list of the effects of T. ask yourself: " do i want those effects?" you already expirience them, i guess. but do you like what it does to you in the grand view? i struggeled bc breasts weren’t on my wishlist but a certain strength was … it is abt the majority here. by now, breasts are very much on my wishlist; denial yk …

Hey, not sure this will help.

Basically societaly i have given 0 clues to others that I was trans. Always have been the person people expected me to be. And somehow, after my own revelation (at a drag show 😊) I was like. Damn but there’s a community here actually. They do exist. When I look back a lot of things make sense about my own identity (maybe I do want to link some event to my transidentity but even then? Do I really need to convince myself? Probably a bit deep down.)

Everyone transitioning is valid whatever they lived. If “You” want to do it (I do put emphasis in the you part it is important). Then you should do it. It’s ok not knowing exactly who you want to be. I was stuck a really long time (thick egg shell, but not only.).

Everything escalated quickly after that, even hrt, and well after 3 months and half, no regrets. I love the changes. It gave me motivation to change, weight loss through proper care (not easy everyday still), affirming myself, do things I forbade myself, knowing it wouldn’t be “me” - the image I was reflecting the world - not my inner self… To me it was a liberation.