This is just my personal experience and definitely not universal to all trans people, but I developed a pretty good internal sense of gender even without HRT around a year or so after I first started questioning it. I had a lot of self-doubt at first (a lot of "am I doing this for attention" kind of thoughts) and also did some gender waffling, but it didn't last forever. I don't feel like my gender now is set in stone, exactly; I'm still discovering new things about myself and my transness all the time and I'm open to the idea that my experience or understanding of my gender may change in the future. But the things I discover about my gender now feel affirming to me; they don't send me mentally spiraling about whether I'm secretly cis or not, the way they might have in those first few chaotic months.
Yeah I don't get the "am I doing this for attention" type thoughts anymore. It's more like, Im just scared that I'm all wrong about myself because like no one sees it, no one expected it... And like whenever I say my chosen name people just give me this look like yeah whatever you say. Some people will even double take and be like seriously? And then bro me.
Internally I feel like me, and I feel like I'm pretty feminine but when no one sees that from the outside Its like really hard to take myself seriously or take seriously my thoughts and feelings. I really just want to be taken seriously by wider society and I'm just not.. I am forced to boy mode at work as a result because I don't think people would take me seriously if I came out and that's also slowly driving me to crazy
I need to just get a strong internal sense of gender. It's kinda hard when no one sees me :/
It does help to have at least somebody around to validate you and whatnot...
This is just my personal experience and definitely not universal to all trans people, but I developed a pretty good internal sense of gender even without HRT around a year or so after I first started questioning it. I had a lot of self-doubt at first (a lot of "am I doing this for attention" kind of thoughts) and also did some gender waffling, but it didn't last forever. I don't feel like my gender now is set in stone, exactly; I'm still discovering new things about myself and my transness all the time and I'm open to the idea that my experience or understanding of my gender may change in the future. But the things I discover about my gender now feel affirming to me; they don't send me mentally spiraling about whether I'm secretly cis or not, the way they might have in those first few chaotic months.
Yeah I don't get the "am I doing this for attention" type thoughts anymore. It's more like, Im just scared that I'm all wrong about myself because like no one sees it, no one expected it... And like whenever I say my chosen name people just give me this look like yeah whatever you say. Some people will even double take and be like seriously? And then bro me.
Internally I feel like me, and I feel like I'm pretty feminine but when no one sees that from the outside Its like really hard to take myself seriously or take seriously my thoughts and feelings. I really just want to be taken seriously by wider society and I'm just not.. I am forced to boy mode at work as a result because I don't think people would take me seriously if I came out and that's also slowly driving me to crazy