Hell I went through college and actively got worse for it, folding back in on myself with a bad rationalization of cognitive dissonance that actively formed a shield against learning and becoming better. To be completely honest, if that hadn't been shredded along with all the other bullshit I'd built up as a bulwark of repression when I finally accepted I was trans, I probably never would have snapped out of it.

Even in that state, learning things that contradicted the built up schema was like touching a raw wound. Like I'm not trying to be poetic here, that is literally what it felt like, it was a physical pain. It took years of slowly learning more and more while existing in a status quo that was actively hostile to my very existence just to bring me around to being a naive sucdem, and years more of reading and talking and processing things to bring me to where I am now.