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Different people experience their gender in different ways. To some people it's a feeling they have about themselves. But to me, that's not enough, that's only the very beginning.
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Online praise is especially flimsy. If you know me online you only know what I look like with a lot of makeup, from the right angles, in the right lighting, from the selection of pictures & videos I curate. You don't know what I look at in the mirror first thing in the morning.
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Like a lot of trans people, I rely for psychological sustenance on positive feedback from other trans people. And there are a lot of great spaces online where everyone is full of love and praise for everyone else. And mostly that's good. But it can be undermined horribly.
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Sometimes I'll make a complaint like "I sound like a man in that video." And some well-meaning person will say: "well you're a woman so any way you talk is womanly!" And my heart sinks and I'll think: "The fuck? Is my beard shadow womanly beard shadow?"
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"Is everyone just patronizing me? Are all compliments lies?" "Is this just a hugbox where whatever makes trans women feel good must be true?" This sends me into a death spiral where I distrust all positive feedback and only what hurts seems real.
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This is how you end up reading threads about yourself on 4chan/lgbt at 2am with a bottle of gin and just reveling in the masochistic glory of being called an AGP hon by other self-loathing trans women who screech at each other about being AGP hons all day.
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This is very bad, of course. It's sadsacks externalizing their own self-loathing, and it's not the truth anymore than the cushiest hugbox is the truth. It's—what's the opposite of a hugbox? An iron maiden. But it feels like truth when you hate yourself.
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At the end of the day what you really need is a sharp-tongued though compassionate gay, or an experienced trans mom to take an interest in you, and give unflinching though constructive feedback. That's what actually helps.
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Anyway, probably this is all going to end in a lot of cosmetic surgery. But before doing that you want to be able to tell the difference between dysphoria about what you look like and dysmorphia about what you fear you look like.
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And seeing as the feedback is mixed and I don't trust my own perception, I don't know how I'm supposed to figure that out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Two things. 1) If this is what you look like at 8 months of HRT, holy cow! Those changes will only go further over the next year or two.
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2) I don't know if this helps, but here it is. I transitioned in my mid 20s in the 1st half of the 90s. In time, that feeling of social/physical dysphoria fades into a whisper at most. It takes time though. Sometimes a lot. It took me over 10 years, but it really does fade.
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I've found I also tend to devalue praise in online spaces where only praise is allowed, like it starts to feel like a positive affirmations language generator. Don't know if that's just a me thing though.
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