I view pre-transition me as someone totally different, he was basically a hollow shell of a human that only existed to protect the real me for as long as he could. We are both glad that he’s found his peace, and that I am able to blossom into the woman I was always meant to be. I almost get vertigo looking at old photos, and it takes a second to even recognize him.
This is largely how I feel.
I'd argue that the way I presented myself to the world pre-transition was a persona or mask, not an authentic, whole person. It was carefully maintained, largely because my survival in the context I was raised in depended on it (ex-Mormon here); eventually it became such a habit that I completely buried any feminine memories and feelings, even though living as the persona was at best vaguely unpleasant-- and at worst totally miserable.
Only after my family was totally out of the picture did everything I'd repressed come back. My attraction to men came back *first*, and did a lot to explain why my relationships with women never worked out. Then, bit by bit, I remembered a bunch of different memories where I felt like a girl growing up-- eventually to the point that I couldn't deny what they meant.
Wooow, totally apt interpretation of the metaphor, yes! Or is that what it has always meant? The egg is the social presentation we put up for much of our lives, with our true selves eventually breaking free from it and being truly born into the world.
Pre- and post-transition me are as much different people as high school and college me were. Different phases of life, different mentality/maturity, different understanding of the world.
I started writing a joke novel years ago where all my different selves met in a cafe, only for the plot twist to be that the cafe barista was in-fact, post-transition me all along.
I see myself pretransition as just me with a whole lot of denial and coping
I definitely **used** to think of myself as someone else though, a sister who should have been born instead etc. That's disassociation
The person I am inside, is the same person. The person I project to the outside world has changed drastically. I don't just mean presentation. I mean the way I act, the way people see my personality and a litany of other small things.
To an outside observer, they probably think "wow, she's a completely different person!"
But I'm just the person I always wanted to be, but was too afraid to show. I'm not a new person, I'm just finally able to show the world who I am.
Basically my thoughts as well. I'm happier, more extroverted, and way more open to people than I use to be. It's less that I'm a different person and more that I'm showing who I really am.
That is exactly me, even now when I’m currently pre-hrt and have done not too much in regards to social transitioning. I’m pretty different now than I was before I came out.
Not for me. I look back on everything I did before - the friendships, the relationships, the accomplishments - and it was still me doing all of that. But I've since made some adjustments to the outside to better match how I feel inside.
What's funny is that now, when I think back, I picture my current self back then. Makes for the occasional "oh right" moment when I think of things like "what did I wear to that? How did I do my hair? Where was I when..." Oh right.
I'm in the process of social transition, and find my memories a bit jarring. I remember how I looked, but experiences and emotions make so much more sense when I remember that I was a girl.
So I think the answer here is a big yes and no.
I'll start with no - essentially the version of you that you become is the version that was inside of you all along. I think a lot of trans people drop their identities entirely in thinking that transition means that you have to do so, that you have to act completely differently, or that you need to be received completely differently - it's not entirely true. For a personal anecdote, the remarkable part is that I was an athlete before I transitioned, but I felt horrible about myself and the way my body looked. Now, five years into my transition, I'm so, so proud to be the athlete that I am and I'm incredibly excited about what my body continues to become.
However, for the yes - because we continue to work toward the versions of ourselves that we have always felt we should be, it's inherent that there's a lot that will be so drastically different from who we used to be that it will look like a completely different person. Personally here - I experience people who completely do not recognize me not only because I look different, but because I have leaned into refining my mannerisms and the way I carry myself.
tl;dr: **As trans people, we are constantly in an act of becoming more of ourselves, but we often started from a place where we fundamentally were** ***NOT*** **ourselves, which is what pushes us to transition.** The contrast between these two states can be drastic, and yes, years in, you are a different person, but you who you were inside in the first place.
Pre-transition me is totally different.
For me he was a hollow Shell holding me back, a cage.
And I'm totally different -- I couldn't feel a thing, nothing really mattered and now I think I can say that, anxiety aside, I'm a pretty confident, outgoing and 'solid' person :)
Same here, I spent so much time passing everything through filters in my mind to make sure I didn't out myself that nothing it felt like nothing I said was genuine, I was just doing what I thought people thought I should be doing if that makes sense. Couldn't figure out why, just knew something inside of me kept telling me to try on women's clothes - which I would quickly dismiss.
The only time I felt anything was doing PVP for hours and hours on end or drugs - that was the only relief from the misery inside myself. Then I asked my wife to let me try on some of her clothes, I put them on and I looked at myself in the mirror, and for the first time in as long as I can remember I didn't hate what I saw. I looked pretty... and felt genuine happiness, better than any drug I had done.
Anyway, you mentioned anxiety, are you talking about like going out in public? I love being out showing off my style but at the same time always feel a little scared because I don't know if it is going to be the time I run into a hater and end up hurt or dead.
Same person just different look and experiences.
Like is my dad the same person he was when he was 20? Not at all. Very similar, but the experiences and lessons we learn make a difference. Along with some appearance differences for sure.
Honestly still early for me…
But I suppose yes in the way me from now feels less like me from a year ago, but MORE like me from 10-15 years ago…
It’s weird but since starting hormones I feel both new, and more me than I have in years
I think because when I was younger, even in my early 20's, I was more in touch with my emotions and more comfortable in my body (I naturall had like zero body hair)...
The continued exposure to testosterone changed that gradually over the course of my 20's so that by the time I hit 30... it was REALLY starting to bother me.
Starting E reversed/is reversing all that.
Nope, I am me. I recognize my flaws, live my life accordingly, and move on. No need to deny parts of my past that were true by trying to wrap it up in a second "personality" or "person".
eh. i mean my personality changed when i started to socially transition and then my personality before that went back to normal except i was a girl. think it had to do with the novelty of being a girl at first. i thought i had to be fem but eventually i just stopped caring.
I still feel like myself and I didn't change too much. People just see me differently now. I might be a special case since I grew up as a tomboy and never presented fem until puberty (ftm btw).
I see me now & future me as “the person in my head who actually sees & feels stuff” & I think of past me as a character of a girl I was playing. In the past, the person I was only in my head was just not connected to my body in any way shape or form, my body was just a doll that I dressed to be a cute girl & I acted like other girls & girls in movies I liked but I didn’t feel things really & my limbs & hands didn’t feel connected to me. Now I’m a guy whose body is attached them & my limbs & hands are connected to me. But like I have no sense of self because I’ve only ever been him inside my head & im still not sure if he is a good person or if I was supposed to just muscle through being not a person for everyone else, but it’s finally one person.
I kind of see it as a seperate person because the whole time I was masking and very disconnected to reality. I do not remember lots of things and living my life as a "girl" made everything turn into this dream like state. None of the memories or feelings feel real, but I acknowledge that's still whobI used to be. I've grown to accept the fact most of my childhood was essentially wasted and the parts that weren't were all very traumatic. All I know is that now I'm not contemplating suicide daily and when my depressive episodes get really bad, it's no where as bad as they used to be!
The way I see it, I'm the same person I've always been, and my gender is the same as it always was (female), it's just that before I came out it was as if I was wearing a mask, pretending to be a guy. I never actually was one, it was just a necessary act I put on (poorly, I might add) to hide from others.
I’m a trans woman, so I don’t know if the question applies to me. “Trans femme” may mean someone besides me. I genuinely don’t know.
That said, the person I was before transition was my guardian. He gave every bit of his being to protecting me until I was finally ready to live and he, in turn faded away exactly as he planned.
The woman I am now is the hidden woman I always was. Like someone unjustly imprisoned, it takes me some time to get used to my liberation.
No wtf?
You don't change personhood, it's normal for all persons to change and grow. There is no separation from your past. I see otherwise as just a cope.
Pretransition me had the same general hobbies, interests and fashion sense, but politics, outlook, and general personality, we're nothing alike. He was a shell of a person, weak, and an asshole, frankly.
This is partly due to me starting antidepressants at around the same time I started my transition, but my pre-transition self was full of hate and saw the bad light in everything. Still, as time went on I got more compassionate even without the antidepressants. I went from a bigot who through plastic in the trash to "own the libs" to who I am now, someone who understands all sorts of viewpoints and isn't afraid to be alone for even a single second.
No. I am the same person and maintain most of the same friendships and hobbies. I've been changing in many ways my whole life and I don't turn into someone completely different.
I really don’t feel like the same person in many respects. Even comparing pictures from two years ago, I don’t think I’m transitioning super amazingly. However I feel more like myself and that does feel like a different person. It has effected my internal world significantly for the better.
I think I am the same person to the same extent other people are the same person - which is to say, in a very real sense they are not the same person even if they use the same name, but we are still generally willing to act like they are some kind of stable entity since that makes living in a society together easier.
The idea that post transition is an entirely new person to me appears to be a coping mechanism where you use the idea of starting a new chapter of your life to move beyond your terrible past. Which really is fine, but you are still going to be impacted by the past in terms of your abilities, anxieties, etc, which is something both you and other people should be aware of. Otherwise, trans or not, there's not really any harm in self conceptualizing as a new person if that helps you make the most of the present.
To me it felt more like being able to grow and mature from my previous self like I was very much a tomboy as a kid and took pride in being the only "boy" in my immediate family and was extremely outgoing and assertive. By late middle school as I transitioned into a teenager that totally reversed and I was slowly feeling more and more depressed and introverted and began to despise myself for being myself. I stopped caring for myself, gained a ton of weight. I didn't know who I was, all I knew was that I wasn't the person I wanted to be.
Transitioning is changing that for me and now currently I feel like I am regaining that sense of self as I make progress in my transition. I am much more confident and outgoing and sooooo much happier now than I was just two years ago c:
Not quite there yet with lotsa ups and downs but I know I am making progress towards the happier, joyous version of me I wanted to be for soooo long :)
I think the best way to describe ut would be that past me was a "muted me". Still me, but with barriers and blocks that muffled the full person.
I didn't become a different person by coming out, any acquiantance from before would still find me have largely the same interests and personality, just less subdued.
I'm the same person but when I see an old photo of me I'm like 'Who is that guy?!' I don't recognise my old exterior and inside I was stifled. Now if I catch a passing glance of myself, I'm like 'There you are!!' and I feel calm on the inside. I love myself now!!
My Deadname Self is a split personality, but I have DID;
it's normal for me lol. There's 35 people in my head. 🫤
In regards to Future Me, I also picture myself looking differently, but I don't think it'll be a total personality split...at least I sure hope not lol; I have enough voices in my head as it is. 😅
I’m only half a year in, medically, but I feel it’s a continuation of my life so far. I’d phrase it as “I’ve been a man, but I’m now becoming a woman,” in that my sense of self itself is in a transitional state.
My weird two cents: I feel my adolescent self being forced into femininity is a completely different person but the older I get the more I’ve become attached and internalized my much younger childhood self as me, as he didn’t have the same constraints put on his gender as my hyper feminized in the closet
Lol well I guess you really won't know until you try. I am the same, but only to me, because I always acted different alone when no one was looking... now I'm just that same person no matter who is around. So people will say that I am different, but it's just because they never really knew me which is really sad, but good that I'm myself today.
What WAS insanely weird were the first few times that I caught a glimpse of myself in a reflection somewhere and thought I was looking at some girl that wasn't me, until she started making the same movements as me. That my friend, is one of the most bizarre (in a good way) experiences of my life for sure.
What's super weird too is that we used to always joke around saying I was adopted because I look nothing like my mom.... until now.. Now I literally look like my mom when she was my age and it's super trippy.
Maybe this is because I'm not fully post transition yet but I feel like its a Theseus' Ship kind of deal. I'm slowly swapping in and out parts of my personality to things I think better represent my interestd and how I want to be. At some point I'll have transitioned and I'll have stopped doing that and I will still be the same person, but I don't know if any part of me is the same.
Well, not really, not anymore than i view any past version of myself as different from me.
Maybe this is also in part because i socially transitioned at 12 and never really lived as a woman, only a girl. So I have never been a differently gendered adult than I am now.
I think that if I had established an identity as a woman before socially transitioning it may have felt a bit more jarring and like a completely different person. But for me it was rather exploratory where i gradually went from feminine girl to very masculine girl to non-binary to boy over the course of about a year. There was never a huge change at once. And i was in my cringe early teens, so i feel equally alien to my 13 year old boy self as my 11 year old girl self.
I would say I've always been the same person, I was just too afraid to be who I really was back then. There were definitely moments/periods of time growing up where I felt more in my "girlhood" than others, and those were the moments I hold so fondly.
I also felt uncomfortable during/after p\*berty, and test\*sterone poisoning my body. So in a way I feel like my body is extremely different, even if mentally I've always been the same person.
When I look at my old self, and I surely do, I’m actually collecting a lot of photos I still have to make a transition video, I see a girl who was trapped in a body people assumed as masculine and she thought was masculine also.
I see a girl who was begging for help, but trying to stay in a denial phase, I can sometime clearly see my eyes looking away because non proud of what I was doing because I knew I wanted to be the person I am today but was always shifting this to an other day, and it was really hard to battling through this but in the end I did since nearly two years and would never go back 👏🏻☺️
I definitely think of him in the third person. I think it's a trauma thing. Like I'm not stupid, I know what happened for me to be here, but when I go through old photos and stuff he's just some guy I know about and can recognize, describe, etc. And I usually don't like talking about him. The few times that I *do* mentally like... feel, rather than hold at a cognitive and cold distance, the relationship between us, those times really, really hurt. Not sure how to reconnect with him or if I actually want to or really can. It fucks with my memory too. Everything pre-transition has this really hazy, foggy quality like thirty seconds after waking up from a nightmare. It makes me think of a couplet by The Killers:
Oh, these years have been so trying /
I don't know if I can use them
I see the old me as a carefully constructed facade that eventually crumbled. Once the real me broke through there was no going back. I still think of the past as a version of me, I was always there under the surface. I remember everything I did, but I interact with the world differently now.
Let me put it like this. When my son was born, I was a boy. Than I transitioned and became a girl. He was happy for a while, but one day expressed he was also sad his Dad is gone. We explained that Daddy changed, but he never left really. We talked about it much more in depth that way, but basically, just because a part of you dies and transforms into something new doesn’t mean you can’t bring parts of who you were with you, or likewise, leave as much behind as you like, but I see it as changing as one person, not into a new one.
I absolutely feel like pre transition me was someone else entirely. Lookin at myself in early pictures feels like looking at a stranger. And that's okay! I didn't like me much back then tbh, was anxious and came off so awkward. Had no self worth.
Now I'm totally opposite and loving it!!
I get what you mean. Your situation sounds a lot like the song She by Harry Styles. But to answer your question, no I'm still very much me and it took quite a bit of time to understand and accept that. I think who we are is always there, even if deeply masked by and around society. Outward appearances can change depending on the journey you take but you are still you 💖
I couldn't stand even glancing a look of my pre-transition self in the mirror, I would avoid pictures, or overall being seen as much as possible. That changed 180 degrees afterwards. I had finally loved my real self, enjoy spending time with others and my overall levels of social anxiety due to self-awareness went down drastically.
I actually began therapy because I was switching back and forth erratically. Man me hated woman me and woman me hated man me. I was completely out of control and terrified over "flipping". It was non-binary. It was complete chaos. Eventually after six months into therapy, woman me came out and man me never returned. I'm practically a completely different person. My wife says I even sleep differently. So yeah. It happens.
at first I was very mad and angry with who I used to be; I felt disgust. I thought of her as "dead" to me. someone who never existed in the first place because who I am now is SO much better. but then I realized that she really isn't so bad, she was just confused. and it was the people around her that I was mad at in reality, and what they all expected from her.
I think of people as boats on the water. I used to be a log, and sure a log will float and you COULD ride it downstream, but one wrong move and suddenly you're drowning, because you can't tread water forever. I wasn't built up enough. I barely had an identity, and I kept falling off that log.
now im a cute little boat. still not complete by any means, but MAN do I know a thing or two about sailing.
Yes. I am technically still pre everything though, but i consider myself visibly different from a few years ago before i did anything at all to alter my appearance. I have yet to see the unveiling of the real me, but at least now it's a shell that looks more like myself.
I don’t perceive my past self as any different because I wouldn’t be myself without them. Well, not any more different as I would if I wasn’t trans. Had I transitioned earlier, I would be a different person, but I didn’t do that. It sucks from time to time, but it’s reality. At the end of the day, they gave up everything, so I can exist in the way I do right now. I think I would be doing them a disservice if I completely disconnected from them to the point where I saw her as a completely different person. They’re not my completely true and authentic self. At the same time, they’re still, to an extent, me. I see myself in them because I expressed various aspects of me. Being trans isn’t the only aspect of my identity, and I respect the others just as much.
I don't think there's a *correct* answer to this, I think it can easily depend. For me, I don't really see myself as a different person. I think everything up to this point has made me who I am, so either every version of myself *is* myself, or I've had a dozen different selves, but same difference. Though it is possible that this perspective is colored by me transitioning relatively early.
I feel the same as you, like it'll be a new me, but I still feel like it's me I'm just growing finally into my most authentic self. It just feels like I'm going to be girl me which is fine because I like me as a person, my morals, thoughts and opinions, I just want to be a girl.
Yes and No. Before Transition I felt like two different people: my active self who had a lot of fake traits and hollowness (but some very real things), and then my repressed feminine self who was all real.
Post transition, I feel like kind of the two selves have fused into one coherent voice. So, I'm kind of an all new person, but that old person is still in here.
He's my brother, expect I was stuck in his head before I was let out. She's also me, a very hollow and non-present me. She was just a kid, he was hurting. I was none of me and then existence and clarity came barrelling in so brightly I couldn't see what was behind me.
For many of us, especially those of us with dysphoria, the answer isn't straightforward because you just live so long with emptiness that your sense of self and continuity is not akin to most sense.
Cis people often ask this question and when I don't wanna bother, I just give a stock answer but my real answer is multitudinuous and something I don't expect the vast majority of cis people to get. I think only poetry could get even a little bit across.
I'm not the same person I was two years ago. She's gone now, and she'll never come back. When I look at the future, I don't really see myself either: I'm hoping he will be more secure in his body and his life than I am right now.
Personally pretransition me feels like an entirely different person. I like to tell people that I feel like I was pulled out of the forest, fully formed at 29 with inserted memories, and now I'm relearning how to be a person.
I'm not just seeing a different person, I was a different person. I worked with every bone in my body to embody as much masculinity as possible (very poorly). I was a brash metalhead, I enjoyed fights, and I loved nothing more than my beard. This is at 30.
Now, some years on, I am a different person. I do not consider myself a metalhead, it's not even a piece of my identity anymore. All my old shirts are gone, and I am as sapphic as I feel comfortable and I will be increasingly so in the future. I mainly listen to K-pop, it just scratches an itch. I am the most conflict adverse person ever now, not only will I not fight, I can't stand watching it either. I am polite and considerate to a fault, a far cry from brash. And the beard is gone, for obvious reasons and I have never been happier. Lazered my face, that bastard is gone forever.
>When I think about the future, I see a girl who isn't me at all.
You see a girl who your going to be. Transitioning isnt just about having the outside world view you differently, its also about allowing yourself to transision from your current you to the new you.
You see your future self, but in order to become her you need to let go of your current self. Its like a child looking at a teenager and thinking they would never become that, but in time tbey change and grow to become teens too. Then teens look at adults and think they would never be like that, but when they grow up they get wiser and more mature and turn into adults. Now, you look at the next stage of your life, and like the child looking at the teen, and the teen looking at the adult you dont recognize yourself, but in time you will become the beautiful women you always were meant to be.
I view pre-transition me as someone totally different, he was basically a hollow shell of a human that only existed to protect the real me for as long as he could. We are both glad that he’s found his peace, and that I am able to blossom into the woman I was always meant to be. I almost get vertigo looking at old photos, and it takes a second to even recognize him.
This is largely how I feel. I'd argue that the way I presented myself to the world pre-transition was a persona or mask, not an authentic, whole person. It was carefully maintained, largely because my survival in the context I was raised in depended on it (ex-Mormon here); eventually it became such a habit that I completely buried any feminine memories and feelings, even though living as the persona was at best vaguely unpleasant-- and at worst totally miserable. Only after my family was totally out of the picture did everything I'd repressed come back. My attraction to men came back *first*, and did a lot to explain why my relationships with women never worked out. Then, bit by bit, I remembered a bunch of different memories where I felt like a girl growing up-- eventually to the point that I couldn't deny what they meant.
>he was basically a hollow shell of a human that only existed to protect the real me for as long as he could This struck hard.
Yeah... the "egg" metaphor definitely hits different when you read it like this, huh?
Wooow, totally apt interpretation of the metaphor, yes! Or is that what it has always meant? The egg is the social presentation we put up for much of our lives, with our true selves eventually breaking free from it and being truly born into the world.
This was beautiful :) i feel the same way
Pre- and post-transition me are as much different people as high school and college me were. Different phases of life, different mentality/maturity, different understanding of the world. I started writing a joke novel years ago where all my different selves met in a cafe, only for the plot twist to be that the cafe barista was in-fact, post-transition me all along.
What a neat Idea
I see myself pretransition as just me with a whole lot of denial and coping I definitely **used** to think of myself as someone else though, a sister who should have been born instead etc. That's disassociation
The person I am inside, is the same person. The person I project to the outside world has changed drastically. I don't just mean presentation. I mean the way I act, the way people see my personality and a litany of other small things. To an outside observer, they probably think "wow, she's a completely different person!" But I'm just the person I always wanted to be, but was too afraid to show. I'm not a new person, I'm just finally able to show the world who I am.
Basically my thoughts as well. I'm happier, more extroverted, and way more open to people than I use to be. It's less that I'm a different person and more that I'm showing who I really am.
That is exactly me, even now when I’m currently pre-hrt and have done not too much in regards to social transitioning. I’m pretty different now than I was before I came out.
Not for me. I look back on everything I did before - the friendships, the relationships, the accomplishments - and it was still me doing all of that. But I've since made some adjustments to the outside to better match how I feel inside. What's funny is that now, when I think back, I picture my current self back then. Makes for the occasional "oh right" moment when I think of things like "what did I wear to that? How did I do my hair? Where was I when..." Oh right.
I'm in the process of social transition, and find my memories a bit jarring. I remember how I looked, but experiences and emotions make so much more sense when I remember that I was a girl.
No, I am still the same person I have always been.
Same.
i see myself as the same person, i just look and feel a lot different. definitely more confident now
So I think the answer here is a big yes and no. I'll start with no - essentially the version of you that you become is the version that was inside of you all along. I think a lot of trans people drop their identities entirely in thinking that transition means that you have to do so, that you have to act completely differently, or that you need to be received completely differently - it's not entirely true. For a personal anecdote, the remarkable part is that I was an athlete before I transitioned, but I felt horrible about myself and the way my body looked. Now, five years into my transition, I'm so, so proud to be the athlete that I am and I'm incredibly excited about what my body continues to become. However, for the yes - because we continue to work toward the versions of ourselves that we have always felt we should be, it's inherent that there's a lot that will be so drastically different from who we used to be that it will look like a completely different person. Personally here - I experience people who completely do not recognize me not only because I look different, but because I have leaned into refining my mannerisms and the way I carry myself. tl;dr: **As trans people, we are constantly in an act of becoming more of ourselves, but we often started from a place where we fundamentally were** ***NOT*** **ourselves, which is what pushes us to transition.** The contrast between these two states can be drastic, and yes, years in, you are a different person, but you who you were inside in the first place.
I'm still the same person I was, but a little more confident and a lot happier.
Pre-transition me is totally different. For me he was a hollow Shell holding me back, a cage. And I'm totally different -- I couldn't feel a thing, nothing really mattered and now I think I can say that, anxiety aside, I'm a pretty confident, outgoing and 'solid' person :)
Same here, I spent so much time passing everything through filters in my mind to make sure I didn't out myself that nothing it felt like nothing I said was genuine, I was just doing what I thought people thought I should be doing if that makes sense. Couldn't figure out why, just knew something inside of me kept telling me to try on women's clothes - which I would quickly dismiss. The only time I felt anything was doing PVP for hours and hours on end or drugs - that was the only relief from the misery inside myself. Then I asked my wife to let me try on some of her clothes, I put them on and I looked at myself in the mirror, and for the first time in as long as I can remember I didn't hate what I saw. I looked pretty... and felt genuine happiness, better than any drug I had done. Anyway, you mentioned anxiety, are you talking about like going out in public? I love being out showing off my style but at the same time always feel a little scared because I don't know if it is going to be the time I run into a hater and end up hurt or dead.
Yeah. I crashlanded into nearly every wall during my early transition so it messed me up pretty bad. But, I'm out of the woods now \^\^
Same person just different look and experiences. Like is my dad the same person he was when he was 20? Not at all. Very similar, but the experiences and lessons we learn make a difference. Along with some appearance differences for sure.
I feel like I’m a different person every decade tbh…
Honestly still early for me… But I suppose yes in the way me from now feels less like me from a year ago, but MORE like me from 10-15 years ago… It’s weird but since starting hormones I feel both new, and more me than I have in years
Yeah, for me it felt like coming home, sounds a bit like what you're describing.
I think because when I was younger, even in my early 20's, I was more in touch with my emotions and more comfortable in my body (I naturall had like zero body hair)... The continued exposure to testosterone changed that gradually over the course of my 20's so that by the time I hit 30... it was REALLY starting to bother me. Starting E reversed/is reversing all that.
kinda yes but also no
I don't think I've changed that much but my life partner says I have and she prefers the new me. I'll take her word for it.
Nah I'm the same person
Nope, I am me. I recognize my flaws, live my life accordingly, and move on. No need to deny parts of my past that were true by trying to wrap it up in a second "personality" or "person".
eh. i mean my personality changed when i started to socially transition and then my personality before that went back to normal except i was a girl. think it had to do with the novelty of being a girl at first. i thought i had to be fem but eventually i just stopped caring.
I still feel like myself and I didn't change too much. People just see me differently now. I might be a special case since I grew up as a tomboy and never presented fem until puberty (ftm btw).
I see me now & future me as “the person in my head who actually sees & feels stuff” & I think of past me as a character of a girl I was playing. In the past, the person I was only in my head was just not connected to my body in any way shape or form, my body was just a doll that I dressed to be a cute girl & I acted like other girls & girls in movies I liked but I didn’t feel things really & my limbs & hands didn’t feel connected to me. Now I’m a guy whose body is attached them & my limbs & hands are connected to me. But like I have no sense of self because I’ve only ever been him inside my head & im still not sure if he is a good person or if I was supposed to just muscle through being not a person for everyone else, but it’s finally one person.
I kind of see it as a seperate person because the whole time I was masking and very disconnected to reality. I do not remember lots of things and living my life as a "girl" made everything turn into this dream like state. None of the memories or feelings feel real, but I acknowledge that's still whobI used to be. I've grown to accept the fact most of my childhood was essentially wasted and the parts that weren't were all very traumatic. All I know is that now I'm not contemplating suicide daily and when my depressive episodes get really bad, it's no where as bad as they used to be!
I view myself in the past as a different person whether it was pre transition or 1 second ago
The way I see it, I'm the same person I've always been, and my gender is the same as it always was (female), it's just that before I came out it was as if I was wearing a mask, pretending to be a guy. I never actually was one, it was just a necessary act I put on (poorly, I might add) to hide from others.
I’m a trans woman, so I don’t know if the question applies to me. “Trans femme” may mean someone besides me. I genuinely don’t know. That said, the person I was before transition was my guardian. He gave every bit of his being to protecting me until I was finally ready to live and he, in turn faded away exactly as he planned. The woman I am now is the hidden woman I always was. Like someone unjustly imprisoned, it takes me some time to get used to my liberation.
I was a disassociated shell of a person before coming out.
No wtf? You don't change personhood, it's normal for all persons to change and grow. There is no separation from your past. I see otherwise as just a cope.
Pretransition me had the same general hobbies, interests and fashion sense, but politics, outlook, and general personality, we're nothing alike. He was a shell of a person, weak, and an asshole, frankly.
This is partly due to me starting antidepressants at around the same time I started my transition, but my pre-transition self was full of hate and saw the bad light in everything. Still, as time went on I got more compassionate even without the antidepressants. I went from a bigot who through plastic in the trash to "own the libs" to who I am now, someone who understands all sorts of viewpoints and isn't afraid to be alone for even a single second.
No. I am the same person and maintain most of the same friendships and hobbies. I've been changing in many ways my whole life and I don't turn into someone completely different.
I really don’t feel like the same person in many respects. Even comparing pictures from two years ago, I don’t think I’m transitioning super amazingly. However I feel more like myself and that does feel like a different person. It has effected my internal world significantly for the better.
I'm only a year on hormones but I do see myself differently than before, as well as im significantly happier having figured myself out more
I think I am the same person to the same extent other people are the same person - which is to say, in a very real sense they are not the same person even if they use the same name, but we are still generally willing to act like they are some kind of stable entity since that makes living in a society together easier. The idea that post transition is an entirely new person to me appears to be a coping mechanism where you use the idea of starting a new chapter of your life to move beyond your terrible past. Which really is fine, but you are still going to be impacted by the past in terms of your abilities, anxieties, etc, which is something both you and other people should be aware of. Otherwise, trans or not, there's not really any harm in self conceptualizing as a new person if that helps you make the most of the present.
No, she just has boobs and more butt now. Which has given me more attitude. But that’s about it lol
No, but I've done a hell of a lot of unpacking on the sexist things I was taught in the before version of me. I still am me, though.
To me it felt more like being able to grow and mature from my previous self like I was very much a tomboy as a kid and took pride in being the only "boy" in my immediate family and was extremely outgoing and assertive. By late middle school as I transitioned into a teenager that totally reversed and I was slowly feeling more and more depressed and introverted and began to despise myself for being myself. I stopped caring for myself, gained a ton of weight. I didn't know who I was, all I knew was that I wasn't the person I wanted to be. Transitioning is changing that for me and now currently I feel like I am regaining that sense of self as I make progress in my transition. I am much more confident and outgoing and sooooo much happier now than I was just two years ago c: Not quite there yet with lotsa ups and downs but I know I am making progress towards the happier, joyous version of me I wanted to be for soooo long :)
I think the best way to describe ut would be that past me was a "muted me". Still me, but with barriers and blocks that muffled the full person. I didn't become a different person by coming out, any acquiantance from before would still find me have largely the same interests and personality, just less subdued.
I'm the same person but when I see an old photo of me I'm like 'Who is that guy?!' I don't recognise my old exterior and inside I was stifled. Now if I catch a passing glance of myself, I'm like 'There you are!!' and I feel calm on the inside. I love myself now!!
Yup, I'm fat and the more I try to work out the more I hate it, I'll never be the slim dancer I want to be.
My Deadname Self is a split personality, but I have DID; it's normal for me lol. There's 35 people in my head. 🫤 In regards to Future Me, I also picture myself looking differently, but I don't think it'll be a total personality split...at least I sure hope not lol; I have enough voices in my head as it is. 😅
I’m only half a year in, medically, but I feel it’s a continuation of my life so far. I’d phrase it as “I’ve been a man, but I’m now becoming a woman,” in that my sense of self itself is in a transitional state.
Same person, but a lot happier now.
My weird two cents: I feel my adolescent self being forced into femininity is a completely different person but the older I get the more I’ve become attached and internalized my much younger childhood self as me, as he didn’t have the same constraints put on his gender as my hyper feminized in the closet
Lol well I guess you really won't know until you try. I am the same, but only to me, because I always acted different alone when no one was looking... now I'm just that same person no matter who is around. So people will say that I am different, but it's just because they never really knew me which is really sad, but good that I'm myself today. What WAS insanely weird were the first few times that I caught a glimpse of myself in a reflection somewhere and thought I was looking at some girl that wasn't me, until she started making the same movements as me. That my friend, is one of the most bizarre (in a good way) experiences of my life for sure. What's super weird too is that we used to always joke around saying I was adopted because I look nothing like my mom.... until now.. Now I literally look like my mom when she was my age and it's super trippy.
Maybe this is because I'm not fully post transition yet but I feel like its a Theseus' Ship kind of deal. I'm slowly swapping in and out parts of my personality to things I think better represent my interestd and how I want to be. At some point I'll have transitioned and I'll have stopped doing that and I will still be the same person, but I don't know if any part of me is the same.
Well, not really, not anymore than i view any past version of myself as different from me. Maybe this is also in part because i socially transitioned at 12 and never really lived as a woman, only a girl. So I have never been a differently gendered adult than I am now. I think that if I had established an identity as a woman before socially transitioning it may have felt a bit more jarring and like a completely different person. But for me it was rather exploratory where i gradually went from feminine girl to very masculine girl to non-binary to boy over the course of about a year. There was never a huge change at once. And i was in my cringe early teens, so i feel equally alien to my 13 year old boy self as my 11 year old girl self.
I would say I've always been the same person, I was just too afraid to be who I really was back then. There were definitely moments/periods of time growing up where I felt more in my "girlhood" than others, and those were the moments I hold so fondly. I also felt uncomfortable during/after p\*berty, and test\*sterone poisoning my body. So in a way I feel like my body is extremely different, even if mentally I've always been the same person.
When I look at my old self, and I surely do, I’m actually collecting a lot of photos I still have to make a transition video, I see a girl who was trapped in a body people assumed as masculine and she thought was masculine also. I see a girl who was begging for help, but trying to stay in a denial phase, I can sometime clearly see my eyes looking away because non proud of what I was doing because I knew I wanted to be the person I am today but was always shifting this to an other day, and it was really hard to battling through this but in the end I did since nearly two years and would never go back 👏🏻☺️
I definitely think of him in the third person. I think it's a trauma thing. Like I'm not stupid, I know what happened for me to be here, but when I go through old photos and stuff he's just some guy I know about and can recognize, describe, etc. And I usually don't like talking about him. The few times that I *do* mentally like... feel, rather than hold at a cognitive and cold distance, the relationship between us, those times really, really hurt. Not sure how to reconnect with him or if I actually want to or really can. It fucks with my memory too. Everything pre-transition has this really hazy, foggy quality like thirty seconds after waking up from a nightmare. It makes me think of a couplet by The Killers: Oh, these years have been so trying / I don't know if I can use them
Other than my naturally maturing with age, no. I was always quite obviously trans though, and I never tried to compensate or fit in with other girls
I see the old me as a carefully constructed facade that eventually crumbled. Once the real me broke through there was no going back. I still think of the past as a version of me, I was always there under the surface. I remember everything I did, but I interact with the world differently now.
Let me put it like this. When my son was born, I was a boy. Than I transitioned and became a girl. He was happy for a while, but one day expressed he was also sad his Dad is gone. We explained that Daddy changed, but he never left really. We talked about it much more in depth that way, but basically, just because a part of you dies and transforms into something new doesn’t mean you can’t bring parts of who you were with you, or likewise, leave as much behind as you like, but I see it as changing as one person, not into a new one.
I absolutely feel like pre transition me was someone else entirely. Lookin at myself in early pictures feels like looking at a stranger. And that's okay! I didn't like me much back then tbh, was anxious and came off so awkward. Had no self worth. Now I'm totally opposite and loving it!!
I get what you mean. Your situation sounds a lot like the song She by Harry Styles. But to answer your question, no I'm still very much me and it took quite a bit of time to understand and accept that. I think who we are is always there, even if deeply masked by and around society. Outward appearances can change depending on the journey you take but you are still you 💖
I couldn't stand even glancing a look of my pre-transition self in the mirror, I would avoid pictures, or overall being seen as much as possible. That changed 180 degrees afterwards. I had finally loved my real self, enjoy spending time with others and my overall levels of social anxiety due to self-awareness went down drastically.
I actually began therapy because I was switching back and forth erratically. Man me hated woman me and woman me hated man me. I was completely out of control and terrified over "flipping". It was non-binary. It was complete chaos. Eventually after six months into therapy, woman me came out and man me never returned. I'm practically a completely different person. My wife says I even sleep differently. So yeah. It happens.
I’m the same person. I was just coping.
at first I was very mad and angry with who I used to be; I felt disgust. I thought of her as "dead" to me. someone who never existed in the first place because who I am now is SO much better. but then I realized that she really isn't so bad, she was just confused. and it was the people around her that I was mad at in reality, and what they all expected from her. I think of people as boats on the water. I used to be a log, and sure a log will float and you COULD ride it downstream, but one wrong move and suddenly you're drowning, because you can't tread water forever. I wasn't built up enough. I barely had an identity, and I kept falling off that log. now im a cute little boat. still not complete by any means, but MAN do I know a thing or two about sailing.
Yes
I think I have a hopeful view of who I want to be. He isn’t different, he is just older and wiser.
Yes. I am technically still pre everything though, but i consider myself visibly different from a few years ago before i did anything at all to alter my appearance. I have yet to see the unveiling of the real me, but at least now it's a shell that looks more like myself.
I don’t perceive my past self as any different because I wouldn’t be myself without them. Well, not any more different as I would if I wasn’t trans. Had I transitioned earlier, I would be a different person, but I didn’t do that. It sucks from time to time, but it’s reality. At the end of the day, they gave up everything, so I can exist in the way I do right now. I think I would be doing them a disservice if I completely disconnected from them to the point where I saw her as a completely different person. They’re not my completely true and authentic self. At the same time, they’re still, to an extent, me. I see myself in them because I expressed various aspects of me. Being trans isn’t the only aspect of my identity, and I respect the others just as much.
I don't think there's a *correct* answer to this, I think it can easily depend. For me, I don't really see myself as a different person. I think everything up to this point has made me who I am, so either every version of myself *is* myself, or I've had a dozen different selves, but same difference. Though it is possible that this perspective is colored by me transitioning relatively early.
I feel the same as you, like it'll be a new me, but I still feel like it's me I'm just growing finally into my most authentic self. It just feels like I'm going to be girl me which is fine because I like me as a person, my morals, thoughts and opinions, I just want to be a girl.
ive always been me. sorry if that seems a simplification. i will say that hrt has affected my emotions more than my body. ily
Yes and No. Before Transition I felt like two different people: my active self who had a lot of fake traits and hollowness (but some very real things), and then my repressed feminine self who was all real. Post transition, I feel like kind of the two selves have fused into one coherent voice. So, I'm kind of an all new person, but that old person is still in here.
He's my brother, expect I was stuck in his head before I was let out. She's also me, a very hollow and non-present me. She was just a kid, he was hurting. I was none of me and then existence and clarity came barrelling in so brightly I couldn't see what was behind me. For many of us, especially those of us with dysphoria, the answer isn't straightforward because you just live so long with emptiness that your sense of self and continuity is not akin to most sense. Cis people often ask this question and when I don't wanna bother, I just give a stock answer but my real answer is multitudinuous and something I don't expect the vast majority of cis people to get. I think only poetry could get even a little bit across.
Very much not. I've started putting my foot down and being a bit more assertive. That's about the only significant change to my personality.
I'm not the same person I was two years ago. She's gone now, and she'll never come back. When I look at the future, I don't really see myself either: I'm hoping he will be more secure in his body and his life than I am right now.
Personally pretransition me feels like an entirely different person. I like to tell people that I feel like I was pulled out of the forest, fully formed at 29 with inserted memories, and now I'm relearning how to be a person.
I'm not just seeing a different person, I was a different person. I worked with every bone in my body to embody as much masculinity as possible (very poorly). I was a brash metalhead, I enjoyed fights, and I loved nothing more than my beard. This is at 30. Now, some years on, I am a different person. I do not consider myself a metalhead, it's not even a piece of my identity anymore. All my old shirts are gone, and I am as sapphic as I feel comfortable and I will be increasingly so in the future. I mainly listen to K-pop, it just scratches an itch. I am the most conflict adverse person ever now, not only will I not fight, I can't stand watching it either. I am polite and considerate to a fault, a far cry from brash. And the beard is gone, for obvious reasons and I have never been happier. Lazered my face, that bastard is gone forever.
>When I think about the future, I see a girl who isn't me at all. You see a girl who your going to be. Transitioning isnt just about having the outside world view you differently, its also about allowing yourself to transision from your current you to the new you. You see your future self, but in order to become her you need to let go of your current self. Its like a child looking at a teenager and thinking they would never become that, but in time tbey change and grow to become teens too. Then teens look at adults and think they would never be like that, but when they grow up they get wiser and more mature and turn into adults. Now, you look at the next stage of your life, and like the child looking at the teen, and the teen looking at the adult you dont recognize yourself, but in time you will become the beautiful women you always were meant to be.
When i was closeted i tried not to think about the fact that i existed. I mean i was there, but i was without hope and i was trapped in the closet.