On the proper piloting of flesh shoots

I used to think it was a good idea to experiment with basically every psychoactive drug, but nowadays I am more skeptical of anyone's understanding of the effects of basically any chemical intervention on the human body, and I adopt more of a "if it's not broken, don't fix it" principle towards all of it. It's a lot easier to make my body or mind work worse than to make it work better.

(Of course, if you were already "pretty sure" you were trans, then that's a different story.)

And for the flip side, my (cis male) partner was having acne issues and decided on a whim to take my anti-androgen to see if it helped (because it's been used to treat hormonal acne, primarily in women for reasons that will become immediately obvious). He was absolutely miserable within a couple days. I was kind of amazed because I had a very similar reaction to you when I started feminizing HRT, I wasn't expecting such a dramatically different reaction on his part, even though he's a cis guy.

That being said, I don't necessarily suggest this kind of experimentation in general. I really don't know what the error rate of this method of diagnosing gender dysphoria is, and I don't want people stuck with changes they'll regret if they do feel good and decide to stay on hormones long-term solely based on that feeling (in the absence of other indicators that they are probably trans). In particular I don't recommend AFAB people try testosterone this way, partially because that one is actually illegal to possess without a prescription due to doping and also because T tends to have superficially positive mood effects in a lot of people, to my understanding, meaning feeling good on T is not as indicative of it being "correct" for you. For presumably cis guys it usually feels pretty awful to have your testosterone levels suppressed, and/or to have higher levels of estrogen, so if you don't feel that way on girl pills and you actually feel better, it's a decent signal that maybe your ideal hormone balance is somewhere in the feminine direction, with all the potential implications that may have for your gender identity.

Congratulations, I'm really happy for you!

Until recently, I was very sympathetic to this view, but on Monday the 3rd of October I started taking oestrogen (2 mg daily) and now feel Embodied, like a person made of a body and mind working together.

That's because estrogen changed the pattern-which-is-you in your brain, and so now you feel differently (the feeling is in your brain as well).

Philosophical questions aside, it's awesome that this helped you to feel better.

I would also say that until this week I didn’t know I was trans.

How do you distinguish "I didn't know I was trans until I took the drugs" and "the drugs have an effect on my mind which warps my judgment to make me think I'm trans"?