u/BoggartBae

For the lurkers and tourists ❤️

My friend recently "started" estrogen. She was gushing about how she had found this great NB doctor at this trans-friendly clinic, and when I asked her what her dose was, she said "oh well, we wanted to start slow, so 2 mg".

Two. effing. milligrams.

I told her that her doctor was transphobic. That that wasnt "starting slow", it was a rounding error for her body. She would not see any feminisation or testosterone supression on that dose, and she would continue to age into a man unless she got a higher dose or started DIY.

"Oh, but my doctor is non-binary! She can't be transphobic"

I think this sub has too much NB hate sometimes, so please see this as a case study for a broader problem in medicine, rather than using it to attack NBs

Doctors are created in a bigoted system, and they perpetuate bigoted medical practices, and they reinforce bigoted rules. All doctors are bigots. It does not matter how nice or liberal they seem, or what their motivations are; doctors are created by bigotry, and they perpetuate bigotry.

And if you *really* think that you have a good one, consider: you are not a doctor, so you don't know the difference between effective medicine and placebo. You can only judge based on vibes, and bigots are really good at hiding themselves with vibes.

Imagine if my friend had trusted her doctor, based on vibes? She didn't understand the medicine she was taking, so her doctor fucked her over.

If you don't understand the medicine you are taking, your doctor's number one priority will be to lower liability and give you the minimal ammount of treatment they can get away with, because medicine doesn't see being trans as a real medical condition, because medicine is bigoted.

TDD.

If someone has a lot of stong emotions about themselves, then telling them to love themselves is just adding more strong emotions to the fire, which will cause more intense mood swings. "Love yourself" is actively bad advice for a lot of highly emotional people, and this is not what most users here need. If you are genuinely feeling good about yourself, then yeah, lean into that while it lasts, but do not try to force your self-hate into self-love.

What you should do instead is remind yourself that being mean is rarely a good motivator for change. It is ok to dislike things about yourself, and to want to change things about yourself, but that change should be motivated by something more productive than self-hate. Whatever reason you find that:

-makes sense
-gives you the drive to do things
-gives you the rush of a job well done

is a good reason in my book. Personally, I *like* disliking things about myself, because it gives me the fire to actually go out and change them. Importantly, this fire feels *GOOD*, and is not accompanied by any self-hatred or negative emotions whatsoever. This is 100% a symptom of my Disorder, but if feeling good and pursuing my goals is unhealthy, then psychology as a field is truly useless.

Traps you might fall into:
- Self-hate can be very comforting if that is all you've known for a while. "comforting" is the opposite of "motivating". Do not twist what I am saying to justify your self-hatred and rot.
- It is ok if you don't have perfect thoughts, and it's ok to not be happy all the time. You should strive for mostly content with the direction that you are headed, but try not to beat yourself up if you can't control your thoughts and feel sad sometimes. That is the doom spiral.
-Other people will never understand your desire to change, and will try to force you to accept yourself and to think happy thoughts instead. I have not figured out a solution to this problem yet.