How Estrogen Affects Your Mood While Undergoing HRT
Everyone is aware that hormones and mood swings are interconnected. So, it is understandable that when trans women begin taking estrogen, their mood is all over the place.
Mood swings can be debilitating, especially in its extreme forms as manifested by estrogen.
You might sink into a hole and feel like you will never get out of it. Thankfully, you can get out of it. There are techniques and methods to power through these estrogen-initiated mood swings.
In essence, the basis of these methods is stabilization. While potent, these techniques are extremely simple to implement.
Estrogen-based mood swings include both extreme highs and extreme lows or what are often referred to as peaks and troughs. Typically, their frequencies and magnitudes tend to be quite similar.
Thus, it might be a good idea to try and manage your mood even when you are experiencing a high, since both the ups and downs tend to be interrelated. When you learn to manage one, it can become easier to regulate the other.
However, it can be quite challenging to mitigate and regulate your high moments, especially since they are often brought about by gender euphoria.
It is of utmost importance to find ways in which you can manage these peaks effectively, since the same neural pathway that leads to these happy moments also facilitates the negative, downward emotions.
Therefore, once you get a hang of managing your highs, you are better equipped to handle your lows as well.
In times of low mood, managing it cognitively is more difficult because your mental resources are limited. As opposed to this, it's easier to hold it together when you're riding a high, because it's a positive feeling.
In theory, this sounds quite simple. However, it may seem quite vague to put into practice. This article will guide you through the steps you can undertake to accomplish this.
Pick an emotion and find yourself reaching for that positive feeling. Picture yourself climbing up towards the peak and allow joy to consume you.
While climbing upwards, try to get off the rollercoaster ride guiding your emotions and objectively watch yourself on the seat.
This way, you can gain control of the rollercoaster or the pathway evoking your emotions and thus, it is easy to put an end to the ride whenever you must. Essentially, you are in charge of the ride and with a push of a button, you can pull the breaks.
The control that you feel while managing your positive emotions will equip you with the confidence required to maneuver past your lowest moods.
Another important thing to remember is that if you put in an excessive amount of effort to try and not feel or experience the dips in your mood swings, it becomes even harder to regulate them.
In fact, it may serve you well to accept the emotion that emerges and address it instead.
Acknowledge its existence and attempt to overpower it a little later, instead of avoiding it altogether. In fact, listen to the part of you that feels low, because it has a voice.
It most likely sounds like your inner child. Hear it out and shower it with love and attention until it is pacified. It is only by loving all your parts can you regulate your moods.
We hope this article has helped you understand how you can regulate your estrogen-induced mood swings. Good luck!!
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