I'm AMAB and since July, I've felt what I now realize is mild dysphoria. Around 2 weeks ago I read more about gender dysphoria from genderdysphoria.fyi and realized I am almost certainly trans. Ever since I realized this, my dysphoria (along with anxiety about said dysphoria) has gotten a lot worse to the point where I'm only getting ~3-5 hours of sleep for multiple days in a row until I get exhausted enough to pass out immediately when I get in bed. I was originally going to wait until I graduate this year but I've been pretty miserable and I want to come out sooner because I think that would at least help with the anxiety aspects, even if I wait to start actually transitioning. That being said, I'm worried about a few things:
My last semester in undergrad for CS is coming up and I have 4 male roommates in an apartment, and I'm scared of making things awkward for the last months we'll be living together since we're all pretty close friends.
I'm lucky enough to be in a blue state (both at college and at home) and my parents and siblings are all mostly progressive politically, but I don't think my parents have ever actually met a trans person. I'm worried that they won't accept me because they think that all trans people knew they were trans as children, and I've had mostly "male" hobbies for my whole life. It's more of less the same story with my grandparents who I'm also very close with, one of whom is in pretty bad health right now. I'm worried that coming out and/or transitioning would be enough of a shock to make that worse.
I guess my questions are, how did you come out, and how can I approach this with my family? Did you start transitioning immediately after coming out to friends/family? Before? Am I way overthinking everything? Any other advice for someone who's new to all of this?
If my run-on sentences are unintelligible lmk and I'll fix them, I'm very sleep deprived rn but I needed to get this off my chest before I actually implode
So I was like you, though I came out probably a bit younger (20) and back in 2015 when everyone and their mother learned we exist. I had always been masculine (afraid to be feminine) I didn’t always know (that someone like me could be trans) and I could go on. I did luck out that my mom was a vocal trans ally already because a local trans teenager’s suicide note called her to action, and she had no idea that her big bearded son was actually her daughter.
I came out before starting hormones but I already had my first appointment with a therapist (informed consent was just taking off at the time and I could only find endocrinologists who needed letters of recommendation, and I feel ancient having to explain all this, like jeez this was so different of a time I was actually showing courage by telling that therapist I was transitioning to gay). And the main reason I came out first was because I was moving back in with my parents after realizing that living on campus might take away from my bottom surgery funds in the future.
It wasn’t a great time to come out by “family health standards”, I spent my early transition stuck between classes and taking my mom to oncology appointments. The people who were accepting were accepting, the ones who weren’t weren’t. Some of the ones I expected to be accepting weren’t and vice versa. And my grandma took like 7 years to gender me correctly consistently and maybe eventually she’ll stop calling my wife my “friend”.
But anyways, I only regret not coming out sooner. Partly because I came out over the month on either side of Caitlyn Jenner and yeah that took some explaining. Mostly though because everything that was going to happen was going to happen. Your roommates may be a different story, but otherwise once you’ve made up your mind to live authentically only delay with purpose. Most of early transition is waiting anyways, may as well hurry up so you can start waiting.
Also for a different perspective my wife was on hormones when she came out to her family because she was an adult and independent and she expected pushback. It was easier for them to accept she’d done it already than for them to fight over her doing it.