Let’s assume that you recently cracked your egg. You then had a period of intense focus on this realization. You came out to friends, you explored things typically associated with your newfound gender identity (such as clothes), and you reveled in how this made you feel. You were confident that you want to transition.
Cut forward a few weeks. The novelty has worn off and getting access to medical care is so slow. Also you’re not out everywhere yet (e.g. work), so you still get addressed with your old pronouns and name constantly. Thinking or talking about yourself trips you up all the time, because you keep misgendering yourself. Your chosen pronouns and name still feel nice but also like a reminder of who you aren’t “yet”. You feel tired.
You start to ask yourself if you’re really trans or if it was just the novelty of it all. If all of this is worth it. But at the same time you’d still press a magic button that gives you the body you dream of in a heartbeat.
How would you deal with this?
For me at least, transitioning – particularly in the first few months – was intensely social. I’m really fortunate to live in a very trans- and queer-friendly city, and there’s something going on every day of the week – at least for queer people, usually something specific for trans people, too.
For me this helped a lot in dealing with frustration and dysphoria, because you meet lots of other trans people who are in the same boat. These people are going to listen to you, validate you, and afterward, and generally make you feel better and happier. So I would basically kinda push myself (without taking it too far, sometimes chillaxing in front of the tv is great) to go out especially when I felt down; I treated it almost as a kind of therapy. For me at least this really helped :)