Are you transgender people, female to male, or male to female? This is a difficult question, which transgender people struggle to understand priors to transitioning. The reason for the struggle is a lack of clear information available, and sometimes denial on the part of the person who is transgender. There is a possibility that you are struggling with accepting you are transgender because you have repressed your gender identity for so long, and you can no longer deny it. There are two specific qualities which transgender people have.
People who are transgender have sometimes called dysphoria. Dysphoria is defined as a state of feel confusing. It varies from mild to extreme and typically centers around certain parts of the body commonly associated with being female. This dysphoria is associated with secondary sex characteristics such as having breasts, a more curvaceous figure, with a narrow waist and wider hips, a round face with soft features, and your current genitals. Do these qualities in your body cause you pain, discomfort, or feel wrong to you? Remember it can be mild to extreme. Then dysphoria can arise when people are perceived as female when they do not feel female. There are signs oof this pain or dysphoria. It can be manifested with anxiety, or depression, and a managed in actions which provide a temporary sense of numbing, like alcohol or drug use, or cutting, and can even lead to thoughts of suicide or even attempts. People who are transgender use these coping mechanisms and are not aware in the moment that this behavior is connected to they're dysphoria. It is only later that it make sense to them that they were struggling with how their body was, and how they were being perceived by others, and that these were actually major contributors to their coping mechanism.
While there are people who have depression, or anxiety, and people who struggle with cutting, and addictions, and these people are not transgender. The difference is for the person who is shemale, these things tend to decrease after transitioning when the dysphoria decreases. Having this severe response to dysphoria is not a requirement to be transgender. Not everyone who is transgender identifies with intense dysphoria. Others feel poorly about their body and their gender, but it will not be nearly as evident. people like this come to understand that they are transgender people by recognizing that they feel better if their body was different, if they were not perceived as female.
An example to illustrate dysphoria that I frequently see in trans men, is their efforts to hide their chest. They will wear a binder, or sports bra, and hunch their shoulders forward and then pull their shirt away from their body, especially whenthey sit. All of these behaviors create the appearance of a flat chest, and that appearance makes them more comfortable. This is a sign of dysphoria.
To determine if you have dysphoria, I want to ask you a few questions. How do you feel about your body as it is? Does it feel uncomfortable, painful, or just not right? Imagine you could never change it. What feeling arise from this thought? That thought may actually intensify dysphoria.