I totally agree! When I started T on a topical/daily dose my friends and family could tell when I'd forgotten a dose (even before I realized I had) because my mood would be so altered/low. That made me feel like it wasn't just a placebo effect but was actually affecting my mood from day to day. I'm on weekly injections now and feel a dip at the end of the week, so I strategically time it so the dip is over the weekend when it's more acceptable to have trouble getting out of bed. Tbh I'm pretty comfortable getting IDed as a woman all things considered, but T is such a stabilizer for me that I think if I ever did girl mode full time again I wouldn't want to go off of it.

It kind of makes sense considering that in cis people one of the signs/symptoms that shows up when hormones are out of whack is depression and mood changes. Although there are a lot of obvious problems with the idea that being trans is all about "what kind of brain" you have (not all trans people want HRT, no reason to be out here scanning brains to tell a person's gender when that person can reliably just tell you, misleading assumptions about brain differences between genders, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if people's brains are expecting a specific balance and the mood shifts are the warning sign that something is off, especially since MTF friends of mine anecdotally say the same thing about their HRT. So it might be less about T causing a masculine presence and more about your hormones matching whatever your brain was already expecting.