I've written about my brother on this forum before but here is the whole story. Firstly he's not biologically my brother, we met about five years ago and became super close best friends. He came out to me as FtM trans* about two years later and from the get go I have been totally fine with this and very proud of him no problems at all. His parents are extremely conservative people and will almost definitely react poorly, so he hasn't told them. My parents however are really accepting of him and so we've sort of adopted him, hence I call him my brother and I really feel he is part of my family. He and I moved about two years really far from our hometown to start working. This past year he's finally been able to start T treatments. He was really nervous at first but I go with him to every appointment and I make sure that he's getting what he needs and helping him to manage the side effects and also doing things like I take care of anything that his crappy family sends him that is inappropriate for his gender. So I really think that I am doing a whole lot of things to support him. Right now I've sort of fallen into a spell of severe anxiety and depression. I started seeing a therapist and I know that he is having a really hard time with my condition. It's very frustrating for him to see me like this and not be able to help me. I've tried to explain how he can be supportive to me (listening to me, not getting upset when I'm upset, generally saying kind things, the usual sort of supportive things), but he really has a very hard time doing this. I think that a big part of his frustration and inability to do these things is due to his hormone treatments. It's sort of bad timing I guess that he is having hormonal issues and I'm having brain chemistry issues but we are just fighting constantly and getting upset with each other and ourselves all the time. It's to the point where I just don't want to talk to him about anything that isn't positive in my life because I don't want to fight with him anymore. TL;DR So I guess the question in here is for some advice on how I can better handle his mood swings related to his T treatments. The problems started when I got depressed again so I feel like it's my fault and more my responsibility to fix things. Losing him from my life is not an option, I care for him very much and also he really doesn't have a lot of people that know about his transition and that he can talk to about it. So I just really need to be able to support him better through his mood swings I think.
Have you guys considered doing quiet, calm-ish activities together (or alone)? That's what my friend's transgender brother did with his wife while he was on T. It seemed to help both parties
He's always been on the energetic end of things and the T is certainly not helping with it haha he's more energetic than ever. But we can generally do things like watch movies without too much trouble.
