Surviving puberty

One of the things that helped was using online character creation tools, such as the South Park character creator and those various superhero ones. I was already crossdressing, so I designed lots of ambiguous and androgynous ones. Some people find that's enough to relieve their dysphoria, and people like that tend to fit into a category that are informally called crossdreamers. In the strict sense of being trans, I dunno if that qualifies, but in the broader sense of gender minorities, then it does.