calms and their counterparts

I’ve been describing to people a lot how HRT changed my stress response from fight-or-flight to acceptance, but thinking now perhaps that, while partly true, is not the most accurate description. What I’ve come to feel is largely calm and anchored, but there is a change felt also in non-stressed circumstances (so maybe not just something reactive), and now that stress levels are really high during these weeks when I move and switch jobs, I recognize some of how that stress feels from before, there is still a physical urgency in the body after some point.

So perhaps what is there is instead: there is a change in the form of stress response I have, but there is also a base reduction of some form of ambient stress that used to be there (dysphoria?) along some mechanism and path. And then there may be that I thus am generally less stressed, and reacting somewhat differently to it, but I also cannot ignore specific and situational (non-ambient) stress on an emotional level as I once could. That is, I can still choose not to act on stress but I cannot really choose not to feel fear or worry. This is something I need to explore further.