I have nothing but anecdotal evidence related to my own life experience, so take it as you will.

I was a Firefighter/EMT for five years before I started HRT. Never once in those five years did I cry over a patient, and never once did I feel truly frightened. I was literally wading through blood and fire, but I had about the emotional depth of a chalk board.

I started E January of 2016, and then I lost a patient in a horrific accident in April of 2016. For the first time ever I ended up behind the hospital bawling my eyes out. Shortly after that I was put into a life threatening situation, and I truly feared for my own safety for the first time.

I honestly thought I was starting to burn out emotionally from all the stuff I was seeing in EMS, so I quit in the summer of 2016. Now, nearly a year later, the emotions I discovered then have not faded; in fact, they've diversified. I get bad news, I tear up. I see something sappy in a movie, I tear up. My mom sent me cookies in the mail today, I teared up. I also feel very vulnerable, and am far more aware of the risks I am putting myself in. All this while still presenting as male, even 14 months into hrt. All this while still living the male lifestyle I enjoy. If it's not the estrogen, I'm not sure what it is. Everything else is controlled.

I think it's kind of crazy to say that something as potent as hormones don't cause any changes to personality.

tl;dr: Experienced trauma that pre-hrt had never phased me. Even after the damaging stimuli was removed, I still feel the world differently than pre-hrt.