That is correct, on the one hand my mom believed the entire psychology profession was lacking ethics and that I would be treated like a lab rat.

On the other hand, my parents have a history of absolutely refusing to seek professional help at all costs:

I once had an ingrown toe-nail that they preferred to go at my foot with a knife and no anesthetic (maybe some hydrogen peroxide) and had the audacity to look at me as insane when I screamed in pain and ask "What are you screaming about? The neighbors will hear." Basically, the embarrassment of being heard was of greater concern than my well being as they continued to go at my toe with a knife.

This eventually required surgery from a specialist foot doctor. Partially because their own reluctance to seek help made the problem worse.

Prior to seeking out estrogen:

I first hired a therapist to discuss a bunch of workplace experiences and analyze the psychology of working in a foreign culture. Then worked with that therapist to present my findings to the company as a matter of trying to improve the corporate culture. I was at the point of "You work on improving this about your company or please fire me, which I know will take you months to legally establish so be prepared for the eventuality that I leave." They did not see any merit in improving the corporate culture so the foregone conclusion was I would part ways which we did roughly half a year later due to strict labor laws for that country.

After pitching that to the company, I and the therapist discussed the anhedonia and were exploring possible explanations. Nothing was really sticking or really fitting any of the DSM-5 criteria for various personality disorders or other possible explanations. Then the thought occurred to me to ask about being transgender and how my parents' abuse lead to me repressing it extremely deeply which along with it resulted in repressing my emotions. The experiences described did fit the DSM-5 criteria for gender dysphoria and then we started to explore with what crossdressing I could, changing pronouns, using virtual reality to have a gender-identity confirming body, and so forth. The evidence continues to accumulate in favor of being transgender despite us continually challenging the theory with new information as it manifests in life. After roughly half a year of testing that theory out, I went to a local clinic to get estrogen injections and the effects were profoundly positive. For the first couple of hours after the shot (while the estrogen was still making way into the blood stream) I was profoundly disappointed thinking that, oh, I guess this wasn't the answer after all... then when the estrogen hit the blood-brain barrier a lot of negative mental health symptoms just melted away. Some of which I had gotten so used to that I didn't know they even were an issue and was as happy as can be. Further injections don't result in as profound of a reaction, but the overall average is a lot happier and continues to get happier as time goes on.