Couple thoughts ... a 'good' female TRT protocol would be in the 4mg to 8mg per week; possibly aiming to have serum levels in the 40-to-65ng/dl range. Now here's the thing, I'm banking you felt pretty good at the higher dose, but I'm banking you have some really high SHBG, causing your free & bio test to be very low. This is just all speculation on my part, but I've seen it with many female HRT patients over the years (including my wife), and it's pretty common stuff in the books with the likes of Dr. Reiss.
You should first start by running some additional labs to see (or post them if you have them). If your free test is low, and I would suspect in the < 1% category, you can benefit from Vitamin D therapy, and researching some nettle root with your physician. Free test is where it's at, and if you can optimize that variable, you can reduce your medication and serum level, and achieve a little more balance in your program.
It sounds like your thyroid, specifically T3 is pooling without HC therapy, and probably from other components that we've discussed. I still suspect iron, magnesium & B12 are off, all common play with estrogen dominance (the other ED!). If this has been going on for quite a while (1 year or more), you will usually see the hypothalamus is exhausted with the long periods of hyper-secretion of TSH. With ED, it's quite common to see Low TSH values, and Low T4 & T3 levels. Usually, Reverse T3 ratios will be low, and ADP (negative charge) will be higher than desired. Lastly on this subject, look at the Circadian T3 method (CT3M) with taking NDT meds or T3. It also involves supplementing D3, a variety of Vitamin B's, and Vitamin C. There's some good information to checkout at Stopthethyroidmadness.com, and Dr. Bruce Rind has some good information on the thyroid in general.