You don't need a gender therapist in order to transition. Any therapist can write referrals. It is just helpful to find someone who is already familiar with the process. A few ideas:
- Go to the counseling department or student health services at your college. Sometimes graduate level students need to get clinical hours and will do free therapy. I'm sure someone would jump at the chance to work with a transgender person. If they don't have that, they may still be able to refer you to someone nearby that will work with you, and may even be willing to call on your behalf to confirm that they'll work with a trans patient.
- Look into online therapy. This is what I did for my referral letters (with Dr. Graham Peveller). There are quite a few options out there now depending on what your budget is. I will say, if you're going for more than just referral letters (like you've got stuff you need to work out or you need a lot of hand holding), you will probably want to find a therapist that does Skype sessions because the text based chats can be impersonal and hard to feel connected to.
