During the school year, I talk with a free counsellor who my school provides. He's the first consellor I've really been able to connect with, and he helps a lot in terms of general support. However, I can only see him for 6 sessions for year (and not at all during the summer), and he's by no means a gender specialist, so at some point I'm going to have to step beyond this and get into "proper" counseling so i can better sort through my gender situation and, hopefully, move in the direction of some kind of transition.
However, there are two major hurdles making this difficult: Location and money.
I have no idea what is involved in paying for/affording counselling. I'm currently in college and financially dependant on my parents (and covered under my dad's insurance), and at the moment, I have no job, though I'm hoping to find one as soon as possible (next summer at the latest). I don't even know where to begin-- I don't even know what all i need to know. What kind of price range should I be looking for? How do I find a counsellor, especially one within reasonable driving range of where I live who I can afford to go to and will be able to help me with what I need?
I live in the U.S. (Northern Indiana, to be precise)-- I don't know what resources we have around here (probably because we don't really have much at all-- I've been searching and searching and I'm still at a loss). I wish I could just go with an online therapist over Skype, but I can't. I can't pay huge amounts of money to sit and cower in front of the computer screen and stutter for an hour-- therapy is already a vulnerable space for me, which I'm prone to anxiety during. Combining that with my phone anxiety sounds like like an absolute recipie for disaster.
I wish I could articulate what i'm looking for, better, but I honestly don't know what it is I'm looking for. I'm genderqueer and plan to transition part-way. The end-goal is taht I'm fairly certain I want to take T (probably short-term, maybe long-term), but I also would simply really appreciate someone professional and knowledgeable who i can talk to and sort things out in regards to exactly how I want to go abouts transitioning-- I know who I am, but I'm pretty utterly lost when it comes to what I'm doing about actual, physical transition. I... don't quite understand how "the system" works.
Help me out, please? And forgive my embarassing quantities of ignorance. OTL
