I am in south central Kansas. Where is the best place to go to find a good GID Therapist?? Any clues??
I hope you have better luck finding one than I am. The nearest in state (vt) to me is a 3hr drive! So I'm kinda stuck for now. :-(
I found mine by calling my health insurance company and asking for a list of therapists that specialize in gender. I then proceeded to narrow that list down to my top 2 by Google searching each doctor's name. After that I sent an email to my top 2. One of the 2 email responses was great, the other one kind of gave me the impression I actually wouldn't get along with that therapist. It made my decision between the 2 very easy. One thing that did suck was apparently other people thought the therapist I chose was great, it took about a month and a half before she had an opening.
At this point, after some time of therapy and I can't even say how many sessions (I go once a week) I am so happy to have chosen my therapist.
I am seeing a therapist but he's not a gender specialist. Ive kinda run into a roadblock of sorts, because I haven't "come out" to him yet. I know in not going to conquer my personal demons until I'm completely honest, but either my paranoia or a vibe licks in and I never quite bring myself to voice it. I'm so confused! I really need to talk to someone. I just cant get out of town to do it. :'( :-!
Finding a for real Gender Therapist outside of any large metro area I think is impossible. No critical mass of clients. Plan B is finding a TG Friendly therapist. One that actually knows anything about being TG beyond what was covered in PSY 247 would also be nice. But don't count on it in a suburban to rural area. A common compliant from my group members was local therapist needed "educating".
Psychologist Today has a Doc-Find with one of the options being Gender Issues http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/ (http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/) Choose wisely... A lot may say 'Gender' but that is the only mention of it. It pays to get a short list together and contact each one's office to set up a short 5 min or so phone call so you can ask a few questions about their experience and practice.
Laura's Playground maintains a list broken down by state and on-line http://www.lauras-playground.com/gender_therapists.htm (http://www.lauras-playground.com/gender_therapists.htm) There are also a couple of TG sites that maintain lists. I assume you already looked on Susan's. You may also try posting in the Therapy forum. Likely you aren't the ONLY one in Kansas.
Another good approach is to find a 'Local' TG support group. Members there can be great for leads on who to see or who to stay far away from. It took me a few months of part-time searching after work and weekends until I was able to find anything local to me. Local in this case was 90 miles away. Still better then a 2 1/2 Hr drive to either DC, Baltimore, or Pittsburgh. Also contacting someone at some a state wide LGBT organization may yield some leads for you
Not sure if you'd be interested or not, but there are a lot of options for online therapy these days as well.
Thank you dears. Looks like a long row to hoe but I'll get there. THANK YOU ALL for the help. Greatly appreciated.