New Therapist

I'm finally back in therapy again. It's been almost a year. Back in Michigan, I saw a therapist, but she had not dealt with many transgender clients. The one I'm going to now sees transgender folk exclusively. There are quite a few others that do so, but none of them take my insurance. A couple of them don't take any insurance!

I was over 30 minutes late to my first appointment the other day, and amazingly, he saw me anyway. Darn Mapquest. It told me to turn right onto a street that didn't even connect to the road I'm on. I called the office and he was able to point me in the right direction.

Yes, my new therapist is a man. I'm not comfortable around men in general. It's some sort of cross between intimidation and a "okay, keep your distance" feeling. To make matters worse, he is very serious. He barely ever smiled, and made no attempt to laugh at my jokes or even humor me. Time will tell if I can ever relax enough to spill my darkest secrets, and get some progress out of all this. I did feel a bit better when he disclosed that he is gay.

He has a Masters Degree in social work. He can, and has, written letters for Gender Reassignment Surgery, and he can refer me to quite a number of good psychologists to write the other required letter. He was under the impression that the old Harry Benjamin Standards of Care had been replaced by something else. That may indeed be under development, but Dr.'s Marci Bowers and Toby Meltzer still require a letter from either two psychologists, or more likely, a therapist and a psychologist. Now all I need is $20,000 or so.

My next appointment is in three weeks, and then I'll be seeing him every other week from then on. We'll see how this goes...