For those with financial barriers, Sondering Counseling and Wellness is committed to providing letters (and associated appointments) at no cost to those who are uninsured and/or underinsured. You can read more about Sondering Counseling and Wellness commitment in increasing access to care here. Please plan accordingly, as letters can take up to 10 calendar days to be completed.
Letter writing details.
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Your clinician must write you are mentally, emotionally, practically, and financially prepared for the intervention, as well as being aware of the risks, benefits, and implications.
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If you’re seeking a letter for chest surgery, hysterectomy, or orchiectomy, you must have an identified surgeon and ideally had an appointment or consultation with your surgeon.
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If you are seeking a letter for facial surgery or genital reconstruction, you must have identified a surgeon and had a surgical consultation prior to the letter-writing assessment session.
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This site is a comprehensive overview of the “Guidelines for the Primary and Gender-Affirming Care of Transgender and Gender Nonbinary People”
Acceptance is possible.
Life is messy. Living in the LGBTQIA+ community is powerful and profound. Sondering Counseling and Wellness is here to help you find your emotional “center of gravity” and lean into a calm, yet confident, life.
How can therapy help anyway?
Sondering Counseling and Wellness is committed to providing exceptional care in whatever capacity is most comfortable for our clients. Therapy can be an intimate, fun, engaging process where clients face their vulnerabilities and successes boldly. Sondering Counseling and Wellness can help manage the gritty emotions through a non-judgmental, culturally competent, person-centered approach.
Individual Therapy | Let Sondering Counseling and Wellness help you ask the questions necessary to help you uncover your identity and sense of self.
Couples Therapy | Regardless of relationship orientation, therapy can help improve communication and firm up commitment.
Family Therapy | Do you have a loved one that is transitioning, or identifies with a sexual or gender identity that is confusing or difficult to understand? Sondering Counseling and Wellness is here to support you by actively addressing your concerns, worries, and any bias or stigmas you have difficulty processing.
Informed Consent Model
Sondering Counseling and Wellness operates under the presumption you are a self-determined person with insight and awareness about how to use your bodily autonomy. The Informed Consent model is described by the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics as:
“Informed consent is a concept that is familiar to clinicians. On a practical, day-to-day basis, informed consent is often implied rather than explicitly ensured, and whether explicit or implied, informed consent is the ethical and legal basis for most patient care decisions. It requires that clinicians […] effectively communicate anticipated benefits and potential risks of a treatment, as well as the reasonable alternatives to that treatment. It relies on the patient’s capacity for understanding and weighing these options. Integral to the practice of informed consent is the principle of respect for patient autonomy—that is, respect for a person’s right of self-determination—and the belief that clinicians will work to facilitate patients’ decisions about the course of their own lives and care” (AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(11):1147-1155. doi: 10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.11.sect1-1611).
