Teen therapist - Tri Valley area

Hi, please do be careful.  If "T" is involved, can lead to a rush to medicalize your kid.

Many kids and young adults are now developing gender dysphoria (the shocking rise is shown in this Economist article, about 1/4 are boys). It seems to "spread" between friend groups, online, within families (not like being gay does!), perhaps due to social contagion (see also here). There is an online rabbit hole ready to grab them-severe distress from something else sometimes then morphs into intensely strong gender dysphoria (my son was groomed online).  Gender dysphoria can be caused by OCD, ASD (e.g, Gender dysphoria in Asperger’s syndrome: A caution, Autistic girls seeking answers ‘are seizing on sex change) issues, trauma, separation anxiety from parents, many things.  If these are the root cause, doing medical transition or surgical transition will not heal the distress.  See, e.g.,  One Size Does Not Fit All: In Support of Psychotherapy for Gender Dysphoria, here, and an essay by a former governor of the main UK child/adolescent gender clinic. 

When you get recommendations, be aware that there is no licensing or training to become a gender therapist.  Some people who claim to be expert are crusaders and will in fact only affirm and encourage drugs, rather than explore your child's situation, an approach with no justification (the AAP 2018 policy is based on falsely quoting studies, see this published criticism by a world sexology expert).If anyone does say your kid needs hormones, ask them for the 5 and 10 year outcomes of everyone they have started on this off-label lifetime treatment.  Ask them for studies, and look to see whether those studies have withstood criticism (transgendertrend.com and segm.org both have articles by professionals addressing studies).  Medicalization is of course attractive to adolescents and young people--they have been given a simple solution to a terrible mental condition: take pills/get shots. And even more, they get popularity, praise, community of peers.  They can believe strongly they have "the answer". The down side is that if anything else was causing their gender distress, it may become clear that changing their body for a problem in their mind was an (irreversible) young person mistake. There are many detransitioners (over 17,000 members on reddit/detrans), although there is considerable stigma in detransitioning.  (There is an inaccurate belief that gender identity is permanent and set before birth-it's not known when/if gender identity stabilizes; about 80% of young kids with strong prepubertal gender dysphoria, not late onset,have it disappear as they grow up.) Many detransitioners are physically permanently altered (some will need to be on hormones forever, are sterilized, and/or have bone damage), and traumatized because they made such a public mistake about what they needed (e.g., Keira Bell's recent legal win).   For these kids, gender issues weren't similar to being gay, but to being, for example, anorexic. Research isn't keeping up.There are lots of calls for studies, and a lot of alarm among professionals. Your young adult might want answers quickly, but the quick answer of drugs does not have support (UCSF is doing a 5 year study right now, but it is a lifelong treatment, and many people who detransition or commit suicide do so after 5 years).  

I would recommend Discovery Counseling Center in Danville (Tri-Valley Area).  They have therapist that specialize in teens.  My daughter went there and it helped her with pandemic isolation and high school stress. Right now they are doing most sessions virtually because of Covid.  I would highly recommend them and eventually your son could transition to in person therapy with them.  Here is the website: https://www.discoveryctr.net/   Email them at: DISCOVERYCOUNSELING [at] DISCOVERYCTR.NET  Phone (925) 837-0505    Monday – Friday: 10AM – 5PM