Today we’d like to introduce you to Brittany Stilwell.
Hi Brittany, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I promised to do everything I could to change the mental health system for the queer community in the south. And that’s why I founded The Mind Parlor.
My name is Brittany Stilwell, I am a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas, and I founded The Mind Parlor in Dallas. The Mind Parlor is a boutique counseling practice emphasizing specialized and high-quality care for any client, with an additional emphasis on gender identity & the LGBTQIA+ community.
I grew up in a small town in east Texas, so I know what it’s like to be in an environment heavily saturated with homophobia, transphobia, toxic masculinity, and racism. At that time, these harmful behaviors and rhetoric were unfortunately very much accepted and normalized, a standard we seem to be quickly reverting back to.
Later, when I was in college, I saw first-hand the lack of competence and access to training for therapists in this niche and I said to myself… “This is a huge problem.”
We have an entire community of people who are socially the most misunderstood, attacked, and rejected, to say the least. For too long this group has been largely underserved in Texas and treated as if they all fit into the same category of “mental health problems” or specialty.
“Check your LGBTQ box and you’ll be matched with the one counselor they keep in the back to pull out for these specific instances.” – The problem is that these letters are not all the same. And the people within each category of letter are not the same.
The transgender community, for example, faces their own very specific combination of challenges internally and socially compared to someone who identifies as lesbian or gay. And in our current political climate, while most minorities are suffering, it’s transgender people specifically who we see being scapegoated and persecuted all too frequently.
At the time of my studies, virtually no gender identity specialists were available in Dallas, which left generalized therapists to make their own attempts, often leading to poor quality care. The very people who were supposed to be helping, were actually causing more harm, even if unintentionally. The system was failing the LGBTQIA+ community, and particularly gender identity clients.
What’s more, is I’ve personally had my own fair share of bad therapy and wanted to provide a place where clients could trust that they are getting quality and specialized counseling, with LGBTQIA+ and gender affirming care being the foundation, rather than an afterthought.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
If there is one universal truth about life, it’s that no road is smooth. You’ve perhaps heard the expression, “pressure makes diamonds”. Well, I can give you at least three examples of how my personal journey founding The Mind Parlor has been challenging.
The first, most obvious struggle, is that it’s not easy being a woman in business. If you’re not assertive enough, men will take advantage of you. If you’re too assertive, you’re a b**** and no one will work with you. You’re constantly walking a tightrope trying, and failing, and trying again to find the right balance to reach your goals.
Secondly, and even before I was a business owner, my professional development and counseling education in this specialty were quite difficult to acquire in Texas. At the time of my studies and clinical internships, it was a “desert” for counseling education in LGBTQIA+ and gender affirming care. This was also long before COVID and before we had many online resources available, even for general counseling skills.
I had to travel out of state to Portland, Seattle, California, and other places to find the proper training I needed for this specialty. All on my own dime, when I was a broke graduate student and intern. But it was important to me, so I made it a priority. And this is why I spend so much time training interns and counseling staff at The Mind Parlor in gender identity and LGBTQIA+ care. I wanted young therapists in Dallas to have a reliable place to learn and provide more options for affirming care to clients in our local community.
Other than being a woman in business, there’s another very significant challenge I have faced and continue to face on this journey. And that is, that it’s not easy doing something that most people around you don’t understand. Many people in my life didn’t understand the purpose of therapy or what it actually is outside of the common judgements and social myths.
I was actively discouraged from following the path of an entrepreneur and therapist throughout most of my career. And when I was younger, even new acquaintances would often stop talking to me after they learned I was a therapist, because they assumed I would spend our time together “analyzing” them or something. When I brought up my specialty with gender identity – forget about it.
Far beyond the stigma around therapy in general, bringing up my work with the transgender and non-binary community tends to spark a whole other conversation, flood of judgements & unresearched opinions, from strangers, from family, even sometimes from other professionals in the field.
In the beginning, it made me hesitant to share any details about who I was and what I did for a living. But then I realized some important things:
I realized that in both cases, these reactions weren’t actually about me. Nor were they about another person’s gender identity, which let’s be honest, doesn’t actually harm anyone. Instead, they were more likely related to the personal insecurities of the individual I was talking to, their commitment to avoiding the real reason why they’re uncomfortable, or their desire to fixate and control things they don’t understand.
Personally, I know I am someone who greatly values respect and kindness to all other people, no matter how different they are from me. And in fact, I believe the people who are the most misunderstood are often the ones who need even more love and support.
The general social environment can be a cruel place, and not only do I not want to be a part of that, but I also want to do everything in my power to put the opposite into the world.
So then, again, in both cases where I felt alone and misunderstood in these social situations, I realized those were not the kind of people I wanted to surround myself with anyway. Eventually I started bringing up these topics even sooner as an intentional strategy or test to see if a potential friend or partner was going to be a good fit for me.
Just like I would encourage any client to do so, I am selective about my inner social circle. The people closest to me are the ones who matter the most. Over time, I have managed to curate a really excellent group of friends and close relationships. And every single one of them goes beyond just supporting and accepting me; they truly celebrate me and the groups of people who I am so passionate about helping professionally.
I’ll say it again… it’s not easy doing something people don’t understand. But ultimately you are the main character of your story, you get to pick the supporting characters, and you choose the path that will ultimately give you a beautiful life and that makes you genuinely and authentically happy.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about The Mind Parlor?
The Mind Parlor is a boutique counseling practice in Dallas emphasizing specialized and high-quality care for any client, with an additional emphasis on gender identity & the LGBTQIA+ community. We have an in-person office for our DFW counseling clients, and we offer online counseling to anyone within the state of Texas.
When you’re not an expert in the field, it can be very challenging to know what to look for when searching for a therapist. Even as a therapist myself, I have experienced poor quality therapy, which ultimately is more time consuming and less effective. And I know what to look for; the average client doesn’t have that same luxury.
For the general population and heteronormative people, they can simply search for a therapist who best matches their specific area of need. “Therapist for ADD” for example, or “body image therapist Dallas”. For the LGBTQIA+ community, and especially gender identity clients, they don’t typically have this same privilege.
The Mind Parlor has solved this problem; we ensure that every single therapist on staff is first and foremost trained in gender identity and LGBTQIA+ affirming care as a foundation. On top of that, each counselor then has their own unique areas of specialty (such as ADD, Body Image, etc.).
This way, just like any other heteronormative person, LGBTQIA+ clients can search for and find a verified LGBTQIA+ specialist and affirming counselor in Texas who also meets their specific emotional or mental health needs.
Our clients also have access to our list of preferred out-of-house providers and local resources. If they need a local HRT doctor, psychiatrist, gender affirming surgeon, LGBTQIA+ friendly group, etc., we can send them to trusted affirming spaces in DFW which we have already pre-vetted for quality.
In that way, we’re sort of a “one-stop shop” for LGBTQIA+ care in Dallas & surrounding DFW area.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I don’t love risk… but despite this, I do tend to be a risk-taker.
I pursued a career and a specialty that few understood. I started and grew a business entirely on my own, with zero guidance or business experience. And despite countless people close to me telling me to change careers or go back to the safety of a “normal” corporate job, I could see the endgame – and no matter how hard it got, I stuck with it.
I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mind and a strong distaste for injustice. If something wasn’t working properly, I wanted to make it better. I would spend hours as a kid sitting in a tree on our property, thinking about the things I could improve, and contemplating if it was really possible to reduce the pain in the world. My favorite Christmas song was always “Grownup Christmas List”, if that tells you anything. I just wanted peace, stability, and love; for myself and for others, especially for those who were harmless, yet have been deeply harmed and rejected by society.
I’ve always been a hard worker and most of all, someone who is not afraid to stand up for what I believe in and fight for what’s right. I know this to be a capability and a luxury that not every person has, so I choose to use these qualities to empower and fight for others who are unable to do so themselves.
I’ve seen the difference it makes in people’s lives to have even just one person in their corner who understands them, encourages them, who loves them unconditionally, and doesn’t judge them. It’s truly miraculous the power of a healthy social system to a human being. And in a climate where the prejudices are loud and divisiveness encouraged, it can feel very isolating.
Right now, transgender individuals in particular are really suffering. This is why, as allies, we need to take the risk, stand up and be louder, and let those who feel the most attacked, misunderstood, scapegoated, etc. know that there are still people fighting for them. To let them know that they are not the problem. And to reassure them that they are not alone.
Most people don’t take risks because they are afraid of the unknown or afraid of failure.
When I was younger, I was also afraid of failure. Afraid that it would somehow define me or mean I wasn’t “good enough”. But as an adult, and especially as an entrepreneur, I recognize the incredible value that comes from failure. It’s impossible to learn and improve yourself without trying and failing… probably 100 times, until you learn that new skill or achieve your goal.
The reality is… if you’re not failing, then you’re not growing. And the idea of never reaching my dreams, of staying stagnant or ignorant as a person, or complying with a system which is harming others… now that scares me much more than taking the risk.
Pricing:
- $65 per session: Masters Counseling Intern
- $90-115 per session: LPC- Associate
- $135-165 per session: LPC & Senior Specialists
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.themindparlor.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themindparlor/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindParlor
- Other: https://www.themindparlor.com/inquire
Image Credits
Copyright: Stilwell Psychotherapy Services, LLC
