Today we’d like to introduce you to Danica Harris & Brittany Escuriex.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
We met in 2016 when we were staff therapists within a large organization. We felt an immediate connection, both personally and professionally, and that year really set the stage for us later founding Empowered Healing Dallas. Within that shared work environment, we often connected around issues of social justice and equity, and we loved challenging one another to grow as therapists and humans. We began to feel more constrained by working within a large system, particularly given how these larger systems often perpetuate hierarchy and inequity. We started talking about what it could look like to build our own practice, create an enriching and empowering workplace, and provide therapy truly congruent with who we are as therapists and people.
In fall 2018, the time felt right to take a leap and start the practice. We found our first space, leased it almost immediately, and dove right into getting the business established. By January 2019, we were seeing our first clients and beginning to create our own work culture. The first year of the practice was just us, and about a year later our friend Sapna joined us and it felt like a really great trio. When the pandemic hit and the three of us rapidly shifted to teletherapy services for all of our clients, we weren’t sure how this might impact our newly formed business. What we found is that more people needed mental health services, and more therapists wanted to provide teletherapy now that everyone was becoming accustomed to that option. Now, Empowered Healing Dallas has 14 therapists and a full-time practice manager, and we couldn’t be more proud of our team.
Starting this business was one of the greatest decisions each of us has ever made. We feel so grateful to support our communities, offer accessible and affirming clinical care, and work with like-minded people who are dedicated to an environment free of workplace trauma. While being an entrepreneur can be challenging, we continue to feel grateful and humbled on this journey.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s hard to imagine starting a business is ever completely smooth, but overall, we’re incredibly grateful for how things have developed in the past (almost) 4 years since we started the practice. In graduate school, we were taught how to be therapists, but not how to be business owners. This seems to be common for many folks who wind up in private practice – we know how to do the work of being a therapist, but the work of owning and operating a business just isn’t part of our formal education. In this way, we needed to learn a lot, and pretty quickly – this process was simultaneously exciting and filled with learning curves. We also both worked other full-time and part-time jobs while getting the practice off the ground. Given the nature of our work, it takes time for potential clients to find us, to get a caseload built, and to be ready to transition fully into private practice. While challenging at times, the process of creating and building the practice solidified our investment in the business, our partnership, and our clients. Any struggles along the way have been worth it!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Brittany and Danica co-own Empowered Healing Dallas, a psychological group practice where we provide therapy services for adults and adolescents and consultation/training for other professionals. We also have some wonderful therapists who work within our practice, and we are so grateful to share space with such passionate and talented clinicians. While we have various clinical specialties and issues we address, we’re most proud of the values we collectively share and the intentions we set around connecting with our clients.
As a practice, we are social justice-informed, meaning we value and affirm all cultural identities, and explicitly integrate discussions of identity into our work. We recognize that mental health is impacted by the socio-political climate, experiences of oppression, and other factors connected to one’s various identities; we consider it vital to affirm folks’ experiences and create an open space to process these experiences. Our entire practice is also trauma-informed, meaning we recognize the broad range of traumatic events our clients might have experienced, and intentionally work to sit alongside our clients as they find safety, healing, and empowerment in recovering from trauma. Finally, our practice is deeply invested in the relationships we form with our clients – we consider ourselves humans first and therapists second. We foster connections with our clients that are rooted in authenticity, transparency, and equity. All of these values create deep and meaningful relationships that are truly transformative.
Within this general framework, our practice specializes in complex trauma, intimate partnership and relationship counseling, people-pleasing, perfectionism, identity development, identity-based trauma, family-of-origin concerns, mind-body wellness, and more. We love sharing our knowledge with others, so we offer training and consultation related to these areas, as well. Something we are really proud of is the additional training our therapists seek out in order to be better equipped in their work with clients. Many of our therapists have advanced training and skill in Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, IFS, EFT for Couples, and Mindfulness.
We recently formed a second business, The Empowered Therapist, LLC, stemming from Danica’s popular Instagram page @theempoweredtherapist. Our intention with The Empowered Therapist is to offer coaching and consultation services worldwide. We also have big plans to host in-person and virtual events for those looking for extra support in their healing, and Danica will be launching some self-paced healing courses before the end of the year.
What were you like growing up?
Danica grew up in the Dallas area with entrepreneur parents. So, it’s maybe no surprise that she played “office” instead of “house” when she was a little kid. She was sensitive and shy and while the sensitivity has remained, she is much less shy these days. Danica has always been a deep feeler, someone with a lot of empathy and compassion for others. She always loved hearing people’s stories and was fascinated by how people came to their understanding of the world. Danica wasn’t always sure how she would be able to channel her gifts and interests into a career, and before becoming a therapist she worked as an esthetician for many years. As a first-generation college graduate who came from a working-class background, being able to create a career that felt honoring of her interests and also would provide financial stability was extremely important to Danica. After working in academic and non-profit systems she struggled to find an environment that felt values aligned and also sustainable energetically. Private practice just made sense for her- the environment allowed her to honor her sensitivity and her entrepreneurial roots. Adult Danica is getting to live a life that Little Danica would be in awe of!
Brittany was always a caring and sensitive child, and she was drawn to activities like dance and theater that allowed her to express herself and connect with others. Theater allowed her to imagine and appreciate the lives of others, so it’s not totally surprising she wound up doing work that also allows her to deeply connect with people’s lived experiences. Growing up, Brittany had her own deeply meaningful experiences in therapy, although she didn’t necessarily consider becoming a therapist until much later. As she grew toward adulthood, her interest in people, their stories, and their well-being flourished, and it became clear she was meant to do some something in service of others. After working in community and university mental health care systems, she realized she was meant to be part of creating a private practice setting that would truly serve everyone touched by it, clients and therapists alike. She is so humbled and proud of what Empowered Healing Dallas is becoming!
Pricing:
- We have therapy services ranging from $80- $200 a session
- Some therapists accept insurance: Blue Cross Blue Shield & United HealthCare
- Sliding scale options available
Contact Info:
- Website: https://empoweredhealingdallas.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empoweredhealingdallas/ and https://www.instagram.com/theempoweredtherapist/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076947116159. and https://www.facebook.com/theempoweredtherapst
Image Credits
Madeline Faye Photography
Rose Scoggins
