Brittney Thomas, clinical intern
(they/she/he)
Languages: English
As a clinical intern at Practical Audacity, Brittney is able to see clients at a reduced rate of $75 per session.
* Welcome *
Brittney is an agender human who prefers any pronouns used respectfully and with love and whose primary purpose for pursuing social justice work is to ensure that communities left out of larger conversations around community care can feel at home with themselves, their lives, and the people in their lives.
* My Focus *
While Brittney seeks to serve all LGBTQ+ folks in need, they intentionally uplift and prioritize the lived experiences and identities of Black, dark-skinned, disabled, queer and trans folks. They work to serve those of us experiencing social defeat, marginalization, madness, and systemic & institutional violence. Their clinical background primarily consists of offering peer support surrounding anxiety, depression, complex PTSD, racial trauma, and shame to individuals unable to seek consistent therapy or obtain culturally competent and affirming care and support.
* My Approach *
Brittney’s approach to care is human-centered. To Brittney, human-centered care asks us to operate from an abolitionist, trauma-informed, anti-oppression & anti-capitalist lens. This means cultivating environments for healing, accountability, and safety. To accomplish this, we must no longer engage with current systems and institutions that are inherently violent and only exist for social control. Brittney believes when our desires, wants, and needs are being decided for us, it makes it almost impossible for humans to access this innate power to determine the quality of our lives, especially individuals whose primary spoken language is not English, folks who are not cisgender, straight, white, male, and who are fat and disabled.
* My Philosophy on Therapy *
Brittney believes social work and psychology must acknowledge our shared humanity and suffering. Often, these fields look to pathologize and essentialize the lived experiences of diverse populations as opposed to acknowledging how these fields have become tools for oppression, violence, and social control. What is not acknowledged cannot be worked through and changed. As practitioners in this field, we have a duty and responsibility to asses our identities and inherent biases and how they impact how we show up for this work and the individuals we serve. Much like Practical Audacity, Audre Lorde has influenced Brittney’s approach to care immensely, as well as other trailblazers such as bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Marcus Garvey, Ida B. Wells, and Mariame Kaba, to name a few. Abolition and decolonization are at the forefront of their values and morals when navigating this work. Systems and intuitions will not sustain us, but we can. We must save ourselves, and we all have the innate ability to heal and sustain ourselves. As a social justice worker, Brittney’s primary purpose in this work and this life is accompaniment, to take that honor of bearing witness seriously, and to do their best to help everyone connect to our individual power so that we may live the lives we were meant to, centering love, joy, play, pleasure, and resistance.
* Credentials & EXPERIENCE *
Current MSW Student, University of Chicago
* MORE ABOUT ME *
I am a Black, dark-skinned, queer, trans, magical, and disabled human born and raised on the west side of Chicago in North Lawndale. Much of what I’ve learned about being alive comes from my lived experiences based on these identities and locations and has informed how I’ve learned to survive. I align with the obscure, the absurd, the strange, and quirky parts of the human experience. It is where I feel the most seen and free. A bit of background on my (mostly) confusing gender or lack of journey: I ran track competitively on both the varsity and D1 levels. This experience is where I began to shape my relationship with my body. I’m also a recovering honor student (we all deserve a support group), which helped me understand how I see myself in relation to others in professional settings. As a survivor of sexual assault at various points in my life, I learned the true meaning of body and identity reclamation for me. As I’ve gotten older and experienced more in this life, I realized that prioritizing empathy, dignity, and integrity in my relationship with myself, others, and the world makes up my internal guide so I can just be exactly as I’m meant to be. If any of this resonates with you, I’m happy to accompany you wherever you are on your journey.
Ultimately, these pivotal points and intersecting identities, among other things, have taught me what it means to be here, in this body, and in this world as a channel for joy, play pleasure, and resistance to thrive. And now I’m here, at yet another stage of learning and unlearning.
Fun Fact: My initials are BLT