About Briana

Many people who come to therapy have spent years holding everything together on the outside while quietly struggling within. They carry the weight of painful experiences, difficult emotions, and patterns that once helped them survive but now feel exhausting to maintain.

I know what that experience can feel like.

I learned early in life that things did not work the way they seemed to on television. Growing up in poverty as a minority in West Virginia, adversity and hardship were part of daily life. I learned to push emotions aside because they “don’t solve anything.” Even in the face of deeply painful experiences, I convinced myself nothing “bad” had really happened.

For a long time I moved through life in a haze, running from the pain. Eventually the emotions I had buried began to surface. Not knowing how to face them, I turned to ways of numbing and distracting myself — using anything that might quiet the storm I was feeling inside.

Over time, that led me to a place where I had to look honestly at myself and decide whether something needed to change. I sought my own therapy and began the difficult but meaningful process of facing the trauma and pain I had been carrying. Through that journey I discovered a way to get to my own healing, peace, and ability to reconnect with myself and others.