Unpack your pain. Honor your body. Reclaim your peace. Thrive.
At this point, you’ve likely experienced more than enough to be at your wits end when struggling with chronic hormonal imbalance: irregular menstrual cycles that disrupt your life plans, unwanted excessive hair growth and weight gain that feels sudden and beyond control, painful ovarian cysts and body inflammation that causes even more suffering when you’re just trying to live your life one day at a time, low energy that’s difficult to function through…and among all this, your struggle not being understood (and in some cases, even believed) making you feel isolated, unheard, and alone.
It’s no wonder that the overwhelm of it all often brings up stress, sadness, and hopelessness for most women living with PCOS.
Yet despite the discouragement, you’re making important strides by actively seeking ways to find help (and hope) to help manage these chronic symptoms that causing you significant disruptions — there’s so much strength in these actions to care for yourself, so thank you for being here!
And hopefully, here I can reassure you that relief, thriving, and living both meaningfully and hopefully in the midst of the various pains that PCOS has caused you is possible, despite the heaviness and frustrations of your experience telling you otherwise.
My name is Briana (she/her), and I’m a licensed psychotherapist with nearly ten years of experience who is passionate about providing supportive and condition-informed mental health care to *BIPOC women suffering from the emotional and physical symptoms that come with living with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).
If you’re living with PCOS, you already know that your experience and struggles that got you to this place of seeking emotional support are so extensive and overwhelming that it’s hard (if not nearly impossible!) to narrow down to just one sentence in a paragraph — which is why I’ve created sections of this website specifically dedicated to these issues, including common problems often associated with PCOS-specific suffering and how treatment with me would look like in order to get you on the path to relief, wellness and hope, as well as a section that clarifies the types of services I provide, including education, psychotherapy, and your personal thriving plan.
If you see your struggles reflected on those pages, including possible resonation with the stories of some my clients who have been where you are right now — struggling, lost and hopeless that things can get better for you — I’d love to work with you and get you started on your own path to reconnect back with your sense of self and hope, even through the challenges that living with a chronic hormonal condition brings! The next step would be to contact me to schedule a free 15 minute phone consultation so I can clarify any questions you may have, and so we can get started on setting the path to your thriving journey.
I commend you on taking steps towards improving your mental wellness, and I look forward to being a support to you along the way!
If you’ve been suffering from overwhelming worries, discouragements and pain that often comes with having a Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, I’m glad you’re here.
My journey to reconnection and hope (aka “About Briana”)
As survivor of childhood and racial trauma, my personal journey began after receiving really meaningful support from a therapist during that time — while it unfortunately did not stop more misfortunes from happening, it planted a seed inside of me, something that I was later in life able to identity as hope.
Always more on the compassionate side while also naturally inquisitive about the complexities of human the human condition that I experienced myself and witnessed from those around me, I knew that I wanted to help others when I grew up, in a similar way that I had been helped, but also seek genuine understanding of suffering along the way — and through different career considerations, the social work and psychotherapy world is the vehicle that called me in how I chose to drive on the road to living out these interest and values of mine — while working through my own continuous healing journey along the way.
As a Biracial Woman of Color, providing care to persons that have intersectional identities (including bi or multi-cultural, racial, spiritual, and LGBTQIA+ identities) is important to me because I understand the uniqueness of not being just one box or the other, despite what the world may try to otherwise have us believe. I understand how often-times it can be a discouragement, especially when those of us with “othered” identities may not feel understood. Also, as a Woman living with PCOS, I understand frustrations that come with not being understood, believed, or uncertain about how to live with the pain and challenges of the chronic condition which often leads to shame; sometimes even by medical professionals not specialized and fully informed of the disorders symptoms and the difficulties managing said symptoms — sometimes even further leading to other missed health issues due to unexplored assumptions, or avoidance of further healthcare due to mistrust which will then make the symptoms worse. Because of this, being empowered in wellness and healthcare decisions while also being fully informed is important to me and the work I do.
This personal understanding drives my passion to help empower others to realize they deserve to have a fulfilling life after experiencing discouragement and hopelessness, and is also part of what fuels me to consistently strive to provide all of my clients an empathetic and open space to share your truth unapologetically, provide resources and informed education on mental health and all the nuances that come with it, and collaborate with you towards creating goals that center self-empowerment, acceptance, an improved sense of self, and renewed hope that you can live the meaningful life you desire for yourself amidst life’s challenges!
When I’m not in sessions with my clients, you can find me trying to live out my own meaningful life by ways of going on walks while listening to 90s music, fantasizing about ways to travel the world to live out my foodie life, watching shows and movies that ultimately end up being about the nuances of the human condition (seriously, I’ve accepted this topic is just a part of me at this point) and trying to connect back to my creative roots and outlets of reading and writing (I can only seem to hold focus and energy for YA novels these days, but if you have any good books recs, it’s always appreciated here).
Licenses:
Licensed Clinical Social Worker, California, #97348
Licensed Independent Social Worker, Ohio, #I.2405282
Land Acknowledgment:
Here in the United States, we reside on stolen Lands sacred to various groups of Indigenous Persons. In California and Ohio, some (among so many) of those groups include the Tongva, Acjachemen, Chumash, Ohlone, Shawnee, Ofo, and Hopewell traditions. I pay respect to the Elders of the past, present and future of this land, and continue to honor by way of advocating for the Landback movement. If you want to know even more practical ways of participating in the Landback movement, Inclusive Therapists has a very helpful article on ways to go about this. Additionally, to find out more which Native Land you may be residing in (either in the United States or Worldwide, check out this resource for more information on this topic.
***Providing support for fellow BIPOC’s suffering from the experience of chronic health conditions is something I care deeply about and have extensive experience in, especially because of the systems involved in care that often make BIPOC’s experience unique — with this being said, I joyfully welcome all adults (regardless of identities) with living with PCOS to my therapy practice, especially if the mentioned mental health struggles resonate with you and you determine that I could be a good fit for you and your specific challenges!***
