Professional Highlights:

CFO and Clinical Co-Director at The Center for Living Balance
Owner of Abundant Life Counseling Services (15 years)
Guest on Marriage and Family Today Radio Program
Guest on Elizabeth Gore’s Talk for Women Radio Program
Presenter at The Healthy Clergy and Congregation Conference

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Deana's Intake Paperwork

Deana Riley, LPC

Co-Owner and Clinical Co-Director

Over the course of my 30-year career, I have focused on developing clinical excellence in specific areas:

helping adults heal from trauma, betrayal, and affairs
assisting couples in finding connection and strengthening their bonds
collaborating with people to understand where their communication goes sideways and teaching them different ways of being together.

My clinical focus is exclusively working with adults and couples with trauma and relationship concerns. I am not a generalist who tries to help everyone. That's important because it has allowed me to but all of my energy and effort into excelling at both marriage counseling and individual counseling for trauma. I never wanted to be okay at a lot of different things-- I have always had a passion for serving in a relational, trauma-informed context, so I leaned into that.

What does that mean for you?

When you come to me for help in your relationship or with your trauma, you'll be getting 30+ years of focused energy, learning, and experience in our sessions
You will receive therapy that is considered the Gold Standard by the American Psychological Association (APA)
You're going to get better results more quickly than you might with a generalist
You'll need fewer sessions than you would with a generalist or someone who is just now learning about trauma and relationships, saving you time and money!

A Bit About Me

My interest in counseling originated from a desire to repair broken relationships within my own family. My exploration to seek wholeness and restoration for the emotional wounds of my past began with reading books about how family relationships work and then progressed to my majoring in psychology in college. I began to learn about how we impact each other and how important it is to seek my own emotional health and healing. This led to my desire to not only seek my own counseling but also to pursue counseling as a career. How meaningful and fulfilling would it be to not only heal my own personal hurts and relationships but also to help others do the same?

At the center of my work, are my deeply held beliefs that we were created for rich relationships and are meant to experience depth, connection, joy, peace and purpose. Despite these meaningful desires, many people report that they cannot develop or return to healthy relationships. But why? I believe that the reasons we don’t have healthy relationships today go back to our personal history of relational experiences. The emotional scars left from living in an imperfect world get in the way of these riches. Thankfully, through effective therapy, healing and wholeness can occur even in the midst of the failures and offenses of this broken world. Distant relational patterns can not only be repaired but the process to repair can result in the deep, rich relationships we’ve always yearned to have.

Even though I have training in many techniques for emotional healing, I prioritize creating a safe emotional place for my clients to share the difficult experiences they’ve had that are often connected to painful emotions. Grief, loss, abuse, abandonment, betrayal, tragedy, trauma, infidelity, loneliness, divorce, spiritual/religious wounds and disconnection are just a few of the experiences I have helped my clients process over the past 30+ years. I feel honored and privileged to help my clients navigate their challenging journeys. I have incredible respect and admiration for those who seek emotional healing, as I know it takes great courage to move toward change.

My family and I have lived in the Fayette and Coweta area for over 20 years. My amazing husband of 34 years and I have purposely pursued our own healing and growth as a couple. We have three incredible young adult children and two sweet grandbabies. My husband and I cherish being parents and grandparents!

The wife of a former senior pastor, I have an especially empathic perspective of the challenges that clergy families face. My family has experienced the good, the bad and the ugly realities specific to mainstream religion and living in a “glass house”. Serving and supporting clergy families, couples and individuals holds a special place in my heart. As a team, we seek to extend our unique services and insights to these community caregivers.