Bryan Barry
Lying awake at 3 AM while your mind replays everything that went wrong. Dragging through another day with pain nobody else can see. Worrying so much your chest is tight before your feet hit the floor. Feeling nothing where you used to feel something. You've tried pushing through it. Ignoring it. Waiting for it to pass. It isn't working. I'm Bryan Barry, a licensed clinical social worker with 25 years of experience. I help adults with insomnia, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression — problems that feed each other and rarely resolve on their own.
I'm one of relatively few therapists trained in CBT for Insomnia (CBT-I) and CBT for Chronic Pain (CBT-CP)—the gold-standard treatments for these conditions.
Insomnia and pain don't respond to general talk therapy. They respond to specific methods, and those are the methods I use. Most people notice a real difference within the first few weeks. If you're ready to stop managing and start changing, let's talk. Evening and weekend telehealth in Missouri and South Carolina.
First session
Our first session is a working session, not an intake interview. I won't spend the hour collecting your life history. I want to know what's happening now — what brought you in, what's disrupting your life, and what you've already tried. Then I'll tell you exactly how we're going to work on it. If you're not sleeping, I'll walk you through how we retrain your sleep system. If pain has taken over your life, I'll show you how your response to pain changes the pain itself. If anxiety or depression is the problem, I'll show you how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors drive each other — and where we break the cycle. Before we finish, we'll set goals you can measure. Not "feel better." Sleeping through the night. Getting through a workday without a panic spike. Doing the things you've stopped doing. You'll leave knowing what we're doing and why it works. You'll also know whether I'm the right fit — because I'll tell you honestly if I'm not.
Strengths
You've seen a lot of profiles that list anxiety and depression. So does mine. Here's the difference. Insomnia and chronic pain are what I do. They're not an afterthought on a longer list. Sleep responds to a specific approach that works better than medication and lasts longer. Pain responds to changing your relationship to it — which sounds abstract until it works, and then it's the difference between a life organized around pain and a life that isn't. I also work at a deeper level than most therapy goes. Standard approaches catch and challenge distorted thoughts as they surface. I go after the rigid beliefs underneath — the demands, the self-judgment, the conviction that you can't stand discomfort. Those are what keep people stuck in the same cycle for years. Every session has a focus. We measure your progress, so you can see it rather than hope for it. Twenty-five years has taught me that's what separates the people who get better from the people who keep coming.
Ideal clients
You might be lying awake most nights, or living around pain that has quietly taken over your days. You might be anxious enough that focusing is hard, or flat enough that nothing feels worth doing. Often it's more than one of those at once. You don't have to be in crisis to reach out. Most of my clients are functioning — going to work, taking care of their families, holding it together. They're also running on empty, and they know something has to change. If you want a therapist who's direct and gives you a clear plan rather than an open-ended conversation, we'll work well together.
Treatment methods
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
CBT is the foundation of my work. The idea is simple: what you think shapes how you feel and what you do. When those thoughts are distorted or rigid, everything downstream suffers. Together we find the specific thinking patterns keeping you stuck, test them against reality, and replace them with something more accurate. It is a skill, and it gets easier with use.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-i)
If your mind won't shut off at night, CBT-I retrains your sleep system. We identify the habits and thoughts keeping your body in alert mode, then reset your sleep with proven methods — sleep scheduling, cognitive reframing, and relaxation skills. It works better than sleep medication, and the results last longer. Most people notice a difference within a few weeks: falling asleep faster, waking less, feeling rested again.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
REBT goes underneath the surface thoughts to the rigid beliefs driving them — the demands you place on yourself, the belief you can't stand discomfort, the harsh verdicts you pass on yourself. Most people know their thinking isn't helping them but can't seem to stop. REBT works on why. We're not just putting out fires; we're addressing what keeps starting them.
Trauma-Focused CBT
Difficult experiences leave beliefs behind — about safety, trust, control, and your own worth. Those beliefs keep running long after the event is over. We work at your pace. First we build skills to manage what comes up, then we work directly on the stuck points that keep the past in the present. You stay in control of the pace throughout.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Mindfulness isn't about emptying your mind or getting calm. It's learning to notice what's happening in your body and your thinking without getting hijacked by it. For sleep, it breaks the cycle of lying in bed monitoring yourself. For pain, it separates the sensation from the catastrophic thinking that amplifies it. For anxiety, it's the skill of watching an anxious thought without treating it as an emergency.
Location
Virtual sessions
Identifies as
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Serves
Licensed in
- MichiganLicense 6801122642
- MissouriLicense 2005025982
- South CarolinaLicense 16513
- TexasLicense 120197