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This practical, evidence-informed program helps participants recognize unhealthy patterns or generational cycles, challenges limiting beliefs, and develops healthier behavioral responses through intentional choices.
Empowering Change
With a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, certification in REBT and a master’s degree in Special Education, Deana Cerniglia first became an inner-city teacher and from there has spent years studying how people learn, grow, change, and overcome what she has coined as patterns (behaviors we’ve started) or generational cycles and challenges that are passed down. Raised by a single, teen mother - she was determined to show others a journey to freedom.
Her work took on a deeper purpose when she launched a program for single mothers centered on accountability and practical life skills. Through that experience, she saw firsthand that lasting transformation requires more than information—it requires self-awareness, practical tools, personal responsibility, encouragement, GOD’s law, and a safe place to grow.
That work became the foundation for the programs she has created for the Breaking Cycles Method. The four programs: Behavior Changer, Life Skill Rebuilder, The Team Builder (support and growth for work/volunteer teams) and The Transformer (peri and menopause support). All her programs are designed with a 5 Module (8 classes each) format. Each experience was designed to help individuals recognize patterns and cycles, strengthen essential skills, deepen connections, and take meaningful steps toward lasting change.
Now, Deana is bringing these experiences together in a beautiful retreat setting where women and their friends, their teams, or sisters can step away from everyday distractions, slow down, connect, learn, and transform through the curriculum workshops. Her hope is to expand the work that began with one program for single mothers and create opportunities for even more people to experience the power of accountability, practical growth, meaningful connection, and transformation.
Deana believes that when people are given the right tools, GOD’s law, the right environment, and the opportunity to truly see what is possible, change doesn’t have to end with them—it can change what comes next.
'Change doesn't occur by accident - it happens when you understand what's driving your behavior!' Deana Cerniglia
'If the belief stays the same,
the pattern or cycle returns.!' Deana Cerniglia
Despite Challenges
I have spent years studying how people learn, grow, change, and overcome the patterns (behaviors we’ve started) or generational cycles and challenges that are passed down.
My work took on a deeper purpose when I launched The Open Door, a program for young mothers and fathers centered on accountability and practical life skills. Through that experience, I saw firsthand that lasting transformation requires more than information—it requires self-awareness, practical tools, personal responsibility, encouragement, GOD’s law, and a safe place to grow.
In 2020, I decided to make the difficult decision in closing The Open Door to focus on a broader, much needed mission. For nearly a decade, we served young mothers and fathers with compassion, practical support, and opportunities to build a more stable life.
Over time, I saw a growing expectation of assistance without the same willingness to take responsibility or participate in the work of change. The barriers these families faced were real, but lasting progress also required a desire to move forward. I chose to close our services and work on the mission in a different, more powerful way, by expanding the parenting, goal setting and budgeting curriculum we were currently utilizing and adding trauma healing, social skills, government roles verses family, and much more. I paired it with REBT (a cognitive behavior tool), along with encouragement and accountability.
This mission grew outside the confinement of young parents, to a broader audience. This curriculum has grown and become more powerful since that day in 2020 when I decided to put my energy and focus into helping others break free from past bonds, and become the healthiest human they can be. This curriculum was designed to help people, no matter what age, examine their beliefs, build practical skills, and take ownership of a different future.