Ep. 16 - When Your Pain Finally Outgrows Your Fear

Ep. 16 - When Your Pain Finally Outgrows Your Fear

First responder mental health and the silence around it is where this conversation begins — with Tim Roberto, a Marine Corps veteran with 19 years of sobriety who turned his own history into something that helps people in uniform ask for help without losing anything in the process. He founded Stomping Out the Stigma, a nonprofit that connects first responders and veterans with licensed, culturally competent therapists. No insurance. No HR. No agency reporting. First name only, and someone calls you back within 24 hours. Tim started using at 11, worked his way through everything available between then and 16, and got sober at 44. What finally moved him wasn't a program or a person — it was a quiet realization that his pain had grown bigger than his fear. For years, fear-based decisions had only produced more fear, the same drain cycling through the same dark. Recovery came through 12-step literature, morning routines, and what he calls a complete psychic change — not something he can fully explain, just something he stopped trying to figure out and started living instead. He grew up one of five boys, raised by an authoritarian Italian father who had been sent back to Italy alone at eight years old for his education, and a deeply codependent English mother. Tim spent most of his childhood trying to be anything other than himself. The episode moves through his early years, his time in the Marine Corps, the moment in a Burger King parking lot at 16 when cocaine found him and he knew immediately it was different, and the first sober Christmas when he finally told his father he loved him — a scene that takes a long time to get through and is worth every second. Jill brings her own thread in — her father, her husband's death, the boundary she set in her early 50s that she couldn't have set before, and what it finally felt like to be parented after spending most of her life without it. Both of them return again and again to the same ground: showing up for yourself in the morning before the day takes over, watching patterns instead of words, staying off the victim triangle, and choosing response over reaction. None of it is abstract. All of it is earned. Palm Beach County has one of the highest death by suicide rates among first responders in any county in Florida. Nationally, more first responders die by suicide than in the line of duty. If you or someone you know is in uniform and struggling, Tim can be reached at sotsinc24@gmail.com or sotsinc.org. Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP * Email: jill@jillbershad.com  [https://jill@jillbershad.com/] * Website: jillbershad.com [https://www.jillbershad.com/] * Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc [https://www.instagram.com/jillkbershad.lmhc/] * Facebook: jillkbershad [https://www.facebook.com/jillkbershad]

Ep. 15 - When Life Keeps Saying No and You Keep Going Anyway

Adventure therapy, Navy SEALs, and what happens when the path you were certain about closes on you twice. David Cohen, a therapist and founder of Invictus Psychotherapy in Boca Raton, sits down to talk about how a DWI at 19 changed the entire direction of his life, and what it took to find purpose on the other side of that. David walks through what adventure therapy actually looks like in practice, why talking about your problems in a chair only goes so far, and how taking someone rock climbing or kayaking can get to places that traditional talk therapy never reaches. The conversation moves into the body, the nervous system, and why so many people are walking around in a stress response they do not even recognize as one. Jill and David talk honestly about sitting with emotions instead of outrunning them, the difference between insight and actual change, and why the belief "I can't do it" that shows up on a ropes course is the exact same belief that shows up everywhere else in a person's life. There is also a real conversation about men and emotional expression, and what it takes to access feelings when you were conditioned not to have them. There is a lot of ground covered here, including OCD, hypnotherapy, exposure therapy, and what it means to be of genuine service versus just getting by. David is about to join the Army National Guard, has a two-month-old at home, and sees around thirty clients a week. He is doing the work, and it shows. Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP * Email: jill@jillbershad.com  [https://jill@jillbershad.com/] * Website: jillbershad.com [https://www.jillbershad.com/] * Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc [https://www.instagram.com/jillkbershad.lmhc/] * Facebook: jillkbershad [https://www.facebook.com/jillkbershad]

Ep. 14 - Surviving a Stroke and Losing a Spouse Finding the Will to Keep Showing Up

Friendship that holds through the worst moments is hard to put into words, but this conversation tries. Jill sits down with Andrew Reiss, a retired pediatrician and long-time family friend, to talk about what it actually looks like to rebuild a life after something shatters it. For Andrew, that was a massive stroke in November 2019 that left his left side paralyzed, though he had no awareness of it in the moment. For Jill, it was losing her husband Adam. Both of them have been figuring out, in real time, how to keep going. Andrew talks honestly about the early days of recovery, going from full speed to complete stillness, and how he developed what he calls minimum daily fitness, a small, non-negotiable commitment to his body that had as much to do with quieting his inner critic as it did with getting stronger. He also reflects on a recent climb up Pico Duarte, the tallest mountain in the Caribbean, and what came into focus afterward about identity, letting go of the role he had held for decades, and what he is building now in its place. The conversation moves into what Andrew watched work with his patients and his own kids over the years, specifically around emotional validation and resilience. His point is simple but easy to skip over: you have to validate the feeling before you try to change the behavior. And the modeling of resilience, he says, starts with parents actually taking care of themselves, not just their children. There is also a quieter thread running through all of it, about connection, vulnerability, and what happens when people stop waiting to feel better before they take the next step. Andrew describes it as acting your way into better feeling, and Jill recognizes it immediately from her own work with clients walking through grief and depression. This one covers a lot of ground, stroke recovery, grief, parenting, identity after retirement, service work abroad, and two people who have stayed close through all of it. Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP * Email: jill@jillbershad.com  [https://jill@jillbershad.com/] * Website: jillbershad.com [https://www.jillbershad.com/] * Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc [https://www.instagram.com/jillkbershad.lmhc/] * Facebook: jillkbershad [https://www.facebook.com/jillkbershad]

Ep. 13 - Two Liver Transplants a Kidney Transplant List and Still Showing Up

Liver transplant survivor and ICU nurse Melissa met host Jill Bershad at a spa just six days before this conversation. The connection was immediate, and the conversation that followed feels just as natural. Melissa’s life has asked a lot of her from a young age. After losing her father at eight, she stepped into a caregiving role for her mother and younger brother by nine. Since then, her path has been shaped by responsibility, resilience, and a series of life-altering health challenges that would stop most people in their tracks. What runs underneath all of it is not performance or positivity. It is something quieter. Melissa talks about her Christian faith the way she talks about everything else, plainly and without pressure. She references the book of Job not as a metaphor but as a framework she actually lives by. She also talks about what she has never done well, grieving, slowing down, letting people see the fragile parts, and she says it without apology. Jill does not turn this into a session. She just listens, asks the questions most people would be afraid to ask, and lets Melissa be exactly who she is. The result is a conversation about survival that does not feel like a survival story. It feels like two people talking honestly about what it costs to keep going, and why most of us do anyway. Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP * Email: jill@jillbershad.com  [https://jill@jillbershad.com/] * Website: jillbershad.com [https://www.jillbershad.com/] * Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc [https://www.instagram.com/jillkbershad.lmhc/] * Facebook: jillkbershad [https://www.facebook.com/jillkbershad]

Ep. 12 - What It Really Takes to Move From Surviving to Thriving

Jill sits down with longtime friend and psychotherapist Rachel Blogg for a conversation that moves between real life, real loss, and the quiet ways people keep going. They talk about what it looks like to live through hard things without stopping long enough to process them, and what happens when you finally do. There’s a thread of high performance running through it all. The pressure to hold it together. The habit of putting one foot in front of the other. And the shift that comes when that’s no longer enough. Rachel shares pieces of her story that she hasn’t spoken about publicly before, including her history with disordered eating, how perfectionism shows up, and the ongoing work of staying aware without letting the past define her. They also talk about fear, safety, relationships, and the difference between living as a victim and making intentional choices that feel more empowering. There’s no neat takeaway here. Just two people sitting in it, making sense of what they’ve lived through, and what it means to keep moving forward with more honesty and intention. Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP * Email: jill@jillbershad.com  [https://jill@jillbershad.com/] * Website: jillbershad.com [https://www.jillbershad.com/] * Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc [https://www.instagram.com/jillkbershad.lmhc/] * Facebook: jillkbershad [https://www.facebook.com/jillkbershad]