Most moms know things will change when a baby arrives. What's harder to anticipate is how much the internal experience shifts, especially for high-achieving women who have always relied on productivity and drive to feel grounded. When the old coping strategies stop working, and the to-do list keeps growing, something has to give.

In this episode of Between Sessions with Berries, Kym sits down with Danielle Smith, LCSW, PMH-C, a licensed clinical social worker and certified perinatal mental health specialist, to talk about what high-functioning anxiety actually looks like in early motherhood. Danielle draws on both her clinical expertise and her own experience as a mom of three to normalize what so many women are quietly navigating, and to offer practical ways to get support without adding more pressure.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• What high-functioning anxiety looks like in mothers and why it often goes unrecognized.
• Why motherhood surfaces old patterns and coping strategies that no longer work.
• The glass ball theory for figuring out what to keep juggling and what to set down.
• What most pregnant women overlook when preparing for the postpartum period emotionally.
• The difference between therapy and coaching, and how each type of support serves a different need.
• How Danielle uses ChatGPT to reduce mental load at home and in her business.

Connect with Danielle Smith:
Website: www.empoweredcounselingnj.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empoweredmotherhood
Support Group: https://www.empoweredcounselingnj.com/support-group/p/empoweredmomscommunity

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.

Join Julie Grace for a guided meditation created specifically for therapists who need to release the stories, images, and emotional echoes that linger after sessions. This practice gently invites you to arrive in the present moment and to honor the weight of what you've heard today without carrying it forward.

Using calming visualization, this meditation guides you to let the words, feelings, silences, and moments from your sessions drift away like leaves on the current, naturally and without force. You'll return to yourself feeling more present, clear, and grounded, ready to step back into your own life.

Berries Meditations offers mental health professionals a place to pause and reset. Created by Berries, these brief guided meditations are crafted to support the wellbeing of those who dedicate their days to caring for others.

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.

Burnout rarely announces itself. For many mental health professionals, it builds slowly, often in the gap between doing meaningful work and losing the spark that made the work feel meaningful in the first place.

In this episode of Between Sessions with Berries, Kym sits down with Lorain Moorehead, LCSW, EMDR approved consultant, clinical supervisor, and faculty associate at Arizona State University, to talk about what actually keeps a career sustainable over the long haul. Lorain brings 18 years of experience working with high-achieving professionals and clinicians, and she shares how staying connected to your core values, not just your caseload, can be the difference between thriving and burning out.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why learning as a core value can act as a built-in burnout prevention strategy.
• How your caseload can organically reveal a niche within your niche.
• The mental health patterns most common in therapist entrepreneurs, including ADHD, anxiety, and perfectionism.
• Why not everyone needs to follow the same career trajectory and why that is actually okay.
• How to identify the parts of your work that drain you and what to do about them.
• The role AI note-writing and customizable EHRs are playing in reducing clinician burnout.
• How Lorain structures supervision using HIPAA-compliant tools like Google Workspace and Dropbox.

Connect with Lorain Moorehead:
Website: https://lorainmoorehead.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theselfcareapist/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@selfcareapist
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theselfcareapist

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.

Join Julie Grace for a guided meditation designed specifically for therapists at the close of the clinical day. Through gentle awareness and movement, this practice offers your nervous system a clear, intentional signal that your work for the day is complete - helping you disengage from the outward orientation of clinical presence and return to yourself.

This Berries meditation moves through arriving into the present moment, honoring the care you brought to your work, and using breath and body movement to release any residue from the day, so you can step into your evening grounded in your own presence, your own breath, and your own life.

Berries Meditations offers mental health professionals a place to pause and reset. Created by Berries, these brief guided meditations are crafted to support the wellbeing of those who dedicate their days to caring for others.

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.

Mental health stigma is a barrier many clients face, but for those from Asian communities, it often runs deeper. It's wrapped up in family honor, generational silence, and the belief that struggling is something to be hidden rather than addressed.

In this episode of Between Sessions with Berries, Kym sits down with Jonathan Llamas, psychiatric nurse practitioner and founder of Mind and Heart, to talk about what culturally informed mental health care actually looks like. Jonathan shares how his own background, Filipino heritage, faith, and a journey through failure and reinvention, shaped the way he shows up for clients and the gap he sees in how providers are trained to handle culture, spirituality, and the whole person.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why mental health stigma in Asian communities is often rooted in family honor and generational trauma, not resistance to care.
• How internal dialogue shapes the lens through which clients experience the world and why it matters clinically.
• Ways to open conversations about culture and upbringing without fear of causing offense.
• How to approach faith and spirituality as a potential protective factor rather than a clinical landmine.
• Why medication management alone misses the picture and what holistic care looks like in practice.
• What providers are not being taught in school about navigating cultural, spiritual, and trauma-informed conversations.
• Why authenticity matters as much in clinical presence as it does on social media.

Connect with Jonathan Llamas:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjonathanvllamas/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjonathanvllamas/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindandheartofficial/

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.

Join Julie Grace for this guided meditation designed to help therapists strengthen their inner sense of stability - the steady, grounded presence that their clients rely on. Through breath awareness and gentle self-observation, this practice invites you to notice your natural responses when strong or complex emotions arise in the room, building awareness without judgment.

This meditation guides you to reconnect with your foundation, so that you can hold space for your clients with ease, allowing emotions to move through the session without taking them on. You'll return to your day feeling secure, present, and grounded in the steady awareness that is always within you.

Berries Meditations offers mental health professionals a place to pause and reset. Created by Berries, these brief guided meditations are crafted to support the wellbeing of those who dedicate their days to caring for others.

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.

Going from a busy agency or school system to solo private practice can feel like stepping into a vacuum. The coworkers, the structure, the built-in community, it's all gone. And for many mental health professionals, that shift is lonelier than they expected.

In this episode of Between Sessions with Berries, Kym sits down with Tara Wells, LCSW, and founder of the Unpacked Mastermind, to talk about what actually happens to clinicians when they go out on their own. Tara brings both lived experience and a growing platform built specifically to fill the gap that grad school, group chats, and Facebook forums never could.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why solo private practice creates a silo and how that isolation affects mental health professionals differently than other entrepreneurs.
• What "pitching" means for clinicians and why learning to articulate your niche is a core business skill.
• How Tara built a free mastermind for South Florida therapists before scaling it into the Unpacked Mastermind.
• What the mastermind format looks like and why it works better than async forums for real-time feedback and accountability.
• Who the Unpacked Mastermind is for, including clinicians who are still agency-based but curious about private practice.
• The business mistakes therapists make early on and why most are learning everything as they go.

Connect with Tara Wells:
Website: https://www.finishlinemindset.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/finishlinemindset
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@finishlinemindset
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarawellslcsw/

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.

Join Julie Grace for a guided meditation created specifically for therapists navigating the uncertainty that is inherent to therapeutic work. In those moments when a session ends without resolution, when a question lingers, something remains open, or clarity hasn't yet arrived, this practice offers you a grounded space to pause and simply be with what is.

Through sound and body awareness, this meditation gently invites you to explore how uncertainty registers in your mind and body, and to discover the steadiness that is already present within you. Rather than reaching for answers, you are guided toward a quiet confidence rooted not in resolution, but in your capacity to remain present and hold space, even when things are still unfolding.

Berries Meditations offers mental health professionals a place to pause and reset. Created by Berries, these brief guided meditations are crafted to support the wellbeing of those who dedicate their days to caring for others.

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.

Mental health professionals are often the last ones to apply what they know to themselves. The pressure to keep showing up for clients, students, and colleagues can quietly chip away at the foundation that makes good clinical work possible in the first place.

In this episode of Between Sessions with Berries, Kym sits down with Dr. Pedro Morante, clinical director at Psych Up Mental Health Services and founder of PASS Review Center, a board prep and mentorship program for nurse practitioners. Dr. Morante shares the Five Ms framework he uses with both patients and clinicians, breaks down how anxiety and identity get tangled together during board prep, and talks honestly about how AI tools like Berries are helping reduce the documentation burden that drives so many professionals toward burnout.

In This Episode, We Cover

• The Five Ms of Mental Health: Movement, Mindfulness, Mastery, Meaningful Engagement, and Mediterranean Diet.
• Why burnout is so common among high-performing clinicians and what actually helps.
• How test anxiety and perfectionism affect board exam performance for nurse practitioners.
• What the 90-day prep window looks like and why timing matters for certification success.
• The role of AI in reducing documentation burden and supporting clinical decision-making.
• How Dr. Morante's PASS Review Center helps students separate identity from performance.

Connect with Dr. Pedro Morante:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peter.morante/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peter.morante/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petermorante/

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.

Join Julie Grace for a guided meditation created specifically for therapists navigating self-doubt and decision fatigue. In this Berries meditation, you are invited to gently land in the present moment, notice where uncertainty lives in your body, and simply be with it -  without judgment, without pressure to resolve anything.

Through breath awareness and grounding visualization, this practice guides you to reconnect with the knowledge, skills, and experience that already orient your clinical presence. You'll move back into your day reminded that there is no perfect map for your work - only the quiet, reliable direction within you.

Berries Meditations offers mental health professionals a place to pause and reset. Created by Berries, these brief guided meditations are crafted to support the wellbeing of those who dedicate their days to caring for others.

Link: https://we.tl/t-29DiDaB3WW3FrxLH

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Join the Berries Community - A dedicated space for mental health clinicians to connect, share insights, and grow together. Look for Berries AI Official Community on Facebook at www.heyberries.com/community

Brought to You By Berries:
Ready to stop dreading your notes? Berries is your AI assistant for mental health professionals. Save time, stay compliant, and get back to the work you love. Learn more at heyberries.com.