The Present Moment Project

Codependency, people pleasing, and setting healthy boundaries can shape how we see ourselves and the relationships we create. Jill Bershad sits down with therapist Michael Berger for an honest, sometimes funny conversation about recovery, personal responsibility, and learning to recognize our own worth.

Michael shares his personal journey through Codependents Anonymous, his struggles with people pleasing and addiction, and how years of personal development helped him understand the beliefs driving his behavior. Together, Jill and Michael explore the difference between genuinely caring for others and abandoning our own needs to gain approval. They also discuss how childhood experiences can create patterns that follow us into adulthood, often without us realizing it.

The conversation turns to personal agency and what happens when we begin taking responsibility for our choices instead of feeling stuck in our circumstances. Michael reflects on the courage it took to recognize his professional worth, build his private practice, and create a life that includes therapy, teaching, fatherhood, and a men's therapy group he's led for more than 16 years. Jill shares her own experiences with grief, difficult conversations, and finding growth on the other side of discomfort.

There's plenty of laughter along the way, including Michael's background in comedy and improv, his approach to self-care, and a special poem about resilience that he wrote for Jill. Beneath the humor is a conversation about the importance of connection, community, creativity, and continuing to do the work, even when life feels uncomfortable.

Recovery and personal growth aren't about becoming someone entirely different. They're about recognizing the stories we've been telling ourselves, learning when to say yes and when to say no, and remembering that we have the ability to make choices that move us toward a healthier, more fulfilling life.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad

Addiction doesn’t happen to one person. It changes marriages, families, relationships, and the way everyone around it learns to survive. Jill Bershad sits down with interventionist Marc Kantor and his wife Julie for an open conversation about addiction, recovery, generational trauma, and what it really takes for a family to heal.

Marc and Julie share the story of a marriage that nearly ended as Marc’s addiction to prescription medication escalated in secrecy. What Julie initially saw as lying, financial problems, and distance eventually became something she understood very differently: Marc was struggling with addiction and needed help. An intervention led him to treatment, but getting sober was only the beginning. Julie discovered that she had her own recovery work to do, and together they began rebuilding their marriage from both sides.

Their conversation explores enabling, unhealthy coping mechanisms, family roles, trauma, and why removing the substance doesn’t automatically remove the behaviors underneath it. Marc also reflects on recognizing generational trauma in his own life and the importance of continuing to work on himself decades into recovery. Jill connects their experiences to something she sees often in her own work: real change requires learning how to tolerate discomfort instead of constantly trying to escape it.

They also discuss growing concerns they’re seeing in the treatment world, including high-potency THC and kratom, and why education and honest conversations with families matter. At the heart of it all is a reminder that recovery isn’t simply about one person stopping a behavior. It can become an opportunity for an entire family to understand its patterns, take responsibility for its own healing, and learn a different way forward.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad

Trauma can shape the way we see ourselves, our relationships, and the world around us without us even realizing it. Jill Bershad sits down with her close friend and EMDR therapist Luna Medina for a deeply personal conversation about how experiences from our past can continue to influence our beliefs, reactions, and choices years later.

Luna explains EMDR through the idea of seeing life through different colored lenses. When painful experiences remain unresolved, they can create beliefs like “I’m not good enough,” “I can’t trust people,” or “I’m not safe.” Jill and Luna explore how those beliefs can become stored in the nervous system, why seemingly unrelated sounds, smells, people, places, and situations can trigger powerful reactions, and how EMDR can help take away the power those memories continue to hold.

The conversation becomes especially personal as Jill and Luna reflect on their own experiences with grief, family relationships, boundaries, dissociation, and healing. Jill shares how Luna showed up immediately after Adam’s death and how their friendship grew into chosen family. They also talk about recognizing unhealthy patterns, accepting people for who they are, setting boundaries without abandoning compassion, and understanding that sometimes healing changes the way we participate in relationships.

Healing doesn’t erase what happened. It can change the way the past lives in the present. As Luna reminds us, change is possible, support is available, and we don’t have to remain trapped inside the beliefs and patterns created by experiences we survived.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad

Grief, trauma, and healing can look completely different from one person to the next. Jill Bershad sits down with therapist Linda Tepper for an honest conversation about losing their husbands within months of each other and the very different ways their minds and bodies responded to loss.

While Jill found herself constantly moving, traveling, going to concerts, and surrounding herself with friends, Linda experienced grief almost in the opposite way. She gave herself permission to sit still and told herself she had a year of grace. Together, they talk about why there is no single right way to grieve, the importance of allowing feelings instead of judging them, and what it means to grow through what you go through.

As therapists, Jill and Linda also explore trauma, dissociation, EMDR, hypnotherapy, anxiety, and Linda’s work with Dissociative Identity Disorder. They reflect on how trauma can live in the body, why old experiences continue to shape our beliefs and reactions, and how curiosity can help us understand ourselves without adding shame or judgment.

Four years after losing their husbands, both women are entering new chapters. They talk about independence, dating after loss, children growing up, learning to accept help, and discovering who you are when the life you once knew has changed. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. Sometimes it means allowing yourself to change with it.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad

Childhood experiences, addiction recovery, and leadership come together in a conversation about how our past continues to shape the way we show up. Jill Bershad sits down with Blake Cohen to talk about his recovery, his work in leadership psychology, and why our unresolved experiences can affect far more than just ourselves.

Blake shares his own path into recovery, beginning with the intervention his family held on New Year’s Eve 2012. He reflects on the self-doubt, pressure, and need to numb that were part of his experience, along with the difficult process of accepting help. Jill and Blake also talk about what families face when someone they love is struggling with addiction and the difference between supporting someone and continuing to support harmful behavior.

The conversation turns to Blake’s research on what he calls the Hero Villain Leadership Spectrum and the connection between adverse childhood experiences and the adults and leaders we become. They talk about accountability, emotional safety, childhood coping mechanisms, and how behaviors that once protected us can begin to hurt our relationships when we carry them into adulthood without examining them.

There is no point where the work is simply finished. We can recognize how our past shaped us without staying trapped by it, take responsibility for the impact we have on other people, and keep moving toward healthier relationships with ourselves and those around us.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad

Supporting a transgender child, healing from childhood wounds, and learning to love yourself are at the center of this heartfelt conversation. Jill Bershad sits down with her friend Shayna Bloom to reflect on resilience, parenting, grief, spirituality, and the courage to live authentically through life's biggest transitions.

Shayna shares her family's journey as her child, Eli, transitioned and began openly documenting that experience online. Together, they talk honestly about the fear of public criticism, the importance of unconditional love, and why creating a safe, accepting home can make all the difference for a child learning to become their authentic self. They also reflect on the impact of social media, community, and choosing love over judgment.

Their conversation also explores the healing work that happens within ourselves. They share stories from a recent humanitarian trip to the Dominican Republic, discuss Reiki, fire ceremonies, intuition, and the lifelong process of releasing old beliefs, setting healthier boundaries, and quieting the inner critic that often begins in childhood.

Healing isn't about becoming someone new. Sometimes it's about letting go of who you were taught to be, trusting your own inner voice, and creating a life rooted in compassion for yourself and the people you love.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad

Personal growth, healing old patterns, and learning to trust yourself shape this honest conversation as Jill Bershad welcomes therapists and Real Course instructors Jon Waller and Stephanie Savo-Smellie. Together they reflect on the life-changing work that helped them move beyond people-pleasing, self-doubt, and childhood beliefs that continued to influence their adult relationships.

Jon and Stephanie share how The Real Course uses experiential personal development to help people recognize limiting beliefs, step outside their comfort zones, practice vulnerability, and take responsibility for the lives they want to create. They also talk about how the work has transformed their relationships, careers, and the way they show up for themselves and others.

Jill opens up about how this work changed her own life after years of carrying childhood wounds, and how learning about boundaries, integrity, accountability, and self-love continues to shape her healing after profound loss. Together they explore why growth often begins with discomfort, why healthy relationships require honesty, and how small shifts in awareness can create lasting change.

Healing doesn't happen by pretending the past didn't matter. It begins by understanding the beliefs we've carried for years, choosing new ways to respond, and giving ourselves permission to live with greater authenticity, connection, and compassion.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad

Grief, resilience, and learning how to keep living after loss are at the heart of this deeply personal conversation. Jill Bershad sits down with Amy to talk about the death of Amy’s son Yossi from brain cancer and the experiences that led her to write The Wholeness of a Broken Heart.

Amy shares the nine months between Yossi’s diagnosis and his death, the community that surrounded her family, and the difficult reality of being present for one child while continuing to parent and care for the rest of her family. She and Jill reflect on vulnerability, asking for help, accepting what cannot be changed, and the people who show up when life becomes too heavy to carry alone.

Their conversation moves through the seven pathways Amy writes about, including acceptance, vulnerability, self-care, family and chosen family, beauty, faith, and miracles. They talk about finding comfort in nature, listening to intuition, setting boundaries, speaking to ourselves with kindness, and allowing grief and beauty to exist at the same time.

There are no simple answers for moving through profound loss. Sometimes resilience begins with accepting the life that is actually in front of us, finding safe people who will sit beside us, and remaining open to the beauty, connection, and small miracles that still exist.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad

Starting over at 45, building a startup, and learning to trust yourself are at the heart of this conversation. Jill Bershad sits down with her longtime friend Nathalya to reflect on decades of friendship, raising families, navigating financial uncertainty, and finding the courage to begin again.

Nathalya shares how a personal family tragedy led her to leave a successful event planning career, return to graduate school, and eventually launch Anywhere DX, a company working to develop an at-home strep test designed to make testing and treatment more accessible. Along the way, she talks honestly about self-doubt, resilience, pitching investors, and discovering confidence she didn't know she had.

Their conversation moves naturally between memories of young motherhood, entrepreneurship, empty nesting, marriage, and the unexpected ways life keeps asking us to adapt. Rather than having all the answers, they reflect on what it means to keep moving forward, trust the process, and take chances on yourself even when the outcome isn't guaranteed.

Sometimes resilience looks less like a dramatic moment and more like making the next decision, taking the next step, and believing that growth is possible long after life has changed.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad

Bryan Martin lost his partner Clayton in 2018 after a bizarre accident during yard work which led to a fungal infection, a missed diagnosis, and liver failure within months. He also lost his father that same year. What followed was grief compounded by invisibility — a doctor in the ER dismissed him because he and Clayton weren't married, and people around him minimized the loss for the same reason. Bryan talks about what it actually felt like to move through those years, including the fog of early grief, the anger of year two, and the isolation of the pandemic that eventually pushed him toward dancing in his kitchen on TikTok.

That dancing became something neither of us expected. Bryan now has 1.2 million Facebook followers who show up every morning for his kitchen dance videos with a cup of coffee. He talks about how that started not as content but as survival — a way to give himself something to look forward to when the world shut down and there was nothing else. What grew out of it, including parents messaging him to say they finally understood their gay children better, is something he still doesn't fully have words for.

We talk about the strange timeline of grief — how four years or eight years can feel both endless and impossibly fast, how certain moments cut through the fog without warning, and why the people who haven't been through it often say the most inadvertently hurtful things. Bryan also wrote a book, The Widow Dancer, compiled from five years of blog posts he wrote for a widowed support organization. He talks about going back and reading all of it, and crying straight through.

There's also a conversation here about what it means to be widowed without being married, and why that distinction shouldn't matter but still does — in hospitals, in social circles, in how people respond to your grief. Bryan is remarried now, to Devin, who by the way is very cute. But the throughline of this whole conversation is the same one that started it: you lose your person, and that's what it is.

Contact Jill K. Bershad, LMHC, CAP

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: jillbershad.com
• Instagram: @jillkbershad.lmhc
• Facebook: jillkbershad