Empowering Women to Lead Without Burnout – Exclusive Interview with Justine Carino

Justine Carino, LMHC, is a licensed psychotherapist and host of the “Thoughts from the Couch” podcast. Justine was recently awarded the 100 Women to Know Across America award in 2025 by the Know Women Network and Top 10 Health Voices to Follow in 2025 by MSN. She currently maintains a group psychotherapy private practice in New York, where they help individuals, couples, and families decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression, improve their relationships, and set better boundaries to create lives that are in alignment with their values. Justine also teaches ambitious women how to manage perfectionism, anxiety, and stress through 1:1 coaching programs. Justine’s advice has been featured in various media outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, Cosmo, The Huffington Post, Forbes, and Very Well Mind. She has also been a speaker at top corporations, including Eileen Fisher, Lockheed Martin, and Know Women Media, and has been interviewed on over 45 podcasts.

Justine Carino, LMHC, Psychotherapist, Coach, and Podcast Host

Who is Justine Carino? Introduce yourself – your hobbies, favorites, and a bit about you at home and in business.

Justine Carino, LMHC is a licensed psychotherapist and host of the “Thoughts from the Couch” podcast. Justine was recently awarded the 100 Women to Know Across America award in 2025 by the Know Women Network and Top 10 Health Voices to Follow in 2025 by MSN. She currently maintains a group psychotherapy practice in New York, where they help individuals, couples, and families decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression, improve their relationships, and set better boundaries to create lives that are in alignment with their values.

Justine also teaches ambitious women how to manage perfectionism, anxiety, stress, and burnout through her 1:1 coaching program, The Balanced Boss. Justine’s advice has been featured in various media outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, Cosmo, The Huffington Post, Forbes, and Very Well Mind. She has also been a speaker at top corporations including Eileen Fisher, Lockheed Martin, Know Women Media and interviewed on over 50 podcasts.

On the home front, Justine has been married for 11 years and has two children and one more on the way, arriving this June. Justine loves exercising and takes weekly barre and pilates classes, which feel close to home for her as she was a trained dancer from the ages of 6 to 26 years old. She values spending time with friends, her family, and practicing her newest hobby, horseback riding.

How did you choose to become a licensed mental health counselor and anxiety specialist?

I have always been fascinated by people’s behavior. In high school, I found myself getting really curious about the decisions people were making around me, as well as my own. I took a psychology class as a senior and fell in love with it. I went to undergrad as a premed student because I wanted to become a psychiatrist. After spending two semesters crying before and after every biology and chemistry exam, I decided science wasn’t for me. This is when I realized my real calling and purpose was to become a psychotherapist. I applied to graduate school, got in and the rest is history.

Thinking back, I think I was called to focus on treating anxiety disorders because I have always been an anxious person myself, but didn’t realize it until I was an adult and in post-graduate training to treat anxiety disorders. As a toddler and young child, I was selectively mute. I only spoke to my immediate family members and grandparents. My brother, who was 5 years older, often spoke for me. Selective mutism is an anxiety disorder where individuals are literally unable to speak in specific settings due to the “freeze” response triggered by the nervous system when anxious. My kindergarten teacher encouraged my mom to get me evaluated, which really confused her because I was talking at home. Back then, no one really knew what selective mutism was. When I was six, my mom put me in dance, and that took me out of my shell. Now, I don’t seem to stop talking and get paid to talk for a living. How ironic?

What specific challenges do you help individuals, families, and couples overcome in your practice?

At Carino Mental Health Counseling Services, PLLC, we treat teens, young adults, families, and couples struggling with anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, and relationship issues for residents of New York and Connecticut. I also have a second company in which I coach female entrepreneurs on how to take care of their mental health by effectively managing anxiety, stress, perfectionism, burnout, and creating work-life synchronicity. I am to provide this service to women in every state.

Can you explain the core philosophy behind your approach to anxiety, depression, and burnout?

I have extensive post-graduate training in both family systems theories and cognitive behavioral therapy. I have combined the two and discovered incredible results by doing so. Taking techniques from CBT and helping people apply them to their lives, while digging into the history of their family of origin and the dynamics at play while they were growing up, helps them understand why they have the core beliefs that they have in the first place. You can’t make a change until you have this type of clarity.

What makes your work with high‑achieving women and moms unique or different from traditional therapy?

Coaching has a different set of boundaries with more access to the therapist as a coach. Clients have access to me between sessions with check-in calls and messages. This often leads to live, on the spot support as my client goes through their day or week and this is not something we do in traditional therapy.

Also, to do traditional therapy and help clients get reimbursement from their insurance companies, the client needs a mental health diagnosis. My coaching clients do not meet criteria for a mental health disorder and want coaching on specific skills or a road map to get their goals accomplished.

How does your “Thoughts from the Couch” podcast help expand mental health support beyond traditional therapy settings?

I started my podcast during the pandemic when my waitlist felt like it would never end, and we were in a mental health crisis. I felt as though more people needed access to mental health support. Not everyone can afford quality therapy, and I wanted to be a resource for people outside of my practice walls. I also wanted to destigmatize mental health and therapy and normalize conversations about it.

My audience is perfectionistic and ambitious women who are creating companies and running businesses while also creating families, so these women struggle with stress, anxiety, burnout, guilt, and overwhelm. I like to pick topics that can support women in these areas, help them with their relationships, but also inspire them to keep going and dreaming. I want women to know that they don’t need to run from stress and anxiety – it doesn’t have to feel this hard.

What are some of the most common misconceptions about anxiety and perfectionism that you address with your clients?

A lot of people think that they need their perfectionism in order to be successful, accomplished or good at what they do. This makes pulling back on perfectionistic thoughts and behaviors a huge challenge for many women. The truth is, we don’t need to rely on perfectionism to make things happen for us. It is just one part of ourselves that we have been conditioned to believe makes us who we are. It was an adaptation to make us feel safe and in control at some point in our lives, most likely during identity development in childhood and adolescence. This perfectionistic part was often positively reinforced by reactions from our parents when we overachieved, or peers when we were very likeable and reliable. It is hard to let go of something we are positively reinforced for, until we realize it may no longer serve us as well as it used to. We can still be very successful without the weight of perfectionism and anxiety. You just have to be taught how to rewire your brain to allow this change. That’s what I help women do.

Can you share a success story or example of how your guidance has helped someone make lasting change?

I had a client tell me last month that she has healed more by working with me for the past 15 months than she has over the past 15 years! I was so honored, I can’t even describe the feeling. She was a survivor of trauma in adolescence, was in and out of a variety of treatment programs and has met with different types of therapists over the years, so when she said this I felt so confident in the work I am doing. I was able to see an outcome. I know my ability to combine cognitive behavioral therapy and family systems techniques is unique but truly effective, and her saying that to me validated everything I have been working on over the past 15 years. I never stop learning my craft and tweaking my skills because I want to see the change. If I am not helping someone, then what am I even doing?

What are the key tools or techniques you teach clients to regain calm and confidence in their lives?

I combine a few different modalities- cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, internal family systems, and Bowenian family systems. It’s amazing how the different tools and techniques from each modality really complement each other and come together as a perfect recipe for change. I help clients understand the relationship between their thoughts, feelings, and actions and how that patterning influences the decisions they make, the relationships they have, and the feelings and patterns they are struggling with. I help clients understand their subconscious core beliefs that influence their automatic thought patterns, which have been highly influenced by their family of origin, culture, and life events. I help clients identify what they currently value in their lives and teach them how to set boundaries around these values so they feel in alignment with their lives. I also use exposure therapy to help clients rewire their brains and achieve the goals and changes they want to make for themselves.

What inspired you to create programs like The Balanced Boss™ for stressed‑out women?

My own struggles with running a business and becoming a mother at the same time during the pandemic inspired me. It was March 2020, and like many women, I was trying to do everything at once. I had a three-month-old breastfeeding baby and a toddler who was potty training and regressing with sleep. I was running therapy sessions on Zoom while bouncing a crying baby between sessions and a three-year-old with no preschool due to the world shutting down.

I was trying to be the calm, grounded therapist my clients needed while also being the present mom my kids deserved. I was growing my practice that had a waitlist, recording a podcast that was ranked in the top 3 %, and honestly, I thought I was handling it pretty well. Until I developed Hashimoto's disease, an autoimmune condition where your body literally starts attacking itself. My anxiety and stress was through the roof, which was so ironic given I am an anxiety treatment specialist.

I knew I couldn’t be alone in this struggle, so I started focusing my content online and on my podcast to serve high-achieving females. I felt like successful working women needed more support. 1 in 4 families in America have a female breadwinner now, but women are still “expected” to do certain things while also working and advancing their careers. Women have a lot of pressure on them about what a “good mom” and “good wife” should look like and what success should look like. This leads to a ton of stress, anxiety, and burnout for women who are growing businesses while building families. We can’t do it all; we need a lot of help, and we need that to be okay with that in our society today. My generation of women did not have many models of how we are supposed to do this, so we are figuring it out now with each other. We need to change narratives around what success can look like for women and who our families and society can support us in these roles as leaders. That’s what I hope my program can do.

From your experience, what is the biggest barrier people face when seeking mental health support and how do you help them overcome it?

I think there are a few things. The first is stigma. A lot of people think therapy is for someone who is severely “mentally ill” or has been traumatized in some way, and many people come to therapy without a mental health diagnosis. Whether or not people want to admit it, our mental health is a significant part of how successful we are, how our relationships go, and how satisfied we are with our lives. You don’t need a diagnosis to benefit from support.

I also think a lot of people are resistant to hiring support and think they can figure everything out themselves, but this belief prevents them from growing and scaling their business. I can’t tell you how many women I have met whose perfectionism has actually blocked them from making more money or having more time.

Lastly, I think people lack access to quality mental health care. Not everyone can afford private pay therapy and coaching, and when they try to use their health insurance, the paneled providers are full with 6-month wait lists. This is why I offer free content on my podcast, email list, and social media. I also have sliding scale slots for clients who cannot afford my full fee.

What message would you like potential clients to hear – and why should they reach out to you for support today?

I want women to remember that they can be successful and sane. You do not have to sacrifice your peace, presence with your family or mental health in order to achieve your professional goals.

The women I work with aren't broken. They're not too much or too sensitive. They're carrying patterns that made sense once but don't serve them anymore. They're brilliant, capable women who are ready to stop running on external conditioning and start leading from their own wisdom. When my clients learn to put down old patterns and trust their own authority instead of their inherited anxiety, they don't just transform their businesses but they transform their whole lives. They become the leaders they were meant to be. The mothers they wanted to have. The women who show up fully without burning out completely. Because the world doesn't need more women who look perfect on paper. The world needs more women who know that success and peace can coexist and that you can be ambitious and also at ease.

Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info!

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