The Wounded Healer Podcast

Michael Smalley, Ph.D.
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Daily

I spent thirty years helping people heal their marriages and their lives. And then mine fell apart completely. What I learned in the wreckage changed everything I thought I knew about trauma, relationships, and what healing actually requires. This is The Wounded Healer Podcast. Every season is a focused teaching series on the things that keep people stuck. Marriage. Trauma. Recovery. Faith. The patterns you keep repeating even when you know better. I teach from thirty years of clinical experience and from a life that has been broken open and rebuilt from the ground up. No performance. No toxic positivity. Just the real stuff, from someone who has actually lived it. If you have ever looked at yourself and thought 'I know better than this, why can't I do better than this,' you are in exactly the right place.

  1. 3d ago

    The Thing You Are Protecting

    Last week I told you I know what to do and I am not doing it. This week I want to go underneath that and ask why. Because the half measure is never random. You are not failing at willingness across the board. You are willing about almost everything and unwilling about one specific thing, and that one thing is fenced off, guarded, and quietly non-negotiable. Every path to freedom that has ever worked runs directly through it. Here is mine. I gained a lot of weight after I moved to Fort Worth. For a while I told myself it was stress. It is not stress. It is grief. I am fifty-three, I do not own a home, and I have never been able to give my kids a place I built for them to come home to. My father was a wealthy, world famous man who provided for us in a way I have never been able to provide for mine. And some days it feels strange to have already done the most extraordinary things I may ever get to do. I have been eating and drinking my way around sitting still with that. That is the thing I am protecting. This episode is about finding yours. Because the thing you are protecting is almost always the thing that is killing you. If you are listening to this and thinking about your marriage, here is what willing looks like. Two days. Just the two of you and me. We find the pattern underneath every fight you keep having, and you leave with tools that work the moment you walk back in your own front door. Most couples get in within two or three weeks, and the first conversation is free. Learn more at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/intensive Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

  2. Jul 22

    Everybody Knows What to Do

    I have not recorded a podcast in over a month. I am struggling with my eating again, and the Diet Coke thing is back. I moved to a new city seven months ago and I still have not found a group or a coach of my own, mostly because I have not really tried. And almost four years after my divorce, I still walk into church some Sundays not knowing how to be a single man in a room full of couples. That is where I am starting this new series. Not because I want sympathy. Because I did not come back from the grave to pretend ever again. Here is what I have learned in thirty years of doing this work: everybody knows what to do. Almost nobody is willing to do it when it costs something. The information was never the problem. You already know the next right thing. You have known it for weeks. So this series asks one question, and it is the same question I ask every client I sit down with for the first time. If you say you want to change, are you willing to do whatever it takes? Freedom is on the other side of willing. Let's go find out what that costs. Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit https://www.smalleyinstitute.com  If you are listening to this and thinking about your marriage, here is what willing looks like. Two days. Just the two of you and me. We find the pattern underneath every fight you keep having, and you leave with tools that work the moment you walk back in your own front door. Most couples get in within two or three weeks, and the first conversation is free. Learn more or reach out here: https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/intensive

  3. Jun 18

    The Commissioning

    This is the finale. And it is the most personal thing I have ever recorded. A while back I sat down and wrote a letter to my son David. Not a letter catching him up on life. Not a funny story about my grandson Remy. Something he could keep. Fold up and put in his wallet or his Bible. Read again when things get hard. It is everything I believe it means to be a man, written from a father to a son, built from surviving things I should not have survived and from watching him become a soldier. In this episode I read you that letter. The whole thing. And then I do something I have wanted to do since the first episode of this series. I commission you too. You have walked through seven weeks of this with me. Rejecting passivity. Telling the truth. Settling your worth. Taking responsibility. Protecting. Serving. This is where it all comes together. This is the send-off. Read this one with the door closed. Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit https://www.smalleyinstitute.com

  4. Jun 11

    Wash some feet

    We have leadership backwards. We picture the guy at the head of the table. The boss. The one barking orders and making the calls. The man everyone serves. Then there is Jesus, on the night before he died, getting down on the floor to wash the dirt off the feet of twelve men. Including the one who was about to betray him and the one who was about to deny he ever knew him. The most powerful man who ever lived spent his last free evening on his knees serving the very people who were about to fail him. That is the model. That is what real authority looks like. Not the man at the top. The man on the floor. I learned this young. I was a college kid dating a girl carrying a mountain of shame from her past, and one night the Holy Spirit prompted me to do something I will never forget. I also once met a famous pastor who taught me more about leadership in a parking lot than most leaders teach in a lifetime. If you have been trying to lead your home by being the boss and wondering why nobody is following, this episode is going to flip the whole thing right side up. Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit https://www.smalleyinstitute.com

  5. Jun 3

    Who Will You Bleed For?

    When men hear the word protection, they picture the wrong thing. They picture the guy who will throw a punch for his family. The action-movie version. The "nobody messes with mine" version. And sure, that has its place. But it is the smallest, easiest part of what protection actually means. Real protection is daily. It is unsexy. It is showing up safe, present, and consistent when nobody is watching and there is no enemy at the door. It is protecting your wife's heart by being someone she does not have to brace against. It is protecting your kids by being there. And it is the one almost no man ever talks about: protecting your own heart by setting boundaries, even when those boundaries cost you something. I learned that last one the hard way. Twenty years ago I walked away from the biggest project of my life because protecting my integrity mattered more than the win. It cost me. And it set me free. I also get to watch my son David do the daily kind of protection with my grandson Remy. The kind that is slowly turning a scared little boy into a barefoot, grass-running, risk-taking kid. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. If you have only ever thought of protection as fighting, this episode is going to open up something much bigger. Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

  6. May 28

    It's Not Your Fault. But It Is Your Problem.

    I teach something called radical responsibility. It is the thing that separates men who change from men who stay stuck. And it starts with understanding the difference between blame and ownership. Blame says "this is my fault and I am terrible." Responsibility says "this is mine to own and I am going to handle it." God told me I was my own worst nightmare. Not because everything was my fault. It was not. The pain was real. The circumstances were genuinely destructive. But I had spent years pointing at everyone else's issues while ignoring the one common denominator in every mess I was in. Me. My son David, in the middle of Army boot camp, wrote nine words in a letter that sum up everything I teach about responsibility: "No one told me life was going to be fair, so I accept it." He is twenty-four. That sentence is more mature than most men twice his age. If you are tired of being stuck in the same cycles and secretly suspect that part of the problem might be in the mirror, this episode is going to feel like a relief. Not a punishment. A relief. Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

  7. May 21

    You Are Enough. Stop Trying to Earn It.

    I built my entire identity on output. How many couples I helped. How many books I wrote. How many stages I stood on. And when all of that got taken away, I had nothing left. Because I had built my sense of self on performance, and when the performance ended, so did my understanding of who I was. Then God told me, in a grove of Aspen trees on the most profound day of my life, three words that almost fifty years of achievement had never been able to produce: "You are enough." This episode is about the thing that destroys more men than alcohol, debt, and affairs combined: performance-based identity. The belief that your worth is determined by what you produce. That you have to earn your spot. That if you stop performing, you stop mattering. My son David wrote me a letter from boot camp that described in one paragraph what took me fifty years to learn. He is twenty-four. I am jealous and proud in equal measure. If you are exhausted from trying to earn something that was given to you before you were born, stop running for thirty minutes and listen to this. Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

  8. May 14

    Stop Lying to Everyone, Including Yourself

    For years I stood on stages and taught people how to fix their marriages while mine was falling apart behind the curtain. "I'm fine." "Everything's great." "Our marriage is wonderful." Those were not white lies. Those were load-bearing walls in a building that was rotting from the inside. This episode is about the quiet lies men tell. Not the dramatic ones. The ones that sound like humility. The ones that sound like strength. The ones that keep your reputation intact while your soul disintegrates. My son David, at twenty-four years old, refused to deny what he was feeling at Army boot camp. He let himself be angry. He cried when he was alone. He laughed when something was funny. He told me he learned that from watching me finally live honestly in the last two years. A kid in his twenties doing what most men in their fifties have not figured out. If you are exhausted from performing a version of yourself that is not real, pull up a chair. I have been where you are. The exit is honesty. It costs everything and it is worth every penny. Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

I spent thirty years helping people heal their marriages and their lives. And then mine fell apart completely. What I learned in the wreckage changed everything I thought I knew about trauma, relationships, and what healing actually requires. This is The Wounded Healer Podcast. Every season is a focused teaching series on the things that keep people stuck. Marriage. Trauma. Recovery. Faith. The patterns you keep repeating even when you know better. I teach from thirty years of clinical experience and from a life that has been broken open and rebuilt from the ground up. No performance. No toxic positivity. Just the real stuff, from someone who has actually lived it. If you have ever looked at yourself and thought 'I know better than this, why can't I do better than this,' you are in exactly the right place.

Information

  • Creator
    Michael Smalley, Ph.D.
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    42
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Smalley Institute
  • Show Website
    The Wounded Healer Podcast