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. Sep 11

    Progress, Not Perfection

    This is the last one. Seven weeks ago I told you that everybody already knows what to do, and that the failure point is never the path, it is the price. Then I spent six weeks naming my own half measures out loud, on air, in front of you. Today I tell you what happened to them. Some of them moved. Some of them did not. I am going to be honest about which is which, including the one I am literally doing right now while I record this, and I am not going to clean it up to give you a better ending. But I want to start somewhere else. A few nights ago, around ten thirty, I opened my garage door and the heat hit me like a wall. If you have been with me since Episode 5, you know what that heat did to me a few weeks ago. It got me spiritually twisted up. I argued with an artificial intelligence about a weather forecast, which is about as dumb as it sounds. This time, standing in the exact same spot, in the exact same heat, something completely different came out of my mouth. That is what this episode is about. Not arriving. Not being fixed. Standing in the same place you always stood and finding out you are not the same person. We are also going to talk about how "progress, not perfection" gets misused, because it is the single easiest phrase in recovery to turn into a hall pass, and I would know. If this series stirred something up in your marriage, come do an intensive with me. Two days, just the two of you and me, tools that work the day you get home. Details at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/intensive You can also get the full Whatever It Takes series in audio and transcript, and support this podcast, at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/jysNpzhW Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

  2. Sep 3

    Go Make It Right

    For five weeks we have been working on the inside. Willingness. The thing you are protecting. Telling yourself the truth. Humility. Surrender. All of it has been internal, and all of it has been leading here. Today it goes outside your own head, and it gets concrete. Today we talk about the people you have hurt. This is the episode with the most teeth in the whole series, and it is the one that changes things fastest. It is also the one people skip, because everything up to now could be done privately, and this cannot. This one requires a phone call. A conversation. A sentence you have been avoiding for years. I am going to tell you about the time I earned my way out of my own son's life. I said careless things about him on a phone call, he heard every word of it, and then he shut the door and I could not even get access to apologize. It took years. I am going to tell you exactly how I got back in, and what I did with the invitation when it finally came. Then we are going to sort through the counterfeits, including the one that does more damage than never apologizing at all. I am also going to give you the step most people skip, which is asking permission before you own something, and I am going to be honest about the people you do not get to approach at all. And there is a second half to this that almost nobody teaches: what do you do when somebody comes to make it right with you, and you are not sure you want to open the door? I have one of those in my own life right now, and I have not landed it. If this series is stirring up your marriage, come do an intensive with me. Two days, just the two of you and me, tools that work the day you get home. Details at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/intensive You can also get the full Whatever It Takes series in audio and transcript, and support this podcast, at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/jysNpzhW Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

  3. Aug 20

    The Handoff

    We have spent four weeks getting here. Willingness. Naming the fence. Honesty. Humility. All of it has been leading to one move, and it is the move everything else depends on. Surrender. But I have to be careful with this word, because it has been twisted into something lazy. A lot of us were taught "let go and let God" and somewhere along the way it turned into an excuse to do nothing. That is not surrender. That is passivity with a worship song playing in the background. And passivity is my signature sin, so I know exactly how that counterfeit works. Real surrender is not going limp. It is the most active, effortful, courageous thing you will ever do. It is a handoff. It is taking the thing your hands are white-knuckled around and actually placing it into hands that can carry it, which yours never could. I will show you the warning light that tells you every time there is something you are not surrendering. And I will confess the ridiculous thing that had me twisted up in knots just this week. It involves the Fort Worth weather, and I am not proud of it. If this series is stirring up your marriage, come do an intensive with me. Two days, just the two of you and me, tools that work the day you get home. Details at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/intensive You can also get the full Whatever It Takes series in audio and transcript, and support this podcast, at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/jysNpzhW Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

  4. Aug 13

    Humility Is Not Self-Hatred

    Most of us were handed a broken definition of humility. We were taught that to be humble means to think you are small. To shrink. To run yourself down and call it godliness. And a lot of people walked away from faith partly because that version of humility was quietly crushing them. Here is the truth. Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less. Those are completely different things, and the difference will set you free. False humility is just pride pointing down. It is still all about you, only now you are the smallest thing in the room instead of the biggest. Real humility is not shrinking. It is accepting reality as it actually is, owning your part cleanly, and being secure enough to say I was wrong without falling apart. And here is the part almost nobody says out loud. You cannot be truly humble without a healthy sense of who you are. You need a floor to stand on. I lost mine for years, and that is mine to own, and I am going to tell you how it happened. If this is stirring something up in your marriage, come do an intensive with me. Two days, just the two of you and me, and you leave with tools that work the day you get home. Details at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/intensive You can also get the full Whatever It Takes series in audio and transcript, and support this podcast, at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/jysNpzhW Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

  5. Aug 6

    Look in the Mirror and Tell the Truth

    Once you know what you are protecting, there is only one way through it. Honesty. The real kind. The kind where you look in the mirror and tell the truth about what is actually there. But I have to be careful here, because a lot of us learned a counterfeit version of this. We learned to beat ourselves up and call it honesty. To confess constantly and change nothing. To run ourselves down so thoroughly that it feels like humility, when it is actually just a more spiritual way of staying stuck. That is not honesty. That is self-flagellation, and it is a game you can play with yourself forever. Real honesty has a different fingerprint. It brings conviction instead of condemnation. Freedom instead of fear. It makes you softer toward the people around you, not harder on yourself. If your honesty is producing shame, exhaustion, and more hiding, it is not the real thing. And God has never once confused the two. I will tell you about a small moment in the mirror from just the other day, where I caught myself about to slip into an old pattern, and had to interrupt it in real time. 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 You can also get the full Whatever It Takes series, every episode in audio and full transcript, and support this podcast, at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/jysNpzhW Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com

  6. Jul 28

    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

  7. 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

  8. 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

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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
    47
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Smalley Institute
  • Show Website
    The Wounded Healer Podcast

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