Connection Codes

Connection Codes coach Laurel Simpson returns to talk with Phyllis about chronic pain, not as a purely physical problem, but as something tangled up with fear. After a severe 2023 injury left her in constant pain, Laurel noticed her flare-ups spiked every single time she was under emotional stress. This is a tender, honest conversation about the pain-fear loop, the quicksand of unprocessed emotion, and what it means to become safety for your own body.

In this episode:

·The pain loop — how a small tweak of pain triggers fear, and fear feeds more pain

·Disentangling fear from the sensation of pain (and why describing it is nothing like thinking about it)

·Laurel's pain history: a 2023 injury, caregiving for her mom through Alzheimer's, and John's 15 days in the hospital

·The quicksand of suppressed emotion — why fighting it only pulls you deeper·"When our nervous systems are witnessed, it changes the DNA of our experience" — the quiet power of a coach

·Becoming safety for your own body

About Laurel Simpson: Laurel is a certified Connection Codes coach and the warm voice behind the community's inbox — when you email in, Laurel is who you reach. Her own story of chronic pain, caregiving, and hard-won emotional processing makes her a trusted guide for anyone learning to listen to their body instead of fighting it.

Related listening: This conversation builds on two earlier episodes — Esther's episode on pain and the mind-body connection, and Laurel's earlier episode from the season her husband John was in the hospital (her "fear chapter"). Either is a beautiful lead-in.

Resources mentioned:

Core Emotion Wheel (free download) → https://connectioncodes.co/cew

Book a session with Laurel → https://calendly.com/laurelsimpson

Book a discovery call with a coach → https://connectioncodes.co/coaches

Join our Community → https://connectioncodes.co/community

Phyllis sits down with two friends in very different time zones — Laurel Simpson in Canada and holistic pain coach Esther Mooney in Australia — for a conversation about something most of us carry quietly: pain that doesn't have a clear cause. Esther spent over two decades chasing answers for pain that moved from her knees to her ankles to her pelvis to her neck, until she learned that the brain itself generates pain — and that fear is what keeps the cycle spinning. What unfolds is a tender, honest look at how our emotions live in our bodies, why "I'm okay as I am" might be the most healing sentence you say all day, and how the work we do at Connection Codes is deeply aligned with calming a nervous system that's been stuck in danger mode. If you've ever been told "there's nothing wrong" while you're still hurting, this one's for you.In this episode:•Why all pain is real — and why the brain creates it (neuroplastic pain explained simply)•The fear-pain cycle, and how avoidance quietly makes our world smaller•The FIT assessment (Functional, Inconsistent, Triggered) — a starting point for asking, "Is my pain structural or learned?"•How emotional stress shows up as physical flare-ups•The "six F's" we reach for when pain hits (fear, focus, fix, frustration, figure it out, fight) and why they backfire•Practical tools: somatic tracking, pleasant sensations, and the evidence journal•Esther walks the Core Emotion Wheel about her own pain journeyAbout Esther Mooney: Esther is a holistic pain coach based in Australia and a former ballet dancer whose own two-decade journey with chronic pain led her to the mind-body field and the work of Dr. John Sarno. She helps people struggling with chronic, persistent pain understand the science of neuroplastic pain and teach their nervous systems safety again. Esther has been a Connection Codes listener for years and is passionate about where the emotional-processing work of CC and mind-body pain recovery overlap.Connect with Esther:Website → https://holisticpaincoach.com/Email → [email protected]Esther's new podcast, Holistic Pain Coach → https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/holistic-pain-coach/id1896924049Resources mentioned:The Core Emotion Wheel (free download) → https://connectioncodes.co/cewFind a certified Connection Codes coach → https://connectioncodes.co/coaches

John Kilmer is back — and this time, Glenn and Phyllis wanted to go all the way in on somatic work and embodiment. What starts as a simple breathing exercise turns into a full tour of the body: where joy lives, where shame hides, why so many of us have been trained since childhood to ignore what our bodies are telling us. This episode builds directly on their first conversation with John, going even deeper into what it actually looks like to come back into your body.In this episode:● What "somatic" and "embodiment" actually mean, in plain language● Why belly breathing feels foreign — and how to relearn it● A live, guided exercise locating all 8 Core Emotions in the body● Why up to 70% of primary care visits are driven by psychological factors● How childhood messages like "be seen, not heard" shape our ability to feel embodied as adultsAbout John Kilmer: John is an occupational therapist and life coach trained in somatic and polyvagal-informed approaches to trauma. A recent graduate of the School of Connection and a newly certified Connection Codes coach, he brings a deep love of embodiment work and a story shaped by years living in Lebanon and Kenya.Catch up on John's first episode:"Your Body Remembers What Your Mind Forgets"

Resources mentioned:-The Core Emotion Wheel for free → https://connectioncodes.co/cew-Find a certified Connection Codes coach → https://connectioncodes.co/coaches-Reach John directly → mailto:[email protected]

Bridgett Blood is back — a year older, a year braver, and now specializing in the work underneath the work. She's traded a leap-of-faith move to Nashville for certifications in story work, narrative-focused trauma therapy, and Christian sexual health, all aimed at singles, daters, and engaged couples. This episode isn't really dating advice. It's about the thing beneath every relationship you'll ever have: you can't show up authentically in romance while you're disconnected from yourself. Bridgett, Glenn, and Phyllis dismantle the myth of "compatibility," name why doing love in psycholation is so costly, and get unusually honest about Glenn and Phyllis's own early marriage — the quiet, the roles nobody chose out loud, and what might have been different if they'd learned themselves sooner.

In this episode:

• Story work, and why what happened to you at six is still steering your cyclone at forty
• Why "stop making marriage the goal" is a healthier starting line than it sounds
• The compatibility myth — why two matching pieces of paper can't survive Wednesday
• Psycholation: doing romance, marriage, or sex alone, and why it's a Connection Codes red flag
• Self-contempt vs. self-hatred — and why the distinction changes everything
• Glenn and Phyllis's story: quiet compliance, unclaimed identity, and a decision that changed their marriage
• A 25-second case study: Glenn asking a restaurant to turn the music down
• Bridgett's issue-specific Core Emotion Wheel on her own story of harm and healing

About Bridgett Blood: Bridgett is a certified Connection Codes coach based in Nashville, also certified in Christian sexual health and narrative-focused trauma therapy. She works with Christian singles, daters, and engaged couples to help them build an honest, embodied relationship with their own story, identity, and sexuality.

Resources mentioned:

• The Core Emotion Wheel (free download) → connectioncodes.co/get-the-cew
• Find a certified coach → connectioncodes.co/coaches#find-a-coach-menu
• Foundations Masterclass → connectioncodes.co/foundations
• Make Sense of Your Story by Adam Young
• The Deep Rooted Marriage by Dan Allender & Steve Call
• Bridgett online → BridgettBlood.com | Instagram → @BridgettBlood

In April, Laurel Simpson's husband was rushed to the hospital — and for ten days she didn't know if he would live. In this tender, remarkable conversation, Laurel walks Glenn and Phyllis through what it actually looks like to process Fear in real time when it won't stop coming. Not the tidy version where you feel it once and it passes — the version where Fear arrives wave after wave after wave, and you have no choice but to sit with it. What she discovered in that hospital room will change how you think about the emotion you've been taught to fight your whole life.

In this episode:

• Why Fear feels like it's "coming against you" — and what it's actually trying to do
• The moment Fear "held hands with Anger" so Laurel could advocate for her husband
• How Lonely sat with her on the nights she was too exhausted to keep going
• The near–panic-attack morning Phyllis walked her through the Core Emotion Wheel, one emotion at a time
• Why "the more I resisted her, the louder she got"
• Co-regulation and why you were never meant to do hard things alone
• What our kids actually need from us when we're afraid

About Laurel Simpson: Laurel is a certified Connection Coach specializing in trauma and nervous-system work, and she's the warm voice behind the Connection Codes inbox — if you've ever emailed [email protected], Laurel is the one who saw it. She lives in Canada, and she shares this story from the other side of one of the hardest seasons of her life.

Resources mentioned:

• The Core Emotion Wheel (free download) → connectioncodes.co/get-the-cew
• Connect with a certified Connection Coach → connectioncodes.co/coaches#find-a-coach-menu
• Foundations Masterclass → connectioncodes.co/foundations

Work with Laurel: Laurel offers coaching for individuals and couples. Book a session with her directly → calendly.com/laurelsimpson

You can also reach her anytime through [email protected].

Greg and Missy didn't come to Connection Codes as experts — they came as a couple who almost didn't make it. Thirty years married, with a near-divorce and a two-year separation somewhere in the middle, they found the Core Emotion Wheel during the slow work of rebuilding. In this episode, Phyllis sits down with these longtime listeners (who emailed in after we invited friends onto the show) to talk about the quiet superpower underneath all of it: putting language to what you actually feel. They get into how the wheel gave their daughter, who has Down syndrome, words to be heard and seen; how they stopped fighting about things they secretly agreed on; how they're using the wheel situationally through a giant life transition; and how connection is what makes room for creativity in the first place — the idea behind Greg's brand-new book. Along the way, the conversation cracks open one of the most misunderstood emotions of all — Anger — and lands somewhere genuinely surprising.

In this episode:

• Why "result words" like overwhelmed, anxious, and upset keep us stuck — and how the core emotions give every brain a common language
• How the wheel gave their daughter language to be heard, seen, and felt
• Fighting about things you actually agree on — and the emotion hiding underneath
• Using the wheel situationally through a major transition: a move, a business relocation, a house sale falling through, a son changing schools
• Holding Joy and grief at the same time — and not rushing a kid out of his Sad
• Why processing emotion is the opposite of wallowing in it
• How conflict quietly steals creativity — and Greg's book, Created to Create
• Anger as a protector and a driver, not violence

About Greg & Missy: Greg and Missy have been married 30 years and first found Connection Codes through the Foundations course in 2021. Both are creatives by trade — Greg is an architect, Missy is an interior designer — and they've used the Core Emotion Wheel as a daily and situational tool with each other and with their two kids. Greg recently released his first book, Created to Create.

Resources mentioned:

• Core Emotion Wheel (free download) → connectioncodes.co/cew
• Find a certified Connection Codes coach → connectioncodes.co/coaches#find-a-coach-menu
• Foundations Masterclass → connectioncodes.co/foundations
• Created to Create: How to Partner with God and Uncover Your Creative Destiny by Greg — available on Amazon
• Want to be a guest on the podcast? Email us → [email protected]

What if your body has been keeping a record your mind never agreed to? In this episode, Glenn and Phyllis sit down with John Kilmer — occupational therapist, life coach, and newly certified Connection Coder — for a conversation about how emotion lives in the body long after the moment has passed. John shares what it was like to grow up between countries, why a hospital stay at 18 months still shapes how he trusts, and how his five-year-old recently named his own fear and shame out loud instead of hiding it. Phyllis opens up about coming to the U.S. as a child who couldn't yet read or write English, and learning to disappear. Together they unpack somatic work, the nervous system, and why simply being present in our own bodies can feel terrifying — and freeing.

In this episode:

• How a five-year-old used the Core Emotion Wheel to self-disclose instead of hide
• Why "the issues are in the tissues" — and what somatic work actually means
• The 90-second life of an emotion, and what happens when we cut it short
• Growing up as a "third culture kid" and the quiet grief no one named
• Why looking into another person's eyes for four minutes changes us biochemically
• Loneliness, isolated mothers, and the tools we were never given
• John walks the Core Emotion Wheel live to close the episode

About John Kilmer: John is an occupational therapist and life coach in rural Washington State, trained in somatic and polyvagal-informed approaches to trauma. A recent graduate of the School of Connection and a newly certified Connection Codes coach, he brings a deep love of embodiment work and a story shaped by years living in Lebanon and Kenya.

Resources mentioned:

• The Core Emotion Wheel (free download) → connectioncodes.co/get-the-cew
• Find a certified Connection Codes coach → connectioncodes.co/coaches#find-a-coach-menu
• Reach John directly → [email protected]

Check out our new website → connectioncodes.co

And be on the lookout — our new community is coming soon. You won't want to miss it.

A trigger isn't an overreaction — it's stored pain asking to come out. From a rainforest compound in Costa Rica (howler monkeys included), Glenn and Phyllis unpack what's really happening when someone gets "triggered," why the brain can't tell the difference between a stubbed toe and an old wound, and why our instinct to calm people down is doing the opposite of helping. Phyllis shares the morning she walked away from a conversation feeling "off" — and turned back around. Glenn shares why he Oooed the stranger screaming at him through a car window. This is an honest, sometimes raw conversation about making space for pain instead of putting the lid back on the jar.

In this episode:

• The working definition of trauma: a current emotional response based on a past event
• Why "just choose joy / stop choosing pain" is something we'd never say to a six-month-old
• The four Phrases — and when not to use the second one
• Why calming someone down tamps the emotion into the body instead of out of it
• The jar metaphor: holding sacred space vs. snapping the lid back on
• Phyllis crying in front of a room of strangers in Switzerland — and why it connected them
• A live, issue-specific Core Emotion Wheel on one of their most intimate, tender topics

Resources mentioned:

• Free Core Emotion Wheel → connectioncodes.co/get-the-cew
• Find a certified coach (book a session) → connectioncodes.co/coaches#find-a-coach-menu
• Send us your questions for the show → [email protected]

Glenn and Phyllis at the mic. They open with a goodbye on a train platform in Switzerland — and the tears Phyllis chose not to swallow — then go straight into what crying actually does inside your body, and what it quietly costs you when you don't. Glenn unpacks the science (your tears are carrying stress chemistry out of you, and blocking them keeps it in), and Phyllis shares the grief that went underground the year her mom died, when she told herself she "didn't have time to be sad." This is an episode about permission — to feel it, to let it flow, and to be the kind of person who can sit with someone else's tears without trying to fix them.

In this episode:

• Why "boys don't cry" may be one of the most damaging things our culture teaches — and why Glenn says it's like telling someone not to exhale
• What's actually inside an emotional tear, and why blocking it leaves stress trapped in your body
• Phyllis's story of not crying when her mom died — and the grief that went underground for years
• The power of the Ooh: what to do instead of reaching for the tissue box
• Why offering a Kleenex can quietly tell someone their tears are a problem
• A live Core Emotion Wheel on tears — Glenn and Phyllis each model it in real time
• "If you love deeply, you hurt deeply. And if you don't, it's much, much worse."

Resources mentioned:

• The free Core Emotion Wheel → connectioncodes.co/get-the-cew
• The blog this episode is built on, "The Cost of Not Crying" → blog.connectioncodes.co/posts/the-cost-of-not-crying
• The tears carousel → on Instagram @connectioncodes
• The Connection Codes Community launches September 2026 — grab the Wheel to be first in line → connectioncodes.co/get-the-cew

After four years, hundreds of episodes, and countless wheels, Tera Wages is stepping down from her role as host of the Connection Codes podcast. In this special two-part episode, Dr. Glenn and Phyllis open with a heartfelt tribute from Costa Rica, and then Tera takes the mic solo from Spain — where she's hiking the Camino de Santiago for her 40th birthday — to share what the Connection Codes has given her, the three things she's carrying forward for the rest of her life, and one final Core Emotion Wheel with the community she's loved.

In this episode:

• Dr. Glenn and Phyllis honor Tera and Wes's four years of partnership in building Connection Codes
• The story of the front porch swing — and the moment Wes put two unplugged mics in front of Glenn and Phyllis that launched the podcast
• Why Tera knew it was time, and what's next for the podcast under Glenn and Phyllis
• Three things the Connection Codes has built into Tera that she'll carry forever: the power of the Wheel, the necessity of community, and the refusal to stay stuck
• A wheel on the phone with Wes, mid-Camino — and the door it opened
• Pilgrims, phones, and the loneliness epidemic
• Tera's final on-mic Core Emotion Wheel: sad, guilt, shame, lonely, hurt, anger, joy

Resources mentioned:

• Core Emotion Wheel (free download) → connectioncodes.co/wheel

• Foundations Masterclass → connectioncodes.co/foundations