I have a PhD in psychology and thirty years of clinical experience. I have read more books on relationships than most bookstores stock. I could explain attachment theory, nervous system regulation, and conflict patterns in my sleep. And I could not fix my own marriage. I could not stop my own destructive patterns. I could not change my own life no matter how much I understood about it.

In this episode I finally explain why. And then I give you something I did not have for thirty years: actual tools that work on the part of you that insight cannot reach.

If you have ever left a therapy session or closed a self-help book feeling like you finally understood everything, and then had the exact same fight with your spouse three days later, this episode will tell you why that keeps happening. It is not because you are not trying hard enough. It is because you have been trying with the wrong part of your brain.

I also give you three practical tools you can start using today. Not concepts. Not frameworks. Tools. Things you can do with your body, right now, that actually change your nervous system response.

Fair warning: one of them involves stomping your feet like a toddler having a meltdown. I never said healing was dignified.

This episode is drawn from my book "You're Not Crazy, You're Traumatized." The podcast gives you the principle. The book gives you the whole story. Grab it here: https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/dQkGnEiB/checkout

I was driving home from a failed mediation in September 2019 when I told God I was going to stay drunk until all of this went away. I meant every word. Months later, when I finally started sobering up and went right back to complaining about her, the Holy Spirit showed up and said something to me that was not gentle. At all.

This is the episode where we talk about the things you are most ashamed of. The drinking. The overeating. The people-pleasing. The shutting down. The staying too long. The leaving too soon. All the ways you have survived that you now hate yourself for.

I spent years despising myself for how I coped with pain I could not name. The food. The alcohol. The passivity. The emotional shutdown. I had a PhD in psychology and I could not stop choosing destruction because I did not understand that I was not choosing anything. My nervous system was grabbing whatever would keep me alive for one more day.

This episode is about the radical, uncomfortable, maybe even offensive idea that your worst coping mechanisms were not moral failures. They were creative solutions to impossible situations. And shame is not going to fix them. Shame is what keeps them running.

This episode is drawn from my book "You're Not Crazy, You're Traumatized." The podcast gives you the principle. The book gives you the whole story. Grab it here: https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/dQkGnEiB/checkout

There is a voice in your head that has been lying to you your whole life. You probably do not even know it is there. You think it is just you. You think it is just the truth. But it is not. It is a recording that got installed a long time ago by something painful, and it has been playing in the background ever since, running your relationships, your work, your whole life.

Mine said "you are not enough." I carried it for almost fifty years before I finally heard it out loud and realized it was not mine to keep.

In this episode I talk about the most common lies trauma installs, how to figure out which one has been running your life, and why your brain picked it up in the first place. Spoiler: it was not because something was wrong with you. It was because you were a kid trying to make sense of something that did not make any sense at all.

I also tell you about a morning in a grove of Aspen trees in Colorado where I heard the truth that silenced the loudest lie I had ever believed. That moment rewired something in me that I did not know could be rewired. And it is still rewiring today.

This one goes deep. Bring a Kleenex. Or don't. Your body is going to do what it wants either way.

This episode is drawn from my book "You're Not Crazy, You're Traumatized." The podcast gives you the principle. The book gives you the whole story. Grab it here: https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/dQkGnEiB/checkout

The morning before my son's wedding, I woke up with a fist around my heart and concrete in my gut. Nothing bad had happened yet. Nobody had said anything. Nobody had done anything. But my body already knew who was going to be in that room. And it was preparing for war before my conscious mind even opened its eyes.

In this episode I talk about the thing most people never connect: that your chronic pain, your insomnia, your jaw clenching, your stomach problems, your mysterious symptoms that no doctor can explain might not be medical mysteries at all. They might be your body finally sending the bill for everything it has been holding.

I also tell you about the session that changed everything I thought I knew about healing. The one where decades of stored trauma started releasing from my body in ways I could not control and did not understand. And I explain why animals in the wild almost never get PTSD, and what that means for every human being who has ever been told to calm down, stop crying, or just get over it.

This one might make you uncomfortable. Good. Your body has been trying to get your attention for a long time.

This episode is drawn from my book "You're Not Crazy, You're Traumatized." The podcast gives you the principle. The book gives you the whole story. Grab it here: https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/dQkGnEiB/checkout

I once drove forty miles on a Texas highway with absolutely no memory of doing it. Both hands on the wheel. Car between the lines. Somehow alive. And I had no idea it had happened until I came back to consciousness in a neighborhood I did not recognize. That story, and what caused it, is where this episode starts. Because it turns out your body has been keeping a very detailed record of everything that has ever happened to you. It does not care whether you remember it. It does not care whether you have dealt with it. It just keeps the file open and waits.

In this episode I break down why insight is not enough to change you, why you can know exactly what is wrong and still not be able to stop doing it, and what is actually happening inside your brain when you get triggered. I also introduce the four survival responses, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, and help you figure out which one has been running your life without asking your permission. If you have ever felt hijacked by your own nervous system, this one is for you. Buckle up. Or don't. Your body is going to do what it wants either way.

Check out the book, You're Not Crazy, You're Traumatized: https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/dQkGnEiB/checkout

I was a psychologist with a PhD, thirty years of experience, and a marriage that was falling apart while I taught other people how to fix theirs. Fun times. In this episode I tell you about the afternoon I sat in a rental car in a Colorado Springs parking lot, sobbing into my phone for three hours, and finally stumbled into the one question that changed everything. It was not the question I had been asking my whole life. That question, "what is wrong with me," had only ever taken me to one place. Shame. The better question took me somewhere I had never been. Understanding. I also break down what trauma actually is, and I promise you it is not what you think. And I walk you through five specific ways unresolved trauma quietly wrecks your most important relationships without you ever seeing it coming. If you have ever looked at your own life and thought "I literally know better than this, so why can't I do better than this," welcome to the club. Pull up a chair. I saved you a seat.

Here's the link to the book, if you are interested: https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/dQkGnEiB/checkout

Dr. Michael Smalley is back. After five years of silence, a marriage ending, a school bus in Colorado, an accidental walk into a Hezbollah camp in Lebanon, and four months in Ethiopia that he did not see coming, he turned the microphone back on.

This is the episode where Michael explains where he went, why he went quiet, and why he is genuinely different from the man who stopped podcasting five years ago. Not a better version of the old Michael. Something new. Forged in the kind of fire you only come out of changed.

He also introduces The Wounded Healer Podcast and what makes this show different. Every season is a focused teaching series, the kind of content that actually moves the needle on how you understand yourself and the people you love. No fluff. No performance. Just the real stuff.

And he gives you a first look at what is coming next: a seven-episode series called You're Not Crazy, You're Traumatized, based on his newest book. If you have ever looked at your own behavior and thought "I know better than this, why can't I do better than this," you are going to want to subscribe right now.

Welcome back. Or welcome for the first time. Either way, you picked a good day to show up.

Connect with Michael: Text or call: (303) 435-2630 Email: [email protected] Website: smalleyinstitute.com

An uncensored conversation with one of my best friends about the morning I decided to end my life in November 2019. Instead of suicide, I chose to call Casey McKown and Seth Johnson. Today, you get to hear Casey's side of that morning.

This episode is explicit because of the nature of our conversation and a couple of words.

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Are you a fan of the It Just Is Podcast? Do you want to take your personal growth to the next level? Become a Member now and support the show at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com and get live daily coaching with me!

Welcome to the It Just Is podcast, I’m your host, Michael Smalley. Today I have another special update from my missionary friend currently living and discipling in Southern Lebanon. Please remember, as you hear his voice, that he is currently surrounded by Hezbollah. I lived one floor above him in Southern Lebanon, the risk is real. One of the key leaders of Hezbollah lives across the street!

You can find out more about their music ministry and discipleship work and support them financially by visiting https://www.horizonsinternational.org/jeremy-and-zaheda-fletcher 

On today’s podcast, I share about the time I daydreamed walked straight into the middle of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Beirut.

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Are you a fan of the It Just Is Podcast? Do you want to take your personal growth to the next level? Become a Member now and support the show at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com and get live daily coaching with me!