Connection Codes

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 relations...

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 af...

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)...

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 shap...

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....

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 w...

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 h...

Michelle and Kurt have been married since 1999 — and they're the first to tell you that "together a long time" isn't the same as "doing well." In this conversation, they share the moment Connection Codes stopped being a book on their shelf and started reorganizing their marriage. Michelle, a relationship coach herself, names something most of us have felt but never said...

Susan and Sean McGinnis drove two hours to a live Connection Codes event in Austin knowing almost nothing about the framework — just desperate to save a 30-year marriage that kept circling the same argument, every three or four months, for three decades. In this episode, they walk Glenn and Phyllis through what they now call "the 30-year fight": a cycle of hurt, still face, shutdown, and...

Bob and Jen Bevan are a married couple from Cleveland, Tennessee — 29 years in, two kids, three grandchildren, and owners of Witt's Frozen Custard. What they didn't expect was that the path to real connection would run straight through the Core Emotion Wheel. In this episode, Bob and Jen share what it was like to enter Connection Codes from very different starting points — Jen as a certifi...

What happens when a man who was wired for achievement — not emotion — finally says out loud that he's afraid? For Mitchell Osmond, it took four years of marriage, a near-divorce, and a funeral to find out. In this episode, Tera sits down with Mitchell, host of the Dad Nation podcast and coach to high-performing men, for a conversation that goes deep into what it actually looks like when a man...

What does it look like to lead hundreds of people every week — and have no idea you're quietly breaking down inside your own marriage? Hiubert and Xiomara are Connection Codes certified coaches,former associate pastors, worship leaders, and evangelists who spent nearly twodecades in ministry. From the outside, everything looked like it was working. On the inside, they were burned out, emotiona...

What if the thing keeping you stuck isn’t a lack of motivation — it’s that you’re too comfortable? This week, Tera sits downwith Dr. Daryl Appleton — award-winning executive coach, high-performance psychologist, and host of the Vogue Top 10 podcast Feelings & Other F Words — for a conversation that will challenge how you think about comfort, fear, success, and the emotional energy you spend be...

What if the thing standing between you and better intimacy was something as simple as the mess of a massage oil? In this episode, Dr Glenn and Phyllis sit down with Justin and Natalie — the couple behind Evree, a 100% natural intimate massage cream that functions as both a massage product and a lubricant without leaving the sticky, oily residue that stops most couples from even trying. Justin and...

What if everything you've been labeling as a problem — the addiction, the affair, the marriage that feels like a hostage situation, the career that's slowly killing you — is actually a prophet trying to get your attention? Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill sit down with Jay Stringer, psychotherapist, ordained minister, and author of Desire, for one of the most searingly honest conversations about...

What does it look like when someone who only knew two emotions — anger and joy — finally faces the full spectrum of what they feel? That's the story Han and Alicia Lau bring to the table this week. Married 31 years, parents to six kids, grandparents to six more — and coaches who almost skipped the Core Emotion Wheel entirely. Alicia grew up in a world that told her to stifle her emotions, be a...

What does it actually look like when one spouse starts doing the emotional work before the other is ready? Ben and Hannah have been married 19 years, raised four kids (including three teenagers), and spent nearly a decade unknowingly drifting apart — until one ordinary walk changed everything. In this episode, Glenn and Phyllis sit down with Ben and Hannah for an honest, unscripted conversation ab...

What do you do when the person you built your life around is suddenly gone? In this deeply moving episode, Glenn and Phyllis sit down with Eric — husband, father of 10, and Connection Codes community member — to talk about what happens when grief, identity loss, and emotional isolation collide. Eric's wife Nicole passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack just after the New Year, leaving him...

What if the biggest relationship challenge in your home isn't a communication problem — it's an ADHD brain that nobody ever explained to you? In this eye-opening episode, Tera sits down with ADHD expert, educator, and coach Martha Hoffman (host of ADHD in the Real World podcast) to unpack what ADHD actually looks like in real families, real marriages, and real emotional lives — and why com...

What if the reason you can't sleep, can't focus, and come home completely depleted has nothing to do with your schedule — and everything to do with what you're doing to your emotions? In this episode, Dr. Glenn Hill, Phyllis Hill, and Tera Wages go deep on one of the most important — and most overlooked — tools in the Connection Codes toolkit: oohing yourself . Not your partner. Not yo...

The Power of Active Listening: How Oooo Transforms Conflict Into Connection. What if the secret to emotional regulation in your marriage wasn't another therapy session, but a simple audible response that releases oxytocin in your brain? In Part 2 of our active listening series, Dr. Glenn Hill and Phyllis Hill dive deep into what stops us from connecting during conflict – and the surprising bra...

Description: What if the biggest barrier to emotional connection in your marriage isn't what you're saying—but the silence in between? In this episode, Dr. Glenn Hill reveals the neuroscience behind "audible listening" and why silence literally disconnects us at a physiological level. Drawing from groundbreaking research like Dr. Tronick's Still Face Experiment, Glenn explain...

What if your anxiety, anger, or depression isn't a mental health issue—but a gut health issue? In this eye-opening conversation, Dr. Glenn and Phyllis sit down with Allison Jordan, a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner and founder of Better Bellies Therapies, who reveals how hidden infections, digestive dysfunction, and mineral imbalances can hijack your emotions and leave you feeling...

What happens when you lose your identity in a new country, face 65 consecutive rejections, and your creative voice gets buried under the weight of just surviving? Lara Pilcher, actress, author, and ICF-certified coach, shares her raw journey from Melbourne to America—and how creativity became her lifeline when everything else fell apart. In this deeply vulnerable conversation, Lara reveals: Why cr...

What if the harshest critic in your life isn't someone else—it's you? We judge ourselves constantly. Our fears, our bodies, our parenting, the way we show up in relationships. And while we think judgment is motivating us to change, it's actually keeping us trapped in cycles of shame, anger, and disconnection. In this episode, Dr. Glenn Hill, Phyllis Hill, and Tera Wages unpack the dest...