The Repair Your Relationship Podcast

I often invite couples to imagine that they have both just been wheeled into the ER. They’re not there because they injured each other, but because they’re finally at a point where the pain can no longer be ignored. The injuries are real, even when they didn’t originate in this relationship, and both people are in need of care. In that space, the question shifts away from blame and toward understa...

For the past ten years, I’ve been climbing a mountain. Not literally, but professionally, in a way that has required persistence, patience, and a willingness to keep going without any guarantee of arrival. I’ve been working toward publishing a book with a traditional publisher for over a decade, refining my ideas, building my voice, and staying committed even when the path felt unclear. It has bee...

Lately I’ve been noticing something shifting in me that feels both subtle and profound. It’s not a dramatic, overnight change, but more of a quiet reorganization happening from the inside out. The way I experience anger, in particular, is beginning to feel different. And that difference is changing how I show up in my relationship with my husband, Doug. The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is host...

For most of my clinical life I’ve understood anger through the familiar EFT lens: anger is often a secondary emotion. Beneath it is usually something more primary – fear, hurt, overwhelm, sadness, or longing. That framework has been profoundly helpful to me because so often what looks like criticism on the surface is really a protest rising from a much more tender place underneath. Lately, though,...

For most of my clinical life, I’ve understood anger through the familiar EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy) lens: anger is conceptualized as a “secondary” emotion. The “primary” emotion is something like fear, inferiority, guilt, hurt, or sadness – usually based on some early attachment wound. That framework has been enormously helpful to me, both personally and professionally, because so often wha...

In the last couple of episodes, I’ve reflected on the experience of being the person who ends up carrying too much in a relationship. As I continued thinking about these patterns, I found myself wondering about the other side of the system. In today’s language, this dynamic is often described as overfunctioning and underfunctioning. One partner becomes highly activated around solving problems, ant...

Anger is often considered a secondary emotion. This means that anger frequently shows up as a protector response when more vulnerable emotions are activated underneath. When someone feels scared, hurt, rejected, or alone, anger can step forward to defend against those painful feelings. From the outside it may look like anger is the main issue, but underneath there’s always something more tender. T...

Recently in supervision I came in talking about anger. I thought the work I needed to do was learning how to help my clients express anger and frustration without it coming out as criticism or blame. Within a few minutes my supervisor took me somewhere I didn’t expect. She introduced an image from the animal world that stopped me in my tracks. She called it the gazelle collapse. The metaphor descr...

I recently did something that felt vulnerable in a way I didn’t quite expect. I brought a recording of a couples session to my case consultation group. I had transcribed it carefully, read it over more than once, thought about it endlessly, and came in ready to dissect what I had done wrong. As I presented the case to my colleagues I let them know I felt embarrassed by what I was going to share. D...

Learning to Trust in a World That's Taught Us Not To In my work with clients, I’ve started noticing a certain pattern, one that shows up again and again, even in our therapeutic relationship. It’s a dynamic that reveals itself subtly at first. Maybe in the hesitation to make eye contact, or the long pause before sharing something vulnerable, or the deflection when asked to go deeper. Sometimes it’...

There are seasons in life when nothing feels clear or straightforward, no matter how much you think, pray, journal, or talk things through. This is especially true when you’re in a challenging relationship. It’s not because there’s something wrong with you, but because every possible path forward involves some kind of loss. The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a License...

Medical events, aging, illness, and loss have a way of touching our deepest attachment wounds, which awaken very difficult questions within a committed love relationship. Will you come for me when I’m feeling alone? Will you stay with me when I’m feeling scared? Can I rest in your arms, or do I have to keep holding everything together on my own? The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by St...

What looks like “bad behavior” is often a nervous system asking for help. The parents learned that curiosity opens doors that control never will. And they learned that addressing the real problem, not just the visible behavior, changes everything. This is what the CPS model does so well. It doesn’t ask families to choose between safety and growth. It builds a bridge between them. It honors a child...

Every so often, a story comes into my practice that highlights something important about human behavior, trauma, and the parts of us that drive harmful actions. I worked with a client I'll call Cassandra. Her former partner, whom I'll call Keith, showed patterns of behavior so aligned with what Martha Stout describes in The Sociopath Next Door that I found myself returning to the book's insights a...

He said it quietly, almost apologetically, during a Family Counseling Intensive: “I know my parents care about me, but I don’t feel cared for.” I could see the words stop his parents in their tracks. Of course they cared. They worried, thought deeply, and talked about their kids constantly. They had invested significant time, energy, and resources into this Intensive precisely because they cared....

I want to tell you about a couple I worked with recently during a Couples Counseling Intensive. Let’s call them Ozzie and Harriet. They were long-married, thoughtful, deeply committed to one another, and genuinely invested in their relationship. They weren’t in crisis. There was no betrayal, no looming breakup. But something subtle and persistent had been wearing on them. Harriet had been feeling...

When Heated Rivalry exploded into the cultural consciousness, people kept asking the same incredulous question. How is it that an M/M hockey romance has resonated so deeply with women across the world? But sitting with it, really sitting with it, the answer feels less surprising and more inevitable. This story didn’t just arrive at the right moment. It named a truth that we’ve kept locked away for...

In the intricate tapestry of human relationships, the impact of early attachment trauma often remains hidden — shaping our experiences in profound, yet often invisible, ways. Attachment trauma refers to the wounds we carry from our earliest relationships with caregivers — moments when our need for love, safety, or connection went unmet. These wounds are not just memories. They live in the body. Th...

Today’s episode is a personal reflection on something I see again and again in my work with clients: the way relational trauma lives in the body — and how safety, not insight, is the real foundation of healing. The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of  Asheville Family Counseling .

Today, I want to talk about something that may feel achingly familiar if you’ve ever watched someone you love suffer… and felt powerless to stop it. It’s a reflection on grief, presence, and the profound difficulty—and transformative power—of simply staying with someone in their pain, without trying to fix it. The story I’ll share is deeply personal. And it’s also universal. The Repair Your Relati...

Today, we’re talking about attachment trauma—and how it can cause us to turn away right at the moment we most long to be held. So what is attachment trauma? At its core, attachment trauma happens when our early caregivers—those who were supposed to protect, attune, and respond—were unavailable, unpredictable, or unsafe. And that leaves a mark. Not just in your memories, but in your nervous system....

In today’s episode, I want to share something deeply personal: what it’s looked like to navigate the past year of caregiving for my mom, and how I’ve come to understand that grief and joy don’t cancel each other out—they live side by side. The Repair Your Relationship Podcast is hosted by Stacey Curnow, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Relationship Specialist, and founder of  Ashevi...

Today, I want to talk with you about a quiet ache many of us carry: the ache of familiar suffering. So many of us carry a deep, often unnamed ache—a persistent feeling of being on the outside looking in. It might show up in relationships where we feel unseen or in family dynamics that stir up a sense of exclusion. It may even surface in moments of self-sabotage, where we’re baffled by our own choi...