The Repair Your Relationship Podcast

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...