We often find ourselves stuck in a cycle of miscommunication and frustration. We don't know how to convey how we feel OR we burst out and create even more pain. Dr. Glenn & Phyllis Hill have spent years researching human connection and how to break that cycle. The Connection Codes is the guide to helping couples conquer conflict and it is the tool to break the cycle of pain and live in peace together.
Hosted by Tera Wages of the I Get It podcast.
For free resources to a better marriage go to https://www.connectioncodes.co/
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Reignite Your Marriage: The Product That is Changing How Couples Connect
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 • Duration 42:20
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 Natalie share the story behind six years of development, what it cost them emotionally and financially to keep going when experts told them it wasn't possible, and why they believe physical touch and intentional intimacy can quite literally transform a marriage.
They also walk through the Core Emotion Wheel — sharing raw, real moments from their own relationship and inner life. This is a conversation about more than a product. It's about removing the barriers that keep couples from choosing each other.
In This Episode:
The date night that started it all — and why Natalie just wanted to go to sleep
Why massage oils and lubricants have always been two separate products (and the problems each one causes)
The 6-year journey to create a product everyone told them was impossible
Why Justin almost gave up — and what happened when they took one more run at it
How Evree functions as a massage cream, lubricant, moisturizer, and body butter in one
100% natural ingredients, edible, vaginally safe, and non-sticky — the full wish list they achieved
What 15,000 couples are saying about how it's changed their marriage
New products coming: Kiss Balm and a pH-balanced intimate wash
Justin and Natalie each go through the Core Emotion Wheel — and it's unexpectedly personal
marriage intimacy, couples connection, how to improve intimacy in marriage, natural lubricant for couples, massage oil for couples, emotional health in marriage, relationship health, how to reignite marriage, intimacy after kids, intentional marriage, couples date night ideas, touch and connection, marriage communication, emotional intelligence relationships, intimacy products for couples
Reclaiming Your Desire: The 5 Things That Will Make or Break Your Marriage, Career, & Mental Health
Tuesday, March 31, 2026 • Duration 45:40
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 human longing, emotional health, and the hidden roadmap inside every one of us.
Jay spent years studying why people engage in unwanted behaviors — and what he found wasn't weakness or moral failure. He found desire. Vandalized, suppressed, and rerouted desire. And he found that healing the root — not just managing the symptom — changes everything.
In This Episode
Why "just stop doing the thing" almost never works — and what to do instead
The 5 core desires every human has (and why over-indexing on one destroys the others)
The concept of the "provisional self" and why so many people wake up at 60 not knowing who they are
What bells and albatrosses can teach you about the direction your life is asking you to go
The DMZs in your marriage — and why avoiding them is quietly killing your connection
How symptoms are actually prophets (and what they're trying to say)
Jay walks through the Core Emotion Wheel live — with stunning vulnerability about loneliness, sadness, and a midlife chrysalis
About Jay Stringer
Jay Stringer is a licensed psychotherapist, ordained minister, and author based in New York City. His first book, Unwanted, explored the hidden drivers of unwanted sexual behavior. His new book, Desire, offers a research-backed roadmap for developing a healthy relationship to desire across all five domains of human flourishing — wholeness, growth, intimacy, pleasure, and meaning. He holds a master's in counseling psychology and an MDiv from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.
Emotions Are More Than Just Joy & Anger: How Learning the 8 Core Emotions Can Transform Your Marriage & Life
Monday, March 23, 2026 • Duration 45:33
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 "good Christian girl," and never be "too much." The result? A life where anger and joy were the only acceptable exits — until a poolside audiobook moment changed everything.
In this episode, Glenn, Phyllis, Han, and Alicia unpack what it actually takes to go from emotional resistance to emotional fluency — including the 45-minute wheel session that helped Alicia finally process her father's suicide, more than a decade after his death.
In This Episode:
Why Alicia threw the Core Emotion Wheel across the room (metaphorically) — and why she came back to it
How blended family dynamics (and two very different cultures) shaped emotional patterns for both Han and Alicia
The moment on their 30th anniversary that changed their marriage — doing the entire Foundations course in one weekend
Han's breakthrough: how advising a client led him to take his own advice about shame and guilt
Alicia's 45-minute grief wheel — and why she no longer feels her dad's death the same way in her body
What it means to practice the wheel "like bad first sex" and why that's the most honest description of growth we've heard
Glenn and Phyllis share their own middle-of-the-night wheel moments — and what lonely really feels like when you go deep
Why Your Marriage Feels Disconnected (And the Emotional Tool That Actually Fixes It)
Tuesday, March 17, 2026 • Duration 47:34
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 about what it really takes to turn a marriage around. Ben resisted Connection Codes for over a year — and then one moment of Hannah staying present when she could have pulled away shifted everything for him. They talk about the emotional dam, why anger is usually lonely in disguise, how they're raising a 10-year-old with OCD using the Core Emotion Wheel, and what happens when coding becomes the language of your whole household.
This one is for the spouse who started the work alone. For the partner who's been resistant. For the parent trying to get emotional tools into a home with teenagers. You're going to want to hear this.
In This Episode:
Why the first 10 years of marriage can mask deep emotional disconnection
What it looks like when one spouse starts coding before the other is ready
The walk that changed Ben's mind — and why Hannah's staying present made all the difference
How anger almost always has lonely underneath it
The emotional dam: why it forms in hours, not years
Using the Core Emotion Wheel with a child who has OCD and self-harm patterns
Why teenagers resist coding — and the long game that actually works
What men lose when culture tells them vulnerability is weakness
Glenn's challenge: say the emotion out loud in the moment, even when no one's there to hear it
The Way Through Grief: Healing Through Emotion, Identity, and Community When Loss Changes Everything
Tuesday, March 10, 2026 • Duration 40:43
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 a single father navigating the unimaginable.
But this isn't just a story about loss. It's a story about what tools, community, and the courage to be emotionally vulnerable can do — even in the darkest seasons.
In this episode, you'll hear:
Why grief cannot heal in isolation — and what it actually needs to move through
How Eric tracked his emotional connection with his wife through selfies (the data will surprise you)
What losing a spouse does to your sense of identity — and why that part often goes unspoken
The difference between grief that gets witnessed and grief that stays buried
How men are conditioned to suppress emotion — and what it costs them and their kids
What Eric's kids said to him that changed how he showed up as a dad
Why Eric drove to Tennessee to be with a community of people he'd never met in person
Learn more about the School of Connection → connectioncodes.co
Keywords: grief and emotional health, healing from loss, marriage and identity, emotional intelligence tools, how to grieve in community, men and vulnerability, mental health after loss, relationship emotional wellness, grief and parenting, connection and healing, emotional resilience, marriage and loss
The Emotions Behind ADHD (& Why It Doesn't Mean Your Brain is Broken - It's Just Wired Differently)
Tuesday, March 3, 2026 • Duration 54:21
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 compassion might be the most powerful tool you have.
Whether you're a parent who suspects your child might have ADHD, a partner frustrated by what feels like chaos, or someone who scrolled through a "signs of ADHD" reel and thought "wait... that's me" — this conversation will change how you see the people you love most.
In This Episode You'll Learn:
The 3 types of ADHD and why it looks completely different in women vs. men
Why emotional dysregulation is now considered CORE to ADHD — not just a side effect
The dopamine deficit connection — and why your ADHD brain might be wired for addiction
How to build a "Dopamine Menu" to replace cheap hits with lasting satisfaction
What Fair Play facilitation does for ADHD couples — and why the trash is never just "taking out the trash"
How Tera uses the Core Emotion Wheel with her ADHD kids — and what shifted for her family
Martha's own Core Emotion Wheel — vulnerability in real time
How to respond when a partner or parent refuses to believe the ADHD diagnosis is real
• Book a Connection Codes Coach: https://connectioncodes.co/coaches
• Martha Hoffman Coaching on Instagram: @MarthaHoffmanCoaching
• Martha's website: MarthaHoffmanCoaching.com
• Martha's podcast: ADHD in the Real World
Why Ignoring Your Emotions is Destroying Your Health (And What You Should Be Doing Instead)
Tuesday, February 24, 2026 • Duration 39:10
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 your kids. Yourself.
We've all been taught some version of "don't be emotional," "choose joy," "power through." But what that messaging actually does is train us to reject ourselves at the deepest level. And the cost? It shows up in your body, your sleep, your productivity, your relationships, and your health.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Why suppressing emotions doesn't make them disappear — it sends them straight into your cells (and the science behind what that does to your body)
The 3 powerful questions that help you tune into yourself in under 60 seconds
How a woman's 12-year battle with insomnia ended after one night of doing the Core Emotion Wheel
Why "positive thinking" culture may actually be working against your emotional health
The real reason you have nothing left for your spouse and kids at the end of the day
How to process fear, shame, and hurt in 10–15 seconds (without a therapy session)
What Tera discovered about herself, her kids, and the mistakes she made before she had these tools
This episode is for you if:You've tried the productivity hacks, the sleep supplements, the mindset work — but something still feels stuck. Or if you teach communication tools to others and still forget to use them on yourself (yes, Tera goes there).
The Neuroscience of Connection: How Active Listening Releases Oxytocin in Your Marriage
Tuesday, February 17, 2026 • Duration 59:17
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 brain science behind why "oohing" your partner actually works.
The oxytocin effect: How active listening naturally releases connection chemicals in the brain (no pills required)
When you feel attacked: How to use curiosity instead of defensiveness when your partner comes at you with accusations
The "never/always" trap: Why correcting your partner's exaggerations kills connection (and what to do instead)
Processing emotion first: Why you must acknowledge feelings before discussing logistics
The right of refusal: How to know the difference between everyday conflict and abuse
Issue-specific wheels: When to pull out the Core Emotion Wheel during heated moments
Saying "ow" in the moment: Why you need to acknowledge your own hurt while still being present for your partner
Glenn and Phyllis share vulnerable stories about their own disconnection – from the dishwasher incident to cruise conflicts – demonstrating how Connection Codes tools work in real marriage dynamics.
This episode is essential for anyone who:
Gets defensive when their partner expresses hurt
Feels like they're being attacked even in simple conversations
Wants to understand the neuroscience of emotional connection
Struggles to stay curious when emotions run high
Needs practical tools for de-escalating conflict quickly
How to Be a Good Listener (The 2-Second Fix That Changes Everything)
Tuesday, February 10, 2026 • Duration 53:17
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 explains how our brains are wired to need audible responses—and what happens when we don't get them.
You'll discover:
Why traditional "silent listening" taught in marriage therapy actually creates disconnection
The science behind the "ooh" and how it releases oxytocin in both the speaker and listener
How babies and adults respond identically to silence (it's 100% universal)
Why you feel drawn to certain people in a crowded room (hint: they're audibly listening)
How to overcome the awkwardness of starting to "ooh" with your spouse
Real stories of how audible listening transformed an 11-day cruise through a literal cyclone
Why this one simple tool is more powerful than learning every personality profile
The ooh isn't just a sound—it's a biological need. When someone "oohs" you, your nervous system calms, your fear decreases, and oxytocin floods your body. This is the connection we're all desperately craving.
Glenn and Phyllis share vulnerable moments from their own marriage, including why this last cruise was their most connected yet—and how they stayed present through rough seas (literally and metaphorically).
If you've ever felt unheard, unseen, or disconnected in your closest relationships, this episode will give you a tool you can implement today. No advanced degree required. No complex personality assessments. Just presence, sound, and connection.
Keywords: audible listening, emotional connection, marriage communication, relationship tools, oxytocin, nervous system regulation, emotional intelligence, still face experiment, active listening, marriage therapy, emotional wellness, connection codes, Dr. Glenn Hill, vulnerability in marriage, mental health tools, anxiety relief, stress management, emotional validation
The Hidden Gut Issues Hijacking Your Emotions (& How To Fix Them) | With Allison Jordan
Tuesday, February 3, 2026 • Duration 47:04
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 broken.
Allison shares her groundbreaking "Five Toxin Trap" framework that has helped hundreds of clients come off anxiety medications, eliminate chronic pain, and finally understand why traditional medicine keeps missing the root causes of their symptoms.
You'll discover:
Why C. diff infections can cause chronic anxiety by blocking dopamine conversion
How H. pylori in your stomach prevents you from absorbing the nutrients needed for neurotransmitters
The shocking connection between copper toxicity and 50% of divorces
Why your "stress" diagnosis might actually be parasites, food sensitivities, or poor detoxification
How one client's sugar cravings disappeared in 3 days after removing hidden food sensitivities
The at-home baking soda test to check your stomach acid levels
Why hormone imbalances aren't the root cause—and what is
This episode is for you if:
You've been told "it's just stress" or "it's all in your head"
You're struggling with anxiety, depression, or anger that won't budge despite therapy or medication
You have chronic health issues like IBS, acid reflux, insomnia, or unexplained pain
You've tried "everything" but still don't feel like yourself
You're tired of being told you lack willpower when it comes to food cravings or emotional regulation
Allison's approach is different from conventional medicine—she uses specialized testing that hospitals don't run to find infections like chronic low-grade C. diff, H. pylori, parasites, mineral imbalances, food sensitivities, and liver congestion that are driving your symptoms.
Related Shows Based on Content Similarities
Discover shows related to Connection Codes, based on actual content similarities. Explore podcasts with similar topics, themes, and formats, backed by real data.
desire and healing, emotional health podcast, marriage communication, understanding your desires, unwanted sexual behavior, porn addiction recovery, identity and self-worth, self-sabotage meaning, mental health and marriage, relationship emotional intelligence, faith and therapy, midlife identity crisis, Core Emotion Wheel, connection codes podcast, Jay Stringer Desire book
emotional intelligence in marriage, blended family communication, how to process grief, Core Emotion Wheel, emotional avoidance, marriage coaching, emotional health tools, processing shame and guilt, trauma healing tools, long-term marriage, mental health and relationships, connection codes, emotional fluency, suicide loss grief
Keywords: emotional intelligence in marriage | marriage communication tools | how to reconnect with your spouse | men emotional vulnerability | emotional health relationships | OCD and emotional tools for kids | marriage disconnection | Core Emotion Wheel | how to stop emotional shutdown | marriage transformation stories | emotional dam | ooh technique | Connection Codes podcast
Keywords: emotional health, marriage advice, mental health awareness, emotional intelligence, relationship communication, burnout recovery, emotional regulation, self-awareness, anxiety relief, insomnia and emotions, leadership emotional health, marriage therapy tools, how to process emotions, core emotion wheel
Join the School of Connection waitlist: Limited cohorts opening May 2026
Shop Connection Codes Merch: Magnets, stickers, and wheels for every room
Keywords: emotional regulation, marriage communication, active listening, relationship conflict resolution, oxytocin and connection, defensiveness in marriage, emotional health tools, curiosity in relationships, connection codes, core emotion wheel, marriage therapy alternatives, healthy communication skills, conflict de-escalation, mental health in relationships, relationship coaching
Join the Connection Codes Cruise (July 2025): Reach out for details
Read more about the Still Face Experiment (Dr. Edward Tronick)
Subscribe to never miss an episode where we make emotional connection simple, practical, and life-changing.
Share this episode with five friends who need to know they're not crazy for feeling disconnected when met with silence.
The best part? Many of these issues are completely reversible when you address the actual root cause instead of just managing symptoms.
Keywords: anxiety root causes, gut health and mental health, emotional health solutions, functional medicine for anxiety, gut-brain connection, hidden infections causing anxiety, food sensitivities and mood, copper toxicity symptoms, H. pylori emotional symptoms, natural anxiety treatment, digestive health and emotions, chronic fatigue root causes, IBS solutions, emotional regulation strategies, holistic mental health
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Allison Jordan's Resources:
Better Bellies Therapies Website: betterbellytherapies.com/constipation (Free baking soda test recipe)
Free Training on the 5 Toxin Trap: betterbellytherapies.com/training
Allison Jordan is a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner who has been helping clients heal chronic gut and health issues since 2018. After experiencing her own health crisis—including losing her period for two years, chronic pain, insomnia, IBS, and anxiety—she discovered the root causes conventional medicine missed and now teaches others how to do the same. Allison hosts the Better Belly Podcast and has helped hundreds of clients reverse conditions like chronic constipation, anxiety, autoimmune diseases, and unexplained symptoms through her signature "Five Toxin Trap" framework.
