Episodes
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366. Pursue Your Kids. It's Almost as Important as Pursuing Your Spouse.
First of all, I'm excited to announce that we've fixed our audio problems. No more Gregorian chant-like episodes! A few weeks ago, Erica and I talked about pursuing our spouse, and that episode generated quite a bit of feedback. Some of those conversations led to an interesting question: What…
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365. What Everyone Gets Wrong About Therapy
What if everything you think you know about therapy isn’t quite right? And what if therapists themselves are getting some important things wrong? Can anyone be a therapist? Isn’t it just talking? In episode 365 of The Joe Martino Show, Erica and I pull back the curtain on the world of therapy.…
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364. Blended Families: The Hidden Dangers Parents Often Miss
There are millions of blended families in America, and we don’t talk nearly enough about the challenges that exist inside these homes. Should step-siblings date? What kinds of conflict might look like ordinary family drama but are actually common challenges in blended families? How should parents...
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363. When Helping Hurts: The Cost of Accommodation Culture
What if our efforts to help people are teaching them they can’t handle life? Nobody wants to watch someone they love struggle. But when we keep removing discomfort, lowering expectations, or stepping in to make everything easier, what are we actually teaching them about themselves? This week…
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362. Never Stop Pursuing Your Spouse
This week Erica and I talk about the power of pursuit in a relationship. So many marriages start falling apart before either person realizes it because pursuing each other slowly falls behind other things. Often, they’re good things. Important things. They’re just not more important than the...
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361. Are Guys’ Trips and Girls’ Trips Killing Your Marriage?
Are guys’ trips and girls’ trips killing marriages? Erica recently watched a clip from an attorney who made that argument. When she told me about it, I’ll admit, I thought he had a point. Now, we’re not talking about the occasional weekend away with your friends. Friendships matter. Having a life...
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361. Suicide Awareness Month
September is Suicide Awareness Month. Approximately 2,000 people die each day by suicide worldwide. Approximately 134 people a day die by suicide in America. Suicide affects three groups of people: those who live with someone who uses the term as a threat, those who wrestle with it themselves…
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360. Oppenheimer, Criticism, and Why We Stop Growing
If you’ve read American Prometheus, you know that after helping create the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer began warning the government about the consequences of the nuclear arms race. Rather than seriously considering what he had to say, powerful people worked to discredit and silence him....
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359. Comfort at the Price of Resilience?
Was Erica missing her privilege in a previous episode? Some listeners thought so and wrote in to tell us. After we deal with that, we look at the University of Michigan’s new grading system for freshmen! No Failing! Pass or No Credit is the only option now. We can’t say you failed. The stated...
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358. What Does Kindness In Marriage Mean? What Does it Mean in any Relationship?
We seem to be living in a world that has lost kindness. And everyone seems to have someone else to blame. But what does it actually mean to be kind in a relationship? When does trying to help, correct, or influence someone cross the line into control? What’s the difference between critiquing,...
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357. Stepparenting Is Hard: How to Build a Healthy Blended Family
About one in six kids in America lives in a blended family, and stepchildren are often one of the top stressors listed for second marriages. After the pain of a divorce, you’ve fallen in love again, and the kids are threatening to ruin it. What do you do? How do you parent as a stepparent? How do...
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356. The Back-to-School Battle: Anxiety, Stress, and Avoidance
356. The Back-to-School Battle: Anxiety, Stress, and Avoidance by Joe Martino
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355A. Full Parental Estrangement Episode
**Please Note: Some podcast players were unable to load the full version of this episode, therefore I am reloading it here. ** If you haven't heard, child estrangement with adult parents is on the rise. A recent research article reported that nearly 30% of parents who are estranged from their...
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355. Let's Talk About Parental Estangement.
If you haven't heard, child estrangement with adult parents is on the rise. A recent research article reported that nearly 30% of parents who are estranged from their children blame therapy. But, is that a good way to construct a study? What does it mean for us today as we try to live and be…
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354. The Most Important Question We Should Ask About Youth Sports
Summer is almost over. For many that means it’s time to buy new spikes, water bottles and fall sports gear. It’s time to send half of the family north for one game, while the other half goes south for a different game. It’s time to either eat late at night at home or in a fast food joint. It's…
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353. What is Emotional Security? How does it Help People Connect?
Today's episode takes us all the way back to episode one as part of my somewhat sporadic summer review series. We're revisiting one of the foundational ideas behind almost everything I do as a counselor, consultant, and in my own relationships: emotional security. What is emotional security? Why...
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352. Why Healthy People Distinguish Between Feeling Unsafe and Discomfort
You hear it regularly. I know I do. “I don’t feel safe.” And that can be important. Manipulation exists, Abuse, and real danger is out there. But what if we've started using the language of safety to describe something else entirely? What if we actually confuse discomfort at being disagreed with…
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351. Life is Short. Live Your Life, Do the Thing.
Summer is almost over. What do you want to do because you're afraid people will judge you? What are you afraid to try because you might fail? Life is so short. Make sure you live it. If this resonates with you, this is what I talk about in today’s episode of the Joe Martino Show.
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350. How Do We Live with Grief?
Today's episode deals with grief. How do we experience it? How do we live fully when we feel heartbroken and our world is falling apart around us? A friend of mine recently lost his son who was trying to save someone else. Twenty-four hours later, another friend lost her dad unexpectedly. Grief…
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349. Constructs: How We Make Sense of Our World.
Today's episode is a replay of a previous episode on constructs. What are they? How do they help us? How do they potentially hurt us? If you've heard it before, may it serve as a fresh reminder. If you've never heard it before, may it bring you something to chew on and grow from. From the…
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348. Parenting in the Age of Smartphones and Social Media
The current conversations around phones and our kids reminds me a lot of past conversations around our kids, spanking and what it means to train our children. There was a lot of all or nothing fallacies thrown around back then. I think that’s happening often today with the conversation around...
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347. Your Diagnosis Was Never Meant to Be Your Identity
Mental health diagnoses can be incredibly helpful. They can bring understanding, reduce shame, and help people find the support they need. But somewhere along the way, many of us started turning diagnoses into identities. In this episode of The Joe Martino Show, I talk about the growing tendency…
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346. What If Phones Are Just Exposing Us?
People love blaming phones for everything. Social media is ruining kids. Technology is destroying families. Phones are why people don’t want children anymore. But what if that explanation is far too shallow? In this Mental Health Awareness Month episode of The Joe Martino Show, I push back on the...
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345. Growth Requires Movement (Even When You Don’t Feel Like It)
Life gets hard. That’s not a surprise. What throws people off is how they think we handle that reality. Most people slow down, overthink, and wait for things to feel better before they move. And that’s exactly where they get stuck. In this episode, I breaks down why growth doesn’t come from…
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344. 5 Things That Actually Improve Your Mental Health
Mental Health Awareness Month is everywhere. But awareness alone doesn’t change anything. In this episode, I take a look at what helps beyond awareness. There is not vague advice nor is there an overcomplicated systems. Just simple, practical ways to start improving your mental health right now....
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343. Hurt People, Labels, and the Truth We Avoid
Everybody’s ex is a narcissist. Your boss is toxic. Your parent is a psychopath. At least that’s what the internet would have you believe. In today’s episode, Joe tackles the rise of weaponized psychology labels and what happens when real clinical terms become everyday insults. He explores why...
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342. How to Think Clearly in a Noisy World
Most people think the solution to bad information is better information. Truthfully? That helps, but it’s incomplete. Sometimes the real solution is refusing to give garbage your time in the first place. We live in a world where everyone wants access to your attention. Outrage wants it. Fear…
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341. Validation Is Not the Same as Agreement
Validation started as a helpful idea. It meant helping people feel seen, heard, and understood. Somewhere along the way, many people began treating validation as something else entirely. Now some people expect agreement when they ask for understanding. They expect protection from discomfort. They...
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340. You Tried to Talk… They Shut It Down. Now What?
If you finally worked up the courage to have a hard conversation and it blew up in your face, this episode is for you. Maybe they got defensive. Maybe they attacked. Maybe they avoided the whole thing and somehow you walked away feeling like you were the problem. In this follow-up to the episode…
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339. What Do You Do When You Don't Like Your Friends Family?
A listener named Chris wrote in with a problem a lot of people have but almost nobody wants to say out loud. He has a long-time friend named Mike. He genuinely likes Mike. But he can’t stand Mike’s wife or most of his kids. What used to be easy family hangouts has turned into something both he…
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338. The Five-Step Framework for Actually Solving Your Problems
Most people don’t actually solve their problems. They analyze them, talk about them, complain about them, explain them, or wait for them to go away. But solving a problem requires something different. It requires responsibility, clarity about what’s actually happening, and a willingness to move.…
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337. Feeling Like No One Understands You? Here’s Why You’re Stuck
Most people think their situation is different. Different pain. Different story. Different obstacles. And on the surface, that can feel true. But that belief quietly traps us. In this episode, we unpack how the idea that “no one understands me” can keep us stuck, isolated, and spinning in the…
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336. Why Taking Responsibility Is the Key to Emotional Growth
When someone hurts us, we’re not responsible for their wrongdoing. We are responsible for our response and subsequent growth. We give up our own power when we wait for an apology to move forward. It’s not fair, but fair is a place where you pay people to pet pigs. We will always be stuck as long…
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335. If Peace Requires silence, It's Poison, not Health.
Most people say they value honesty. They say hard conversations are necessary for healthy relationships. But watch what people actually do. They avoid them. They delay them. They soften them. They convince themselves that staying quiet is wisdom or patience. Sometimes they even call it “keeping…
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334. Boundaries and Empathy: How to Care Without Losing Yourself
Do you find yourself overexplaining a lot? Do you delay hard conversations because you’re worried about how the other person will take it? Do you find yourself caught in the quagmire of resentment? Do you struggle to have boundaries because you’re concerned that the other person’s feelings will…
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333. Growth Often Feels Like Loss First
Have you ever wondered what emails I might get as a podcast host? Today, I read two of my favorites. Then the episode dives into the truth that our growth will often be painful. Often when people encounter that pain, they stop engaging the growth process. In this episode we dive into how the…
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332. The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Being “Calm”
Calm gets praised. It gets rewarded. It gets mistaken for health. But emotional quiet is not always emotional maturity. In this episode, we unpack the difference between true regulation and strategic shutdown, and why some forms of calm are rooted in fear, control, or avoidance. You’ll learn how…
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331. Emotional Maturity: The Skill No One Taught You
331. Emotional Maturity: The Skill No One Taught You by Joe Martino
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330. How Do We Know if We Had a Good Conversation?
There is a common assumption in the world today: how someone feels after a conversation is the best way to judge how well the conversation went. If they aren’t offended, what we said was good, loving or right. But feelings were never meant to be the scoreboard. They’re data, not conclusions. In...
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329. Why Some People Feel Attacked by Accountability
Accountability often feels like an attack, not because it is one, but because of what it touches in us. In this episode, I unpack why responsibility can feel threatening, how shame and emotional fusion distort feedback, and why defensiveness is often about fear rather than arrogance. We’ll talk...
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328. Big Emotions Happen. They Don't Excuse Bad Behavior
It’s become a rallying cry. Parents are told they must validate a child’s emotions during a full-blown tantrum. Adults expect other adults to accept and validate emotional outbursts without question. The message is everywhere. In many ways, this is a good thing. For a long time, emotions were...
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327. Wishing You a Happy Holiday Season.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. This season may not be what you had hoped. I grieve for and with you. If your holiday is exactly what you hoped for, I celebrate with you.
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326. Do You Love Someone Who is Toxic or Do You Just not Like Them?
How do you tell the difference between someone who’s truly toxic and someone who just annoys you? In this episode of The Joe Martino Show, I break down five clear markers of toxic behavior and how to spot them without overusing therapy-speak. We’ll also talk about how boundaries get misused, why...
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325. The Counterintuitive Benefit of Reading Books You Don't Like or Agree With
In this episode, we explore the surprising mental and emotional benefits of reading books you don’t enjoy. From expanding your perspective to building resilience, we break down why pushing through uncomfortable or challenging material can actually strengthen your mind. You’ll learn how disliked...
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324. Celebrate Failure. Utilize These Five Steps to Improve Your Life
Recently my son accidentally ruined an entire freezer full of meat. In today’s episode I use this event and my response to it to explain five steps that anyone can use to change their lives. Episode 324 is live. Don't forget to subscribe and share.
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323. How Do Navigate Family Stress at the Holidays?
Family stress seems to be more of a theme around the holidays. It seems to me most people are caught between wanting to spend time with family and not wanting to wade through the distress of a divisive political conversation. In today’s episode, I share some strategies to finding a peaceful way…
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322. How Much Cancel Culture Lives in All of Us?
Nearly all of us say we hate cancel culture, but in this episode, I explore the possibility that maybe we like it a little bit more than we let on. What happens when all or nothing combines with a dislike of being questioned? Often, we engage in a mini version of cancel culture. That is to say…
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321. Your Words Build Your Life. For Better or Worse.
The words you speak shape the world you live in. When you learn to own that truth, you can stop reacting to life and start creating it, one word at a time. This episode dives into how your language defines your reality, your mindset, and your freedom. Let’s talk about how changing your words can...
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320. The Truth About Change: It Doesn’t Build Character—It Reveals It
When life shifts, we like to think we’re being tested, but most of the time, we’re being revealed. Change doesn’t create your character; it exposes it. In this episode, we’ll talk about how turmoil shows what’s really driving you, and how to use those moments to grow instead of spiral. You’ll…
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319. What Version of You Does Your Family Get?
Are you one person at work and another at home? In this episode of The Joe Martino Show, we talk about what happens when the version of you your family gets isn’t the same one everyone else sees—and how to start closing that gap. Plus, I answer a listener question about “The Rule of Three” and…
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