Reclaiming Your Desire: The 5 Things That Will Make or Break Your Marriage, Career, & Mental Health

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.

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Resources & Links

Get the Core Emotion Wheel — Free Resource

Book a Connection Codes Coach

Jay Stringer's book: Desire

Jay's first book: Unwanted

Jay Stringer’s Website: jay-stringer.com

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jay_stringer_

Take Jay’s Desire Profile Quiz (from the book)

Jay’s Contact Page (Linktree)