Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick

We can know we are loved and still not be able to let it in. The gap between believing something and feeling it in the body is not a faith problem — it's a physiological one.
In this second conversation with Aundi Kolber, Michael and Julianne press deeper into what it actually takes to change: why being loved is not just a comfort but a biological prerequisite for growth, why asking someone to change before they feel safe is, in Aundi's word, cruel, and what it means to come home to yourself rather than keep fleeing from what hurts. Aundi also draws a line between the shame that keeps us stuck and the compassion that actually moves us — and why God is calling us home, not calling us out.
This is a rebroadcast of one of the most-listened-to conversations in the show's ten-year history.
Aundi Kolber is a licensed therapist and author of Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us Out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival and Into a Life of Connection and Joy.
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Most of us were taught, somewhere along the way, that the answer to pain is to push through it. Try harder. White-knuckle it. And for a long time, that worked — until it didn't.
Aundi Kolber wrote Try Softer as a love letter to her younger self, and in this conversation with Michael and Julianne Cusick, she unpacks what it actually means to pay compassionate attention to your own experience — not as self-indulgence, but as the very thing Jesus modeled in taking on a body. They explore why our survival strategies stop serving us long after the danger has passed, how embodiment is the missing piece in most approaches to emotional and spiritual growth, and why the command to love your neighbor as yourself may be more demanding than it first appears.
This is a rebroadcast of one of the most-listened-to conversations in the show's ten-year history.
Aundi Kolber is a licensed therapist and author of Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us Out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival and Into a Life of Connection and Joy.
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Most people who know the five love languages have tried speaking their partner's language — and wondered why it still isn't working. The problem usually isn't the language. It's something underneath it.
Dr. Gary Chapman returns with new research showing how personality, empathy, and the subtle dialects within each love language determine whether love actually lands. In this conversation, he and Michael explore why speaking someone's love language can backfire if it runs against their personality, what it looks like to confuse encouragement with pressure, and why the most important question in a marriage might be as simple as "How can I make your life easier?"
At 88 years old, Chapman also shares the turning point in his own marriage — a vision of Jesus washing his disciples' feet that changed not his technique, but his posture.
Dr. Gary Chapman is a marriage counselor, pastor, and author of The Five Love Languages, which has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, and his newest book, The Love Language That Matters Most.
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Shame doesn't only live in the dark corners of a broken life. It lives just as quietly in the person everyone else envies — the one who has achieved everything and still wakes up feeling like it isn't enough.
Ken Shigematsu grew up moving between Japan, England, and Canada, carrying the weight of a shame-and-honor culture that most Western theology never addresses. In this conversation, he and Michael explore why deep grace is different from knowing grace is true, what it means to grow our capacity to actually receive love rather than deflect it, and why beauty and joy aren't spiritual extras — they are among the most direct routes out of shame and into the self God made.
Ken also shares the simple daily practice that, over 30 days, can literally rewire the neural networks that make it hard to feel loved by God — even when you believe it.
Ken Shigematsu is a pastor in Vancouver, Canada, and author of Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self.
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Most people assume temptation is about weakness or willpower. But the wilderness story in Matthew 4 reveals something far older — evil moves first against the places where we have not been seen, soothed, safe, and secure.
In this conversation, Michael and AJ Denson walk slowly through the baptism and temptation of Jesus, presenting them as a portrait of attachment under siege. They explore how the devil's opening accusation — if you are the Son of God — lands precisely where God's voice had just spoken identity and belonging, why hunger, loneliness, and exposure aren't just physical states but the exact conditions evil exploits, and what it means that after the ordeal, angels came and attended to him — a scene almost never preached, yet the one that puts the bow on the whole story.
This is a co-host episode from Michael's ongoing series unpacking Sacred Attachment, chapter by chapter.
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ENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:
- Follow us on YouTube
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- Email us at info@restoringthesoul.com 

Thanks for listening!