Therapist Podcast Episodes with Angela Smigiel
These therapist podcast episodes feature Angela Smigiel, LCSW, CSAT, a Scottsdale therapist with more than 20 years in mental and behavioral health. She talks about relationships, attachment, trauma and recovery.
Latest Therapist Podcast Episodes
Angela was the guest on both shows. The episodes run 45 and 64 minutes and are free on YouTube. Use the chapter times to start at the question you came with.
May 21, 2026 • 45 min
Nothing's Off The Table with Louis Ruggiero
Episode title: A Friend’s 7-Year-Old Son Was Caught Watching Porn | The Therapist Warning Everyone About Porn
Angela was the first therapist Louis Ruggiero had hosted on his recovery show. The conversation opens with codependency and what healthy love looks like. It moves through attachment styles and why so many people chase emotionally unavailable partners. Then it turns to sex addiction, how porn is changing young men’s brains, and what porn does to a relationship. It closes on withdrawal, recovery and setting boundaries.
Jump to:
- 1:40 Understanding codependency and recovery
- 3:41 What healthy love is
- 4:43 Attachment styles and toxic relationships
- 7:01 Recognizing codependency and its root causes
- 14:49 Why we seek unavailable partners
- 21:23 Sex addiction explained
- 25:21 Porn, technology and addiction
- 31:32 How porn addiction affects relationships
- 34:05 Intensity, boredom and commitment
- 39:00 Recovery, healthy relationships and boundaries
August 27, 2026 • 64 min
Sunsets Are The New Happy Hour with Kristin Horstman
Episode title: Why You Keep Choosing The Wrong Person (And How To Change That)
Kristin Horstman’s show is for people dealing with gray area drinking, anxiety and burnout. Angela explains why the wrong partner keeps feeling right. The nervous system is running survival patterns it learned in childhood. She covers the five core issues of codependency and childhood roles such as the hero and the lost child. Later she gets into limerence versus love, AI companions and the dopamine trap, and the talking boundary tool.
Who These Podcast Episodes Are For
Start with these therapist podcast episodes if any of this sounds familiar.
You keep choosing partners who are emotionally unavailable, or you stay long after you know.
A kind, steady partner feels boring, and intensity feels like chemistry.
You stopped drinking or using and still feel empty.
You people-please until you can’t, then put up walls.
You find it hard to say what you need, or even to know it.
You worry about what porn and screens are doing to you, your partner or your child.
Angela treats each of these as a pattern the nervous system learned early, and one that therapy can change.
About Angela Smigiel, Therapist in Scottsdale
Angela Smigiel, LCSW, CSAT, is a licensed clinical social worker and the founder of Spiral Up Counseling in Scottsdale, Arizona. She has worked in mental and behavioral health since 2004. Her work covers anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, codependency and the relationship patterns that grow out of early attachment wounds.
She also trains clinicians across the country in Pia Mellody’s model of codependency and Post Induction Therapy. In sessions she draws on PIT, IFS, EMDR, NARM, Brainspotting and Deep Brain Reorienting, so treatment fits the person in the room.
That thread runs through both podcast episodes: once you understand where a pattern started, you can start to change it.
Start Therapy in Scottsdale
If one of these therapist podcast episodes put words to something you have lived with for years, start with one conversation. Tell Angela what you recognized in yourself. She will tell you how she would work with it, in person in Scottsdale or online.
or call (602) 671-3408