What does it mean to be your real self, and is it even worth it? Armand DiMele argues that when you love someone, you are really loving the feeling of yourself in their presence, which reframes heartbreak, authenticity, and the search for connection as fundamentally inward journeys. Callers push the question further.
We are never just one person. Armand DiMele argues that the selves we show at work, in love, or in fear are not masks hiding the real you but genuine alternate personalities, shaped by survival. The episode examines perfectionism, passive aggression, romantic longing, and SSRI-induced personality shifts through this lens.
Most people with dyslexia, ADD, and related phobias feel stupid despite high intelligence. Dr. Harold Levinson argues the root cause is inner ear dysfunction, not brain damage, and that treating the cerebellum can lift reading difficulties, phobias, and chronic disorganization at once.
What if every addiction or compulsion is run by a hidden alter self, not the person you know yourself to be? Armand DiMele draws on his decades treating dissociative identity disorder to argue that alter personalities, from the false front to the persecutor, operate in all of us, driving behaviors our primary self disowns.
Most of us carry a story about how others see us, and that story is often wrong. Armand DiMele examines the gap between self-image and social reality, touching on trustworthiness, sarcasm as a defense, online dating personas, schadenfreude, and what it would take to simply be yourself.
Fixed mindset people treat setbacks as proof of permanent flaws; growth mindset people treat them as data. Dr. Carol Dweck, Professor and Author of “Mindset,” joins Armand DiMele to explore how these two orientations shape ambition, love, parenting, and even how we age.
Triangulation is both a normal developmental step and a source of lasting dysfunction. Armand DiMele traces how children get pulled into taking sides between parents, how gossip and confiding in friends repeat the same pattern, and why splitting the world into all-good and all-bad leaves people stuck. Callers share their own family triangle experiences.
Vainglory is subtler than plain boasting: the vainglorious person wraps genuine insight in passing self-flattery, steering every story back to their own greatness. Armand DiMele unpacks the pattern, argues it masks deep smallness, and makes the case for genuine humility as the rarer and more admirable quality.
Loneliness is not a feeling but a perception, Armand DiMele argues, shaped by how many connections we hold and whether we feel truly heard. With Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, he maps the spectrum from highly connected people to those who isolate as self-protection, and examines how shopping, affairs, and caretaking often mask the ache of disconnection.
Armand DiMele and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, trace adult romantic patterns back to Mary Ainsworth’s infant attachment research, mapping secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized styles onto grown-up love. Callers share fresh breakups and repeating patterns, revealing how hard it is to outgrow the attachment wounds of childhood.
