Guest: Barbara Jessen

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Growing Up Without Rules with Barbara Jessen March 27, 2007

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Barbara Jessen, Brian Jefferson, Stephanie D'Ambra
Category: Family & Parenting, Personal Growth & Change

Rules are love, argues Armand DiMele in this conversation with Barbara Jessen, executive director of a group home for at-risk teenage girls in Indiana. Together with Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW, they examine what chaotic childhoods cost kids, how brain development shapes decision-making, and why structure feels foreign to children who never had it.

Finding Someone Strong Enough to Hold You Undated

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Barbara Jessen, Carolee, Dr. Scott Baum, Keith, Leora, Sippy
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, Family & Parenting

Why do so many people seek partners or authority figures who can overpower their worst impulses? Armand DiMele builds on earlier research by Scott Baum about fathers and invisible male roles to explore how unresolved inner rage drives partner choice, avoidance of intimacy, and the surprising relief some people find in external discipline.

The Chemistry of Falling in Love Undated

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Barbara Jessen, Darlene, Demetrius, Jeremy Shockley, Monroe, Tommy Thompson
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, The Mind & Neuroscience

Oxytocin bonds us to partners and tribes, but new research suggests the same chemical that makes us trust also makes us exclude outsiders. Armand DiMele unpacks this paradox, arguing that deep love can quietly shrink a person’s world, and callers share their own experiences of friendships lost to relationships.