Why do people treat their closest partners with more contempt than strangers? Armand DiMele and co-host Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW examine the hormonal roots of relational irritability, tracing how shifts in dopamine, prolactin, and testosterone erode compassion, and offer practical steps for breaking the cycle.
Memories shift each time we recall them, and music rewires brain chemistry in ways science is only beginning to confirm. Armand DiMele and co-host Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW, draw on a recent conference on music and neurological function to explore how rhythm and melody can reach Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients, spark dopamine release, and even mirror the pull of addiction.
Is constant digital connectivity replacing real human contact? Armand DiMele sits down with a 17-year-old student, his tech-savvy cousin Giullian Gioiello, and therapist Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW to examine how Facebook, texting, and smartphones are reshaping how young people relate, feel lonely, and find (or lose) silence.
Armand DiMele argues that theft, in nearly all its forms, is rooted in a felt absence of love. From childhood shoplifting to time theft at work, he traces how people take what they cannot seem to receive. Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW, joins to discuss fighting institutional systems, and callers weigh in on corporate fraud and righteous anger.
Our instincts are not primitive liabilities but hardwired tools for success that evolution refined over hundreds of thousands of years. Henry Weisinger, author of The Genius of Instinct, walks through six key instincts with Armand and Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW, showing how shelter seeking, care soliciting, and emotional vulnerability help people move from merely surviving to genuinely thriving.
Drawing on Tony Robbins’ TED talk, Armand DiMele unpacks four core human needs: certainty, uncertainty, significance, and love. Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW co-hosts as callers weigh in with stories of illness, grief, and new beginnings, making the framework feel lived-in rather than theoretical.
What does it mean to be real, and how do we lose touch with it? Armand DiMele opens with a reading from The Velveteen Rabbit, then ranges from Prozac’s cultural impact to managed care, specialist bias, and the patient’s right to question treatment. A caller shares his experience of bipolar disorder, addiction, and the numbing effects of lithium.
Most people who quietly disappear from your life, practice, or group never say why. Armand DiMele and Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW, examine the social and emotional forces that stop people from giving honest feedback, from fear of conflict to hidden agendas, and how providers and individuals can actually elicit the truth.
OCD is a physical brain disorder, not just a behavioral one. Armand DiMele and Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW, examine the neural circuitry behind obsessive loops, explain why stuck thought patterns generate what Armand calls “brain burn,” and offer practical strategies for manually shifting gears to break the cycle.
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.
