Mood: Bad

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Animal Choices and the Hidden Self Undated

Host: Armand DiMele
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, Identity & The Self

Your favorite animal reveals your true nature, while your favorite color is the mask you show the world. Armand DiMele builds a surprisingly revealing self-knowledge exercise from listener responses, then pivots to pity, arguing that pitying others distances us from them and that self-pity quietly sustains depression by substituting victimhood for honest self-examination.

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.

Criminal Intention and Self Knowledge Undated

Host: Armand DiMele
Category: Identity & The Self, Personal Growth & Change

Most people enter therapy not to change but to get better at what they already do. Armand DiMele introduces the concept of “criminal intention,” the hidden, often dark strategies we developed as children to survive, and shows how recognizing them in love, friendship, and work is the real engine of personal change.

A Year as a Buddhist Nun with Diana Winstead Undated

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Diana Winstead
Category: Identity & The Self, Meaning, Spirituality & Philosophy

Diana Winstead spent a year as a shaved-head, robed Buddhist nun in Burma, meditating in near-total silence. Armand DiMele draws out what she learned about sexuality, surrender, and selfhood by removing almost everything modern life is built on, and what happened when she returned.

What Love Actually Feels Like Undated

Host: Armand DiMele
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, Love & Romantic Relationships

Love means something different to everyone, and Armand DiMele makes the case that it is fundamentally an internal feeling rather than a fixed set of behaviors or rules. He examines love as fear, possession, safety, sex, and even addiction, arguing that your version of love is valid whatever form it takes.

Thinking as Emotional Discharge Undated

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Ben Starr, Giullian Gioiello
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, The Mind & Neuroscience

Thinking is not neutral reflection but a behavior the mind uses to discharge uncomfortable feelings before they overwhelm us. Armand DiMele walks through his feelings-impulses-behaviors model, with co-hosts Giullian Gioiello and Ben Starr, and a caller’s story about a protest march illustrates how beauty and solidarity can break through emotional shutdown.

Contacting Your Inner Creature Self Undated

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Diane, Heidi, Yvette
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, Personal Growth & Change

Stop attacking yourself and start listening. Armand DiMele walks listeners through a step-by-step practice for reaching the instinctual, feeling self he calls the “creature,” using guided relaxation, breath work, and a non-dominant hand writing exercise to open a dialogue between the rational mind and the emotional self.

Objectification and the Fear of Need Undated

Category: Emotions & Inner Life, Identity & The Self

Why do we turn people and needs into abstract objects? Armand DiMele argues that objectification is a defense against vulnerability, whether it shows up as racial dehumanization, sexual fetish, or the jealous conviction that no one can be trusted. Callers trace these patterns back to childhood wounds.

Food as a Drug Undated

Category: Addiction & Compulsion, Emotions & Inner Life

Food is not just fuel for many people but a mood-altering drug, and Armand DiMele argues the difference is rooted in brain chemistry and early conditioning. Drawing on research into serotonin, sugar dependency, and stress eating, he shows how grief, anger, and childhood comfort rituals wire us toward specific foods.

Self-Medication with Dr. Kent Robertshaw Undated

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Kent Robertshaw
Category: Addiction & Compulsion, Emotions & Inner Life

Why are so many people medicating their own physical and emotional pain, and what are the risks? Armand DiMele and Dr. Kent Robertshaw, MD, psychiatrist, trace the shift from doctor-dependent care to self-treatment, covering everything from nutrition to Vicodin abuse among teens, and explore when self-care empowers and when it becomes a dangerous substitute for professional help.