Dependency gets reframed as a workable strategy rather than a simple flaw. Armand DiMele, working with supervisee Lisa Arnone, LCSW, walks through dependent personality disorder, the hidden advantages it offers both the dependent person and their partners, and why independence is no guaranteed path to happiness either.
Are smartphones and social media bringing families closer or hollowing out real intimacy? Armand DiMele and co-host Lisa Arnone examine adult children moving back home, how texting reshaped parent-child bonds, and the painful gap between online connection and genuine closeness. Callers bring it to life.
Disappointment is the hidden threat to political activists: it slides into apathy, rage, or depression if left unexamined. Armand DiMele, joined by Lisa Arnone, LCSW, and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, uses the Occupy Wall Street moment to explore what happens psychologically when passionate effort seems to yield no visible result.
Caring for a seriously ill spouse strips away plans, freedom, and identity. Dr. Diana Denholm, MD, author of “The Caregiving Wife’s Handbook,” joins Armand DiMele and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, to examine how caregivers manage resentment and burnout, and what the person being cared for can do to preserve their partner’s dignity and wellbeing.
Every behavior we label dysfunctional serves a hidden purpose. Armand DiMele argues that depression, addiction, paranoia, and even passivity are forms of power, and that befriending these parts of ourselves rather than fighting them is what actually enables change. Lisa Arnone, LCSW joins the conversation alongside callers working through these ideas in real time.
Power is largely an illusion, and fighting that truth is a recipe for depression, rigidity, and exhaustion. Armand DiMele and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, trace powerlessness from its biological roots through addiction, codependency, grief, and disability, arguing that accepting what we cannot control is itself a form of strength.
Your attitude toward money, not your bank balance, is what keeps you stuck. Armand DiMele and Nick Papadopoulos, Success Counselor, trace how childhood environments of scarcity or abundance shape spending habits, self-sabotage, and the unconscious games people play around earning and giving money away.
Armand DiMele argues that compulsive sexual behavior in both men and women is really a search for a missing parent: women seeking the nurturing of an absent mother, men seeking the masculine affirmation of an absent father. Callers push back, share personal stories, and probe the theory’s limits.
Every family is a web of valences, positive and negative, and Armand DiMele maps the full constellation: single fathers raising daughters, mothers and sons, absent parents, and the toll each pattern takes. Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, adds clinical perspective, and a caller named JT illustrates what happens when a child withdraws from an unaccepting world and how embarrassment, not circumstance, becomes the last barrier to belonging.
Is the feeling of safety in relationships a genuine need or an illusion? Armand DiMele argues that craving safety actually signals underlying anxiety, that chronic worriers cannot truly love, and that real intimacy requires tolerating danger rather than eliminating it. Callers share stories of dependency, caretaking, and long-term relationships shaped by depression and mental illness.
