Anger hides in workaholism, control, and even the urge to merge completely with a partner. Armand DiMele traces how unmet childhood needs shape adult love, from fusion relationships to the search for safety in families where it was never found. Callers bring raw examples of both.
We think we knew it all along, but hindsight bias distorts judgment and fuels overconfidence. Armand DiMele and co-hosts Linda and Julian explore the psychology of bad habits, including why elimination is harder than replacement, and how scheduling, rewards, and physical interruption techniques can help.
Severe winters and accelerating climate disruption are doing something to us emotionally that seasonal affective disorder alone cannot explain. Armand DiMele, joined by co-host Giullian Gioiello and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, explores how environmental upheaval drives withdrawal, hormonal disruption, and a search for connection through technology, money, and music.
Feeling good is more complicated than it looks. Armand DiMele, joined by Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, and co-host Giullian Gioiello, unpacks the spectrum of gladness, from alert calm to manic highs to nervous laughter, drawing on brain chemistry, fruit fly research, and callers sharing their own deflections from pain.
Fear is false evidence appearing real, Armand DiMele argues, rooted in the nervous brain’s ancient survival wiring. He walks through the five core feelings, introduces a sixth (numbness), and explains how anxiety flips between clinging to security and a quiet wish for it all to end. Callers bring these ideas to life through fears about family, children, and personal history.
Why do people hide the truth from their doctors, their partners, and themselves? Armand DiMele and co-host Giullian Gioiello, joined by Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, examine what questions really do: test safety, reveal love, expose fear, and build trust. Callers explore childhood silencing and emotional breakthroughs.
Armand DiMele and his studio guests probe the difference between painful isolation and liberating solitude, drawing on Buddhist sunyata, Freudian theory, Beckett, and callers’ real lives including veterans struggling to reconnect after combat and a caller who rebuilt himself after losing everything in 2008.
Childhood entrapment quietly drives adult fears, including fear of flying. Armand DiMele traces a caller’s claustrophobia to her violent, alcoholic home and explores why some people compulsively give advice, linking it to feelings of inadequacy and a need to feel powerful.
Irrational thinking is the hidden engine of unhappiness. Armand DiMele walks through nearly twenty common cognitive distortions, from needing universal approval to believing everyone else is happy but you, drawing on rational emotive therapy and his own clinical stories to show how funny thinking fuels emotional distress.
Protecting people from the truth slowly erases who you are. Armand DiMele argues that fear of hurting others’ feelings drives chronic self-suppression, indecision, and blame, tracing how the habit often begins in family dynamics and quietly hollows out a person’s sense of self.
