Keyword: anxiety

↕

Hypochondria Panic Attacks and Psychosomatic Pain with Dr. Kent Robertshaw July 13, 2006

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Kent Robertshaw
Category: Anxiety & Fear, The Mind & Neuroscience

Panic attacks feel like heart attacks, and hypochondria can be a disguised craving for care or an unconscious flirtation with death. Armand and Dr. Kent Robertshaw, MD, Psychiatrist, argue that fibromyalgia, irritable bowel, and chronic pain are often psychosomatic, and that most doctors overtreating vague symptoms do more harm than good.

Heat Stress and the Body June 20, 2006

Host: Armand DiMele
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, The Mind & Neuroscience

Summer heat does more than make us sweat. Armand DiMele takes calls from listeners struggling with panic attacks, hot flashes, and depression triggered by high temperatures, tracing physical symptoms to hormonal and chemical factors while connecting heat stress to the emotional weight of controlling parents and distant wars.

How Breathing Controls Our Emotions June 14, 2006

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Neil Schachter, Roberta Maria Atti
Category: Depression & Mood, Emotions & Inner Life

Shallow breathing is not a flaw but a learned survival tool: we suppress emotions by constricting breath, and chronic shallow breathing can deaden sensation, deepen depression, and fuel psychosomatic illness. Armand DiMele and co-host Roberta Maria Atti caution against the easy advice to “just breathe deeper,” explaining why opening the breath can flood the body with overwhelming feeling.

Your Brain on Fear and the Synaptic Self June 7, 2006

Category: Anxiety & Fear, The Mind & Neuroscience

Why can’t you think your way out of an emotion? Armand DiMele and co-host Roberta Maria Atti dig into how the amygdala dominates the brain’s fear circuitry, why emotional states resist rational override, and how synaptic buildup (“neuro-gunk”) may underlie compulsion, addiction, and depression. Practical tips on hydration, nutrition, and movement close the episode.

Psychiatric Medication with Dr. Kent Robertshaw April 20, 2006

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Kent Robertshaw
Category: Anxiety & Fear, Depression & Mood

Armand DiMele and Dr. Kent Robertshaw, MD, Psychiatrist, walk through the landscape of psychiatric medications, from why Prozac reshaped treatment to how a psychiatrist actually chooses between antidepressants based on symptoms. They cover OCD, paranoia, psychosis, and the tension between medication and talk therapy.

The Noonday Demon with Andrew Solomon April 1, 2006

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Andrew Solomon
Category: Depression & Mood, The Mind & Neuroscience

Andrew Solomon, author of ‘The Noonday Demon,’ joins Armand DiMele to explore how depression escalates across repeated episodes, why agitated depression is especially dangerous, what cortisol does to brain cells over time, and why our screen-saturated, sleep-deprived culture may be quietly fueling an epidemic.

The Healing Power of Doing Nothing March 30, 2006

Category: Anxiety & Fear, Personal Growth & Change

Almost every healing practice, from acupuncture to aromatherapy to the doctor’s waiting room, shares one active ingredient: roughly 22 minutes of enforced stillness. Armand DiMele argues that most human behavior is fear-driven, and that quieting the body temporarily relieves that fear, regardless of what treatment claims to be doing the work.

Fear, Sleeplessness and the Medicated Mind February 8, 2006

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Roberta Maria Atti
Category: Anxiety & Fear, The Mind & Neuroscience

Surging sleeping pill prescriptions since 2000 point to a population kept chronically anxious by threat messaging and media fear cycles. Armand and co-host Roberta Maria Atti trace how an overstimulated amygdala eventually crashes into depression, why sleep is biologically active rather than passive rest, and what simple remedies can replace Ambien.

Personal Space and Human Behavior January 18, 2006

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Roberta Maria Atti
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, Society, Culture & Current Events

Why do children huddle in the center of a yard when fences are removed? Armand DiMele and co-host Roberta Maria Atti dig into proxemics, the science of how humans claim, defend, and respond to space, covering personal bubbles, gender differences in seating preferences, crowding and cooperation, and the neuroscience of spatial memory.

The Psychology of Chronic Worry December 28, 2005

Host: Armand DiMele
Category: Anxiety & Fear, Emotions & Inner Life

Chronic worriers aren’t weak or dramatic; their brains are locked in a primitive survival reflex they cannot simply switch off. Armand DiMele defends the chronic worrier against dismissive “pathologically positive” people, traces worry’s roots in fragility and future-thinking, and shows how it can paradoxically drive away the very support worriers need.