Your speaking style gives you away. Armand DiMele and voice specialist Elizabeth Sastry break down the psychological types behind how people talk: the deferential, the dramatic, the worrier, the scattered, the controlling, and the silent. Callers then test the framework against their own relationships.
Most people ask the wrong questions about themselves. Armand DiMele and Lisa Arnone, LCSW walk through a structured framework for deeper self-inquiry, moving from surface-level complaints through feelings, causality, and self-acceptance, with caller conversations illustrating each step live.
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.
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.
Anxiety is the antenna that triggers self-protection, and Armand DiMele and co-host Linda Vanilla walk through the full spectrum of psychological defenses, from denial and repression to dissociation and passive aggression. Caller stories ground the theory in real family pain, showing how childhood coping habits outlive their usefulness.
Life does get better for most people, and Armand explores why with Dr. Kent Robertshaw, MD, Psychiatrist, and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R. Three forces drive improvement over time: burnout from exhausting old patterns, learning to manage triggers, and growing self-acceptance. Psychiatric advances, caller stories about ambivalent relationships, and the transformative love of parenthood all figure in.
Buried anger is the engine behind most psychological suffering. Armand DiMele maps the strategies people develop to survive it, from repression and regression to dissociation and acting out, tracing how childhood rules about anger shape adult behavior, relationships, and even career choices.
Serotonin may not cause depression after all. Armand DiMele and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, dig into why the serotonin hypothesis is crumbling and why neurogenesis, the growth of new brain cells, may better explain how mood shifts with age and how exercise, learning, and enriched environments can counter decline.
Most older adults are not depressed, not dependent, and not eager to move in with their children. Dr. Bernard Starr, PhD, Psychologist, joins Armand to dismantle those myths with research, and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, weighs in on seniors who self-isolate. Hidden alcohol abuse, the loneliness of widowhood, and a bold proposal to tap elder wisdom in education all get airtime.
