Possessiveness gets a bad name, but Armand DiMele argues the impulse to belong and be claimed is deeply human. With co-hosts Ben Starr and Giullian Gioiello and clinician Lisa Arnone, LCSW, the conversation moves from child development and hoarding to family alienation and the paradox that you must feel owned before you can push free.
Physical clutter carries emotional weight, and clearing it can unlock broader change in how we live. Barbara Tako, author of ‘Clutter Clearing Choices’, walks through practical methods like the four-box sort and the one-in-one-out rule, while Armand and Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW explore how clutter connects to guilt, relationships, and self-worth.
Is greed a moral failing or simply the human condition? Armand DiMele and Dr. Bernard Starr, PhD, Psychologist, examine greed as a near-narcotic drive rooted in survival, comparing Wall Street excess and the Madoff scandal to universal human hunger for more health, love, and meaning.
Rigid, perfectionistic people crack hardest when life goes wrong, and Armand DiMele explains why. He distinguishes OCD from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, showing how the desperate need to be right drives indecision, relationship conflict, explosive anger, and hoarding, and how admitting fallibility is the way out.
Clutter is a habit; hoarding is an illness, and Armand DiMele draws a clear line between them. He traces hoarding to a fragile sense of self, fear of loss, and compulsive just-in-case thinking, then takes calls from listeners wrestling with their own accumulation and the anger and grief beneath it.
