Why can’t you get someone out of your head? Armand DiMele traces romantic obsession to the brain’s danger-detection system, arguing that the amygdala treats lost love as a survival threat. Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, joins co-hosts Ben Starr and Giullian Gioiello as callers share raw stories of grief, betrayal, and letting go.
When love is withdrawn, some people don’t just grieve, they rage. Armand DiMele and Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW examine why lost love can trigger obsessive calling, stalking, and even violence, tracing the reaction to a primitive wound response and asking whether abandonment rage is a kind of temporary insanity.
Why do people willingly give up control of their own minds? Armand DiMele argues that boredom, peer pressure, and the pleasure principle all prime us to surrender our mental autonomy, whether to love, obsession, cults, or hormones. A caller shares her near-recruitment by the Moonies as a vivid case study.
A rigid mind is the root of most psychological suffering, from addiction to depression to PTSD. Armand DiMele argues that mental flexibility, the willingness to take in new information and break habitual patterns, is the single quality that separates a stuck life from an open one. Callers test the idea live.
Why does love, the ultimate prize, cause so much pain? Armand DiMele traces the roots of romantic neediness, examining how men and women fall into obsession at different points in a relationship, why desperation can both draw people in and push them away, and what the concept of limerence reveals about involuntary romantic longing.
Perfectionism is not a virtue but a disguised form of anger. Armand DiMele traces how indirect social aggression in childhood breeds neurotic perfectionism in adults, connects it to eating disorders and hoarding, and urges listeners to loosen their grip, especially during the holidays.
Love may be the root of most human suffering, Armand argues, from neurosis to violence. The episode digs into stalking behavior, its statistics and psychology, the delusional belief that persistence will win someone over, and callers wrestling with infidelity, separation, and the cost of staying or leaving.
Six distinct love styles, from the game-playing ludic lover to the selfless agapic giver, frame a deep dive into manic love and its links to hypomania and bipolar disorder. Armand DiMele draws on callers’ personal experiences to show how most people blend several styles at once.
Why do we go blind when we fall for someone? Armand DiMele and Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW, break down lust, lovesickness, and limerence, the infatuation state coined by Dorothy Tenov, arguing that romantic blindness may be biologically wired and that mature love requires accepting people as they actually are.
Seven million Americans live with OCD, yet most go undiagnosed for nearly a decade. Armand DiMele traces the disorder to its neurochemical roots in the amygdala and cingulate gyrus, explains why evolution wired us toward obsessive vigilance, and surveys its many overlooked forms from hoarding to contamination fear.
