Temper is something you can lose, hold, or redirect, and Armand DiMele argues all three carry consequences. With co-host Giullian Gioiello and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, the conversation moves from toddler tantrums to explosive adults, asking whether suppressing anger protects us or stores up damage for later.
The unconscious exists to keep us safe, storing everything from childhood fears to inherited instincts. Armand DiMele and Lisa Arnone, LCSW break down Freud’s id, ego, and superego, using listener responses to Armand’s voice as live evidence of how unconscious associations with safety, kindness, and trust actually work.
Ninety percent of your choices are driven by the unconscious, Armand DiMele argues, and the episode makes that case through vivid examples: a fear of dogs from a forgotten childhood bite, the smell of lilies tied to buried grief, vanilla cake linked to a sister’s rage. Callers test the ideas live, including one who traces his social anxiety to a single humiliating childhood moment.
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.
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.
Why do we keep making the same resolutions year after year? Armand DiMele and Dr. Sherry Siegel, M.D. dig into the inner force that blocks change, tracing resistance through its many disguises including procrastination, self-criticism, and forgetting. Armand’s concept of the internal “engineer” offers a fresh way to understand why the familiar, even when harmful, feels safer than growth.
Can psychological symptoms be resolved in four steps? Dr. Bernard Starr, PhD, Psychologist, guest-hosts and interviews psychoanalyst Dr. Henry Kellerman, whose book argues that every symptom traces back to unconscious rage over blocked wishes. They unpack the four-step symptom code, contrast psychoanalytic and behavioral approaches, and discuss how identifying hidden anger can dissolve phobias and obsessive thoughts.
Hypnotherapist Cindy Brielotta walks Armand DiMele through the five-phase process she uses to locate and release buried emotions. The conversation covers why suppressed feelings drain energy and drive overreaction, how hypnotic age regression traces emotions back to their earliest source, and why forgiving an offender is ultimately an act of self-liberation.
Why are emotionally open people such easy targets? Armand traces the roots of emotional manipulation from childhood repression to adolescent psychopathy, then lands on internet trolling as its modern form, confessing he was once trolled on his own website without realizing it. The episode connects online provocation to everyday relationship dynamics.
Bottled-up feelings turn into rage, depression, and stuck stories. Armand DiMele and therapist Anne Marganow argue that accessing fear, sadness, and vulnerability is not weakness but the path to self-support, discussing breathwork, role-switching, and why hysteria is actually a flight from feeling.
