Mother’s Day triggers some of the deepest and most complicated feelings people carry. Armand DiMele traces the holiday’s activist origins, examines why therapists are trained to watch for crisis around it, and opens the phones to callers sharing tender memories, estrangement, infertility, and the particular ache of becoming an orphan at any age.
Psychiatrist and author Dr. Irvin Yalom joins Armand DiMele to argue that confronting death directly, rather than avoiding it, is essential to living fully. They discuss erotic transference, the therapist’s need for ongoing personal therapy, and Yalom’s existential view that therapist and patient are fellow travelers facing the same mortality.
We unconsciously seek partners who recreate the emotional dynamics of our childhood homes, not the people themselves but the feelings they produce. Sandra Reischus, author of the book of the same name, joins Armand to unpack why comfort zones in love are often traps, and how psychotherapy rewires those early patterns.
Father’s Day triggers deep, often denied wounds that shape careers, relationships, and self-worth. Armand DiMele maps the landscape of absent, frightening, and emotionally dead fathers, argues that most men’s self-hatred traces back to unacknowledged need for their fathers, and fields calls from listeners grappling with unavailable dads and its lasting fallout.
