Episodes

Dec. 24, 2024

Hybristophilia: Attraction to Predators

Hybristophilia is a term that has emerged to describe a peculiar and often misunderstood psychological phenomenon: sexual or romantic attraction to dangerous people or people with a criminal history. This type of attraction a...
Dec. 17, 2024

A Life Filled with Regret

Regret can be an incredibly painful emotion. While rooted in feelings of contrition, disappointment, guilt, or remorse for things that have happened in the past, such feelings can have a powerful influence over your life in t...
Dec. 10, 2024

The Makings of an American

Living in a foreign country and adjusting to a new culture can be a very rewarding experience. But, it can also be a difficult one if you do not understand the values and assumptions of the society. Values are ideas about wha...
Dec. 3, 2024

A Narcissist Family Christmas

If a family member suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder or displays significant narcissistic tendencies, the holidays can mean great chaos and calamity. During the season, there are more opportunities for narcissist...
Nov. 26, 2024

Life as Eeyore: Persistent Depressive Disorder

Persistent depressive disorder, known as dysthymia or low-grade depression, is less severe than major depression but more chronic. It occurs twice as often in women as in men. Persistent depressive disorder (PDD) is a serious...
Nov. 19, 2024

The Cost of Loneliness

Though our need to connect is innate, many of us frequently feel alone. Loneliness is the state of distress or discomfort that results when one perceives a gap between one’s desires for social connection and actual experience...
Nov. 12, 2024

Where You Live Influences How You Think

Geographical psychology examines links between location and psychological phenomena, such as how and why personality traits, life satisfaction, and social behavior differ from place to place—or cluster in certain areas. These...
Nov. 5, 2024

How to Make and Sustain Friendship in a Busy Life

You just moved to a new city. All your friends are getting married or having kids. You retired. You got divorced. You've outgrown your childhood friends. You’ve been clinging to your spouse as your only friend and it’s making...
Oct. 29, 2024

Meaning: What is the Point of Being Here?

The question of the meaning of life is perhaps one that we would rather not ask, for fear of the answer or lack thereof. Still today, many people believe that we, humankind, are the creation of a supernatural entity called Go...
Oct. 22, 2024

Chunky Children: Childhood Obesity

With all the buzz around childhood obesity, it's easy to become desensitized to the statistics. But the shocking figures can't be ignored: Since 1980, the prevalence of obesity among kids and adolescents in the United States ...
Oct. 15, 2024

Sexual Promiscuity: The Love Parade

Promiscuity is formally defined, according to Webster, as including not only frequent but indiscriminate sexual behavior. Preference for frequent sexual contacts is not necessarily the same as being sexually indiscriminating....
Oct. 8, 2024

What Marriage Use To Be

Through most of Western civilization, marriage has been more a matter of money, power and survival than of delicate sentiments. In medieval Europe, everyone from the lord of the manor to the village locals had a say in decidi...
Oct. 1, 2024

Bi-Polar Opposites: To Be Manic

Mania can range from mild (known as hypomania) to severe; at its most extreme, mania can trigger delusions, violence, and an increased risk of suicide. Depending on the cause, a manic episode can last anywhere from several da...
Sept. 24, 2024

Victim Blaming

Virtually anyone who has survived sexual assault or experienced sexual harassment knows how painful victim-blaming can be. Survivors are often asked what they were wearing, what they did to “encourage” the perpetrator, or eve...
Sept. 17, 2024

Body Talk: Understanding Our First Language

Body language is a silent orchestra, as people constantly give clues to what they’re thinking and feeling. Non-verbal messages including body movements, facial expressions, vocal tone and volume, and other signals are collect...
Sept. 10, 2024

Search for Identity through Politics

If nothing else, the conflict in the Middle East has made it clear that identity politics isn’t going away. In fact, many individuals who previously criticized identity politics now embrace their personal identities more stro...
Sept. 3, 2024

Childhood: No More

While American children had once commonly enjoyed the freedom to run around outside with minimal adult interference, they began to spend more time indoors where their parents could watch them. When they did go outside, they w...
Aug. 27, 2024

Grudgy People: The Unforgivers

Why do we hold grudges when they are in fact quite painful to maintain, and often seem to work against what we really want? Why do we keep wounds open and active, living in past experiences of pain which prevent new experienc...
Aug. 20, 2024

How Media Programs Our Lives

Media especially through portrayals of characters, narratives and scenarios can serve as powerful models for learning behavior. We have seen this in the famous Bobo doll experiment by Albert Bandura. Following a series of chi...
Aug. 13, 2024

Kids Who Refuse To Go To School

It’s always difficult to hear your children yelling or sobbing that they don’t want to go to school. You may be even more sensitive to their reluctance and anxiety because of what an unpredictable place school has felt like f...
Aug. 6, 2024

When Did Marriage Start To Require Best Friends?

What makes friendship in marriage a potential benefit is that you will need to have someone you can talk to and fight alongside when life gets tough. And the ideal combination is a spouse with whom you share your life plans a...
July 30, 2024

Meh...Living With Apathy

What, exactly, is apathy? In a sense, it’s something like falling in love. You can describe it all you want, but until you’ve experienced it, you can only guess what it feels like. Paradoxically, what makes the feeling of apa...
July 23, 2024

Ego: Delusional Reality

When you take things personally, you allow many issues to consume your well-being. This way of thinking exhausts your energy with little good and a lot of stress and anxiety. The amount of worry, anger, and suffering you expe...
July 16, 2024

Married to Bat Shxt Crazy: (BPD) Borderline Personality Disorder

People who have borderline personality disorder tend to have more tumultuous, chaotic romantic relationships. Such relationships are often marked by stress, conflict, and dysfunction. Some of the ways that BPD can manifest in...