Blue Therapy #7 (This Show Sucks) Therapist Reacts

Haters over listeners, today I'm going to react to blue therapy. But before I get to that, I want to address something that's been happening in my reaction videos lately with this show. I've been criticizing the therapist, and I never feel good about that for a lot of reasons. One, I'm a therapist and I understand that we make mistakes. And two, as a professor of therapists, I absolutely understand that, you know, there's a learning curve and there's different approaches and I'm very used to helping people when I see them making a mistake. And I don't like to do that publicly. — I don't even like to do it in front of the other students. Sometimes I'll have private conversations with them so that they aren't humiliated by that. You know, we all make mistakes. I've had supervisors of mine that I respected, the ones I respected and they would pull me aside in that same way. And so I really just don't feel good about Another reason why I it is because it's an edited reality TV show. Not only just edited and spliced up, I think, but also the producers have their hands in the thing that's happening. I don't know, but I assume that the producers are influencing the therapist, that the therapist isn't just completely on their own to do whatever they want to. In fact, this show seems particularly that way. I don't know, but the therapist seems to be operating on some agenda that will help the reality TV aspects of the show. You know, focusing in on certain dramas. And you know, it's a pretty big contrast this show, Blue Therapy, with Couples Therapy on Showtime. And if you've watched my reaction videos, I think you can sense that whether you watch the show or not. That's another aspect of my reaction video and something that I want to get out there with the show is that it's very different from Couples Therapy. Couples Therapy is very similar to the way therapy would look like. Dr. Orna has a very particular approach. You know, my approach would look very different and another couple therapist, they as well. But it looks like real couple therapy. Whereas Blue Therapy doesn't look like therapy at all. In fact, I would argue that no therapy is occurring and that it's basically just a reality TV interview. Meaning that the interview or the process or the agenda is driven by what will make good reality TV. I'm only halfway through the season. I think it's eight episodes this season. And I'm about almost done with episode four at this point. I think. And I've been thinking about it cuz, you know, I'm just reacting and I care about people therapy technique and theory. And so I can't help but to comment when a therapist does something that I think is not great. There's differences between things that I will see in which are style differences and not necessarily bad therapy, right? You know, so every therapist has a different style and so sometimes and I'll try to distinguish that. I'll say, "Oh, that therapist is doing something that I wouldn't do, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. " So I guess there's two categories even within that category. There's style differences where I suspect that both styles would be fine. Then there's a style difference where I'm like, "I'm not quite sure, but who knows? I would have to be the client and see the outcome over time. " That's the thing about therapy is we always just do what helps, right? That's what I was always teaching my students. They'd be like, "What do I do in this situation? " I'd be, "Well, one, do what you think would help. " And how do you know what would help? Well, that's where I come in. That's what I'm supposed to teach you. Um so there's those two categories and then there's a third category of it doesn't matter if it's a style difference that I see. If it's a problem, I'm going to say it's a problem that the therapist is doing. So even though they might have a different style than me, it doesn't matter. My judgment as a professor, as a supervisor for 30 years, that is not likely going to help. It But that's the thing is that it's unclear. You'd have to be the client, you have to see over time. Sometimes bad therapy works with people or sometimes bad therapy doesn't cause harm. And so if a therapist has a mix of good and bad therapy, I don't know. But it's just my opinion. I can't know I'm watching from afar again, edited reality TV show. But in this show, it has shown me some real problems and don't feel good about talking about that publicly. So since these are member videos, you know, I usually put out a bit a trailer, you know, a five to 10 minute free video of the beginning. Usually my member videos are 20 25 30 minutes long, but I'll put

out the first five or 10 minutes uh free for everybody. Usually when I'm in the member zone, I feel a lot more safe, just personally, emotionally, but also that if I can sort of criticize a little bit more freely, figuring, hoping that it won't get back to the person. You know, I it could, right? But I'm just a little bit more free cuz I figure there's only a small number of people that are members that are going to be able to see it. So with the next number of videos, I'm planning on doing a series with Blue Therapy in which I evaluate the therapy that's happening. It's not a takedown of the therapist. I've talked about this before. If I were in her shoes, I'm sure that another me would criticize that version of me because of the edit. When I'm under the lights and the cameras, I get nervous and I wouldn't be at my best. So there's that. Also, I'm swayable. You know, the producers, you have all these meetings and and even though I might try to hold on to the core of my being as a therapist, the producers would probably push me, especially a show like this. Now I don't know, maybe the producers are on the up and up, but it really does not look like therapy, like I said. Either the therapist doesn't know what they're doing or the therapist knows enough when they're in their office, you know, without cameras around, but the producers are pushing her around or they're editing things or I don't know. Uh but it's either bad therapy or it's just reality TV. And I think it's important to put that out there because if people think this is therapy or at least what I would endorse as a good representation of therapy, then it's going to scare people away or it's going to give people the wrong idea. And I have I've been realizing over the past five or 10 years that a lot of therapists get their training so or their post-grad training from shows like this or from TikTok or from me. Which, you know, depending on the source, it could be good or bad information. Of course, I'm going to be biased and say that my information is at least not bad, maybe good, I don't know. But there's a lot of bad information out there and I just want to put it out there. So if you're a student or you're thinking about becoming a therapist or you're in early career or whatever, I just want you to know that this show does not represent anything close to There have been so many moments, you know, like the the thing that really pushed it over for me was when uh what Mike, I think his name is, and he was talking about all the shame explicitly, both in a one-on-one interview that she doesn't see, but also in session. And he has the spending problem, right? And yeah, it's a problem. He was lying to his wife, his partner. He was acting like he had a job for a couple months when he didn't. I mean, this is extreme lying. It's lying on a high level cuz it's not just like one lie. It's lying every day. He woke up every day and got dressed and acted like he was this lie lie lie. Yeah, it's a problem, but it's not a moral failing. People come to therapy because they have problems and he's not even unaware. He's telling He's doing her work for him for her by and analyzing himself. He comes pre-analyzed and he has laid it out there. And that's our job. One, it's our job as therapist to analyze or to assess, figure out what the problem is, have a conceptualization. And then two, address that conceptualization. You know, people come to us with problems, we conceptualize the problem, what's the cause, and then we treat the cause to get rid of the problem. The therapy that we're seeing on the show doesn't do that. It just says, "Stop doing that. " They come in with a problem. So to put it in very simple terms, which is not far from the reality. I think his name is Mike, the overspending guy. He comes in with a problem. He's overspending and he's lying. He also presents the conceptualization. Which the therapist usually has to do. And it could take a year or two just to get at that conceptualization that Mike is presenting cuz a lot of people don't have self-awareness or they're in denial, they don't want to talk about their childhood or something. So we need we There's three things. Problem, conceptualization, treatment, maybe four, outcomes. But the problem we have, right? He presents the problem. And he also presents the problem. His partner didn't cuz she didn't know. He's revealing the problem which is overspending and lying. Two, we need to conceptualize that. He already has a conceptualization. He's given that. He's just a lot I was saying he's lobbing the ball. So then we have to treat the conceptualize Now, the therapist might not agree with the conceptualization, I guess, but it's pretty straightforward

right? It's not doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand where you know, what the problem is. It doesn't make it okay, morally speaking. He's lying. It's immoral, but it's not a moral feeling, which is the way that non-therapists think that if you were to do something like that or drink too much depressed and you had a hard time going to work, that's not a result of you being weak or you having low willpower or not being good with God or with religion or whatever you know, in the past that's how or today anyway. But the way that the show is depicting it in the edit or the way the therapist is doing it, I don't know. But the therapist is approaching it like, "Why are you doing it? Stop. Just stop doing that. Just don't do that anymore. " She's doing it to everyone. All the couples. Whenever there's a problem, that's what she just says, "Stop doing that. " Now, she doesn't use that phrasing, but that's the message. At the very least, there's no addressing of the conceptualization. Now, I've only watched halfway through the season. So, maybe if I continue watching, it'll get there. I'm actually really hoping for that. I figure that will happen, but so far it hasn't. I've watched four episodes of an eight-episode season and I've yet to see anything resembling therapy. Not only that, but the therapist introduces this intervention in the second session with Daisy and Jay, I think. It says, "I want you to reveal three secrets to each other. " So, that's six secrets in the second session. And there's no therapy that's offered. She's operating on this notion that just airing your secrets solves all your problems. She I thought she was then going to do something with those secrets. She She Her premise is you have to just air your secrets. You just have to get them out there and then you can move forward. She That's what She said that explicitly in interviews, you know, she There's a voiceover or an interview with her after the session. And she's like, "Okay, now they have told their secrets and now we can move forward. " And I'll admit, maybe. — But as a professor of couple therapy for the past 30 years, I can tell you confidently that there is no theory, there's no model of couple therapy that involves that intervention at all. There's a whole wing of couple and family therapy that involves secrets and this sort of thing. Virginia Satir, who is one of my Someone I admire a lot, Virginia Satir. Anyway, she was all about getting stuff out there, but it wasn't just getting stuff out there. It was a product of therapy. And if you don't know what therapy is, it's fine because it's complicated. That's why they're graduate I have a master's degree in couple and family therapy. And then I went back to school, got another master's in psychology and a doctorate in psychology, trained as a psychologist. And so, it takes a lot of classes, a lot of supervision. I've had multiple internships. I've been under something like 17 plus supervisors. I've you know, it takes a long time to learn this And a lot of these couple therapists that are on TV don't have, from my understanding, any training in couple family couple and family therapy. Like graduate You could take a training on EFT or something. That's not the same as getting a degree in couple and family therapy. It's a special It's the hardest form of therapy in my opinion. Group therapy is up there, too. But individual therapy is simple compared to couple therapy. Couple therapy is the hardest. But it's treated as like, "Well, you know, you're just talking to marriages. What's the big deal? " No. Everything in individual therapy is happening in couple therapy, except you have two people and it's exponentially more complicated, right? Anyway, and you're triangulated and if you validate one, then you're invalidating the other. It's weird. It's hard. A lot of countertransference. A lot of action. A lot of a lot at stake, you know? Anyway, so what I want to do is not have trailers because I want to be free to just talk about what's out cuz when I started watching Blue Therapy, I thought that it would be like couple therapy where I would be mostly talking about the issues with the couples and then occasionally talking about what Orna was doing. And usually I'm complimenting what Orna is doing. Occasionally, there are some issues, but you know, not like this with on Blue Therapy. But with Blue Therapy, it was the opposite. I was watching the couples and I'm really trying to comment on it, but I wasn't

getting anything because the show isn't really therapy. It's reality TV stuff. It's oriented towards just creating drama to provoke a react I don't know if this is the mission, but in my opinion, and I've watched a lot of reality TV, that the show at the very least the effect that it main the main effect it has is that it causes the audience to go, "Hey, that's a jerk face. " And therefore, it that's seemingly what it's oriented around. The sessions also seem really short, you know, in couple therapy, you get the sense like you're catching them in the middle of a session or something, you know? Whereas with Blue Therapy, it just seems like every session and it also seems like there's not that many sessions. Anyway, so halfway through the season, as I'm reacting and really trying to find something to grab onto that I can talk about other than, "Oh, he's a jerk face. " Cuz I just not very interesting. 90% of my emotional reaction had to do with what the therapist was doing. And I was refraining from saying anything because I don't know, it's edited and I don't feel comfortable criticizing someone like that and if I was you know, all that kind of stuff. So then, as I, you know, stopped recording and thought about it, I thought I think moving forward, it's probably going to look the same. I'm probably going to 90% of the time talk about what the therapist is doing and not what the couple is cuz there's not much to grab onto with the couples because it they're not asking them questions. There's no depth. It's just jerk face. I think they're even editing out stuff that would give us sympathy for some of them so that we can villainize some of these people, you know? So, I want to make the rest of this series just for members with no trailers if that makes any sense. So, I don't know how they show up on your feed, you know, if the member only video shows up on your feed if you're not a member or something. Anyway, but so the rest of this series of Blue Therapy reaction is there's not going to be any trailers and so that's what I'm saying. All right, let's watch the show. Well, actually, the rest of this episode will be for members. So, if you want to see the rest of this episode and the rest of the series, which I'm guessing there'll be I don't know, five, 10 more reaction videos, then become a member and watch me get frustrated. Otherwise, please take care of yourself because you deserve it. You really, really do.