Couples Therapy – BBC iPlayer – have you seen it?

Like most people, every so often I get hooked on a TV series and binge watch what is trending.  So at the time of writing this, I’ve just watched two series of a documentary on BBC iPlayer called Couples Therapy.  I came across this whilst flicking through for something new to watch and I was instantly enticed by the title, anything that has got the words ‘couples’ and ‘therapy’ in it is surely going to be juicy! For those that haven’t seen it, the series features couples living in New York, in some sort of crisis, being psychoanalysed by a therapist called Dr. Orna Guralnik.   At first I couldn’t get my head around if it was real life or not, I wondered if it was going to be like a David Brent  ‘Office’ style comedy –  but no it was real and in my opinion, it’s fabulous viewing which is why I binged watched the lot!

Both series highlight the therapy journey of three couples who are struggling in their marriages or relationships.  When they start talking to Dr. Orna, you can see the cogs starting to work in her clever brain, she listens so intently, she’s as sharp as a pin and every so often she will use a facial or hand gesture to invite the couple to expand on what they have just said or explain it in more detail.  This often includes asking them to regress and to share experiences that they have had during their childhood.  When she’s got enough intel she will then provide her psychoanalysis, often leading them to draw conclusions on their own through their own realisations or she will offer solutions to help them in overcoming the blocks.

Series 2

In series 2, I was drawn to couples Michael and Michal because I could relate to Michal in some way.  Michal thought that Michael was lazy and didn’t do enough around the house or with the kids.  She would go on rant at 100 miles an hour during the session, which made me think of me at home when my fuse blows with my husband and teenage son, steam coming out of my ears!  My husband has the attitude that weekends equals leisure time whereas I’m often spending that time doing my ‘second’ job of cleaning and shopping.  We both work full time so the resentment can build up, especially when you realise that there are no pots in the kitchen so you can’t have your breakfast and you know exactly where they all are – they are accumulating in your son’s bedroom.  All the spoons will also be found in there too, crusting in empty yoghurt pots.   So I often come to blows and the ‘f’ bomb will be dropped during my rage especially when this is the third time during the week that i’ve called for this pot amnesty and it’s fallen on deaf ears!

When Michal would start on one of her rants, Dr. Orna would respond calmly by telling her to relax and ‘let her do some of the work’, unfortunately she didn’t mean that she would go round and do her laundry, it meant that she would start psyching Michael and Michal out by going back to what happened when they were children to find links to why they both behave in the way that they do.  She did however advise Michal not to do anything for 3 whole hours a day to give Michael a chance to ‘step up’ which she did and it must have worked because Michal became pregnant later on in the series! So for this couple, there was a happy ending and Dr. Orna had done her job!

Captivated

I became a bit captivated by it and it made me think about how I behave and how me and my husband interact with each other, linking it back to how our childhood experiences might have contributed to who we are today.

So for example last week, teenage son left his scientific calculator at school in the classroom.  My husband who is normally very laid back and doesn’t worry about anything much, suddenly went into catastrophy mode and started repeating how teenage son ‘will never see the calculator again’ and that ‘someone will have nicked it’.  I felt a bit sorry for teenage son because it wasn’t his fault that it got left, it was due to a random set of circumstances which included a fire alarm!  He was also a bit stressed because he was doing exams and he needed the calculator for the exam the next day.  In contrast, even though i’m normally very much the catastrophist, for some reason, I went into ‘Miss Practical Pants’ mode to try to soothe the situation.  I made a plan of action that he would (1) go into school early to see if the calculator was where it got left, (2) if it wasn’t, check the office to see if it had been handed in, (3) if it wasn’t there, ask a kind teacher to borrow one for the exam and then (4) I would get on amazon and buy another one, even though they cost £70 which is ridiculous waste of money for just a calculator in my view.

So because my husband displayed some strange behaviour for him in reacting to this situation, I started channeling Dr. Orna and I found myself giving him some ‘therapy’ by basically telling him that his reaction to the misplaced calculator was a regression back to his own childhood. With him being an only child, he was very precious about ‘his toys’ when he was younger because he never had to share them with siblings and never got hand me downs or other peoples cast offs like I did.   There’s definite signs that he carries this over into adulthood, obviously not with toys but with most technical equipment that he purchases. He also has an annoying habit of needing to keep everything pristine in its original box, whereas I follow the Marie Kondo rule where you just get rid of all packaging straight away.  So for example, recently he purchased some lovely new spectacles for long distance viewing, but like many of his purchases, they have rarely seen the light of day because they are kept prisoner in their protective case in the house. Yes, in order to ‘look after them’ he would rather be blind than let the glasses serve as they are intended – that’s what i’m dealing with here!

I had to remind him that the calculator wasn’t his ‘toy’ and that he needed to put things into perspective here!  It turned out the calculator was found exactly where it was left by the way and harmony was restored!

Joking aside though, what I found most noticeable from watching all the couples in both series is how deep rooted old trauma had manifested itself within their present day and some of their stories that they shared were truly heartbreaking, leaving them in a perpetual state of being in ‘flight or fight mode along with the issues that that brings too.  Thank goodness then for therapists like Dr. Orna and what was even more endearing about the show was watching her undergoing ‘therapy’ herself with her mentor.  It made you see that they are human too and have vulnerabilities like all of us which made it even more compelling to watch.

And if you don’t watch it for the couples, watch it for the dog!  Both series feature Nico, Dr. Orna’s husky type office dog.  He opens the show on series two with his own head cam! If only we could all view the world from Nico’s perspective perhaps then we wouldn’t need therapy!