Couples Therapy (Marjorie & Jason ) Nonconsensual TED Talk

[00:00:00]Hey, Desert Island listeners, Couples' Therapy, Let's Watch. My name is Dr. Kirk Honda. I'm a therapist and a professor. I've been specializing in teaching couples' therapy for the past 30 years, and a lot of you have been asking me to watch one particular couple.

[00:00:15]Uh so, let's watch that couple.

[00:00:17]>> What troubles the two of you?

[00:00:19]>> We fight.

[00:00:21]Every day.

[00:00:22]>> Well, we don't fight every day.

[00:00:24]>> Well, we argue every day.

[00:00:26]>> Well, we we have different levels of disagreement.

[00:00:30]>> Okay, that is just a little >> [laughter] >> ironic that they're disagreeing or fighting about how much they fight.

[00:00:38]But, yeah. Okay. It's almost universal that couples come in because they have conflict. There are two things that people come in. One is conflict, and two is a lack of closeness. Often, they go hand in hand.

[00:00:53]So, we're hearing that.

[00:00:55]>> Whenever there's a major decision to be made, my input will briefly be listened to, and then trumped out if it's under agreed with. No negotiation, no I understand.

[00:01:06]I get trumped.

[00:01:08]>> So, that's my second >> Okay. So, according to him, he isn't heard, or he doesn't have power in the decisions of the family or something.

[00:01:18]>> marriage, and I have a 22-year-old and a 16-year-old.

[00:01:24]And then we have a son together.

[00:01:27]So, we're >> Okay, so I'm going to take notes here.

[00:01:29]Marjorie and Jason, we already know from the title card that they've been married for 11 years. She was married before.

[00:01:38]She has two kids from that previous marriage, and then there's a third kid between the two of them.

[00:01:43]>> moving in a few weeks, and he doesn't understand that it's hard for a teen girl in high school to just move schools and start a new school. And I am going to take it upon myself to inconvenience myself for 2 years for her emotional well-being. I get it. I was a >> Okay, so she's saying that she's worried about her 16-year-old daughter having to change schools.

[00:02:08]And she's going to inconvenience herself for what?

[00:02:12]>> How are you going to inconvenience inconvenience yourself?

[00:02:15]>> Because I'm going to be driving >> 80 miles 80 miles one way to bring the kids to school in the morning.

[00:02:20]>> But he is >> So they're moving 80 miles and the 16-year-old daughter probably doesn't want to switch schools and so the mom is going to as she's saying inconvenience herself. Now, for laypeople when they watch this sort of thing, this show, or they hear about friends having a conflict, the typical response is to identify with one person or the other.

[00:02:46]To think, "Oh, yeah." You like you try to see who's right, right? You You think, "80 miles, that's ridiculous." or "Well, yeah, I mean, it's worth it cuz the 16-year-old, you know, this daughter matters, you know, it's a But therapists, true therapists, true systemic couple therapists don't think that way. Unless it is important to do so like in an abusive relationship, then we do want to quote unquote take sides, if you will, cuz abuse is not okay. But typical stuff in couple therapy, it's debatable, right? And we don't engage in thinking regarding who is right and who is wrong.

[00:03:26]So it sounds like they have a disagreement about this and true couple therapists think about two things. One, how they communicate with each other, which is a fairly easy thing to analyze.

[00:03:36]And I mean, it's not So it can be complicated sometimes, but it it isn't very complicated. But at a deeper, more complicated level uh that we think about is how they feel and what emotions are going on, what threats are there, what complexes are there, what misperceptions are there, what perceptual distortions are there, what past traumas are there, you know?

[00:04:02]And often clients themselves don't even really know the basis of the fight, you know, typically in couples when we're fighting we're fighting on a lot of levels, but we're talking on the most surface level.

[00:04:16]We're debating, you know, like it sounds like they're debating whether or not it's a good idea to drive the kid 80 miles to school every day, you know?

[00:04:26]And that's what they talk about. That's ridiculous. 80 miles, you're never going to be able to accomplish that for 2 years, that's ridiculous. There are schools in the neighborhood. Whereas the other person is like, but you know, my 16-year-old, her emotions matter and her feelings matter. And you know, and so that's what you talk about. And you know, those are data points. So the on the two levels there's how do you talk to each other? Do you discount each other? Do you listen?

[00:04:51]And all those kinds of things, Gottman gets into this. But at a deeper level, it's what are the feelings involved, right? Not only just about the topic that you're talking about, but about all the past topics that kind of relate to this, maybe even your own life when you were 16 or something. And also the feelings you have about the way the two of you are communicating right now and the way you've historically communicated up until this point. Because if you enter into a tense conversation with your partner and you have all this resentment and expectation and hurt, then little things that the other person will do will trigger all this past trauma. You know, there's ah, here we go again, you know, this kind of stuff. So, that's another very important layer to address.

[00:05:34]That can take a long time because it requires the client actually knowing themselves a little bit, but there's sort of a fast track of at least getting on to the surface of that.

[00:05:43]And I find that on the show they don't do that second level, at least in the edit. They will do the top level and they I will say that they get into that deeper level to some extent in that Orna will be able to get sometimes to individual feelings, you know, and traumas and stuff, but they never get to that final piece that I and maybe outside the edit they do, but to me the real helpfulness of the power of couple therapy is how those two emotional {slash} trauma {slash} perceptual systems interact and the way that the system mutually causes each other, circular cause anyway, let's watch more.

[00:06:25]>> Also, one way to bring the kids [clears throat] to school in the morning.

[00:06:28]>> But he is dead set against it.

[00:06:30]>> They struggle to get to school on time right now and they're only 20 minutes away. When they're an hour and 30 minutes away, it's going to be a nightmare. And they have to get up they have to get up, you know, 5:00 in the morning.

[00:06:43]>> Got it.

[00:06:43]>> Right. So, this is pretty classic couple therapy where each person is sort of making their case to the therapist.

[00:06:52]Uh it's unknown what their motivation is, but sometimes it's trying to convince the therapist that they are right and the other person is wrong, right? And that that's a classic triangulation in life and also in therapy and as therapists we understand that triangulation and you know, respect it. It makes sense that that would be what you'd want to talk about, but it's not helpful to get involved in who's right and who's wrong as as I said. So, let's see how Dr. Orna handles it. She usually handles it quite well.

[00:07:19]>> So, let me ask the two of you. So, you have two different opinions on what's the right thing to do.

[00:07:24]>> Yeah.

[00:07:25]>> Yeah.

[00:07:25]What happens when you try to talk about it?

[00:07:28]>> All right, just chiming in here. The rest of this episode will be for members of the YouTube channel. So, if you want to see this whole episode and all the other full episodes in this series and all the other couple's therapy episodes that I've made. I think all of them are members only.

[00:07:41]So, become a member of this channel.

[00:07:43]Otherwise, please take care of yourself because you deserve it. You really, really do.