Couples Therapy (Showtime) #1 - Therapist Reaction 

Me too!

I agree! You can tell Dr. Honda is completely in his element.

Same!

@@ktz5047 for sure! It was an hour long! I was thrilled lol

You did a great job on this! More please...

😂

🤣🤣

I am with you on this one.

And I’d watch it in a heartbeat 🤣

It's time 👀 @psychologyinseattle

Wow I never considered this but I've been actually doing it my whole life... thank you ❤

No... I KNOW that I sometimes do that xD but I didn't know that there was a term for that! Humor is a great way to defuse a stressful situation.

Security specialist and author (The Gift of Fear) Gavin de Becker has said: "At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them." Everyone should read his book.

I noticed that. without the laughing, you seem aggressvie. and that is not feminine, and women have to be feminine, etc.

Holds true for me. Scarier when it doesn't work. I have a story but it's long so I'll share if you guys are interested

Yesssss. This helps everyone if you continue to react to this show!

One hundred percent

Agreed! Keep them coming!!

Wow ! I’d have loved to be the fly on the wall when you served my stepfather at nite and my mother by day !!

Ooh...your poor feet❣️

As an introvert: your life sounds my personal hell. But thank you for doing not one but two very useful jobs.

I disagree. Dr Honda covers for abusers all the time. I don’t think he should be critiquing or teaching anyone.

​@@daniellewilliams9739 He doesn't "cover" for them. He *treats* them. Just like everybody else who is morally deserving of therapy in your opinion.

@@daniellewilliams9739 can you be more specific? Is there a video where he does that? If so, which video?

Wait till we meet olna's clinical supervisor!

Yaaaaas. This guy is wounded from his upbringing and his ego and aggression has served him well so he refuses to bridge the gaps he's missing in his treatment of his wife

He's manipulative and uses devalidation to control his wife

@@keishapuryear8180 bear in mind he is monogamous and wanted just annie for the night on his bday and she ignored his protestations and hired an array of sex workers including a dominatrix when she knows his first sexual experience was being dominated by an older woman who took him away from the family home at age 15 for a couple of weeks of statutory rape as a sexual object.

@@etherspin I watched the series twice and don't recall any mention of her hiring a dominatrix. I totally missed that. I did get the sense that he expected his wife to continue his insatiable fantasies of sex just because he committed to her. Sex should be for mutual enjoyment and not merely to fulfill one's dysfunctional needs.

99999999999999999999999

9

I miss those days where he uploads 30+ mins long of videos

Right!!?? I was like “okay dr Honda” hits like immediately lol

That was very brave of you! I hope you're in a better place now

That was very brave of you to do, & I have no doubt that it impacted those students. On the wording that you didn't feel like you worded right: 1. I felt like the idea came through fine. 2. If guinea pig isn't quite accurate, maybe either {an unusual bug being stared at} or {a germ on a microscope slide}? Both would convey feeling small or vulnerable, & being the subject of intense focus (which can be intimidating, uncomfortable, nerve-wracking, etc.) Idk if either Bug or Germ feels right to you, but that's just what popped into my head. And again, I can't even imagine how difficult that must have been, & I'm honestly pretty impressed. Hope things are looking up for you; if not, I hope you keep in mind that the hard times can't last for literal eternity.

I hope you’re in a better place now mentally ❤️

🥺 💕💕💕

Thank you. I hope that it helped you as much as I'm sure it helped them.

Well said!

....he has a Patreon

Steven Killeen I am aware of that. I meant Showtime or TLC considering the amount of promotion these videos give to these TV shows.

Ha! If people are still watching 44 min in, does he really need to ask if it is interesting! :)

Parker Isles also he seems to equate “she knows when I’m thirsty for a glass of water” to “she should be able to arrange a complicated sexual fantasy for me that I never clearly expressed”!!

I got the feeling he was trying to embarrass her.

If you watch the show, you’ll see he’s very childlike and expects his wife to fulfill his every need. He doesn’t care about her feelings, needs, and independence whatsoever. He’s indifferent and emotionally detached. She should leave him.

Watch the whole show, they make a breakthrough and he’s emotionally stunted because of severe neglect and physical abuse.

Ikr....also some people are really into surprises, and that can work but you still gotta communicate....you can give multiple fantasies or scenerios or things you like and your partner can work off of that and still make it a surprise......but it sounds like she did try to go off of what he said but he was just a little bitch and didn't say he didn't like it atm and would like some changes and is now complaining

You took the words right out of mouth

Totally agree with this! It feels more real and it’s way more interesting and probably most helpful as it’s easier to feel somehow related to some of the things we experience in life compared to other shows that are staged for huge drama.

From just these first few minutes, I get the same feeling. It seems like a silly exercise where they are discussing semantics. Why don't they just come out and say what their goals are instead of hashing over old stuff.

Oof that's not good

I watched the entire series awhile ago so forgive me if I leave something out. This couple expressed in their first session that they've quit many other therapists and this is their last chance. Husband has never healed from the trauma of his upbringing. He fought his way unconventionally to success so he has an inflated ego and sense of entitlement to be worshipped by his wife for his financial success and believes because he provides she should have no concerns and inherently know how to cater to his every unspoken whim

@@keishapuryear8180 very well said, I feel like I don't need to read anymore comments now lol

@@RT22444 although I recognize his accomplishments he needs extensive therapy to break his patterns. He isn't open to adjustment or learning possibly because he never received guidance and thus doesn't accept any opinions or guidance besides his own. He will lose his wife if he doesn't change and stop expecting her to replace the nurturing he didn't receive from his mother while simultaneously objectifying her sexuality for his personal gratification

His videos have helped me understand my therapy better and communicate better with my therapist

The same her especially since my therapy session have been cut down because there are a lot of they have more of a case load

Agree

I wanted to punch him so badly and I’m the most non-violent person ever. The denigrating way he talks to his wife and the therapist must trigger something in me but I’m not sure it’s personal more on a how does anyone talk to anyone like that level. I wonder if they end up staying together though after 23 years with him maybe it’s just another day to her.

@@lisaess6514 good lord. I keep having to take breaks bc i want to punch him so much lol

TheUpwardSpiral I have a friend who is a marriage and family therapist and I immediately called her after watching this show and thanked her for dealing with couples because I don’t think after seeing Mau that I could ever handle it.

@@lisaess6514 that is so true!! Aww What a nice thing to do

He's a nightmare. He is abusive.

Thanks for the info 👍🏾

Never seen it

@@birdytvcertified its really really cool.. maybe because I am a total therapy nerd but I really love it

Jana Ras we are the same, I’m a therapy nerd as well and I’m proud 🖤✌🏽

@@birdytvcertified 😁💫 oh yeah

very much agree with this take, because that's my lived experience haha. always having to anticipate what my mom's mood or opinion on something would be, always trying to figure out how she's going to feel about something, or about ME, and how I can protect myself against her criticism for a long time I really wanted a boyfriend, or even just a best friend, so that i would finally have someone on my side, someone who would care about my moods and how i was feeling etc but as I've gotten older, I've realized that that wouldn't really be fair to another person. ofc in a relationship people should be able to be considerate of each other and take care of each other and that's a positive thing, but being mutually supportive is different than just wanting someone to take care of me (which, for a long time, is what I thought I wanted)

This was very profound. ;)

walklikearobot I have a father who growing up, had a strong opinion on everything in the world. From the big, to the small. Not only that, he could not recognize his opinion as an opinion. His opinion was simply the truth. We would walk on eggshells around him, and I memorized as much of his likes and dislikes as I could, and I had a mental catalogue of dad facts. He would blow up (not at us but the topic at hand) very easily, so we learned how to cater our conversations to the best of our ability to keep him happy. For you, it sounds like you wanted to find someone to be hypersensitive to your wants. For me, it made me very guarded in my relationships. I was always reluctant to talk about my wants and opinions before I knew whether he shared the same wants and opinions. As a result, I ended up with a lot of self centred guys who didn’t care to get to know me, and were happy to talk my ear off without ever asking me a question. It’s crazy because this topic has made me sort this all out in my head, and I never realized this before now. I thought my past boyfriends were total opposites to my dad, but it turns out I was still modelling the same relationship dynamic.

@@goodgirl140 reading this made me realize that I also have a tendency to not express my opinions on things until I know how the other person feels, then if we agree, great, and if we don't, I'll kind of talk in circles and try to say that I disagree without actually saying that I disagree (or just nod and say something generic like "oh, interesting" and not express my opinion at all) so that I don't... lose their approval? lose the peace in the conversation? or something. idk.

walklikearobot 🙋‍♀️ Me too! I’m working on being aware of my own opinions and being willing/able to express them 😮

Fab L Check out ester perel's podcast "where do we begin"'. It's so so good.

William Baughman thank you! I’ll check her out:)

It was fantastic and I learned so Much !!

I personally think he is pretty devastated. I think the word choice was correct in the abstract. She said it because whenever this sort of thing happens everything is ruined for him. Simply because that's not an adjective he would use to describe something, we can't take anything else away from the conversation. I mean I'm not a therapist, but I've been to therapy. And I feel like there are always moments where the therapist would not completely identify the emotion or correctly understand the situation. And my reaction to that isn't your wrong and your stupid, but usually I agree with the general direction and kind of fill in the gaps. He on the other hand, he doesn't want to fill in any kind of gaps. He is very much "if you can't get it all the way right than it is wrong." Instead of being like "well I don't feel devastated what emotion do I really feel when this happens?" Instead he just wants to talk about how that was the incorrect word choice and how the person is wrong for using it. Now should she have actually used that word? No. I think Dr. Honda's style is better in dealing with someone like this especially because he seems to be under the impression that for any kind of good/close relationship to work, the other person needs to just know what he is thinking, feeling, or needs. And he never seems to be the one who actually has to articulate his needs or emotions. Like with the birthday mishap, "it's she got the sexual fantasy wrong. If she actually knew me she wouldn't have gotten the sexual fantasy wrong." But he never offers what exactly he wanted vs what was actually delivered. Or when the wife said it sounds like you want me to mother you, and he instead goes off on his whole profound tangent instead of being like "that's not what I meant. Here is what I meant." It kind of reminds me of the age old couple's fight of where do you want to eat. When one person says their down for anything, but then rejects their partner's suggestions without just saying where they want to eat because they can't identify what they really want. They need someone to say the right thing for them to really identity that. He seems to have trouble identifying his emotions and needs or he has trouble explaining it. Which is why he longs for a relationship where a person can do that work for him. So a more judo style approach would help address several different issues at once.

I agree with your analysis, and I also speculate that the therapist did that on purpose. Dr Honda has a much different, softer approach and that's his style. He called this therapist brave and I'd describe her as more of a "karate than judo" type therapist. I think it was a calculated move to test her hypothesis. She said he jumps to devaluation and is sensitive to ppl "not getting it just right" but if this is their first session she couldn't know that for sure unless she tested her hypothesis and collected data. That he "did it again" confirmed it. I wouldn't say it's unethical, but it is more abrasive. Though I do think it could be a useful technique if she uses it sparingly and mends the relationship each time afterwards. It's a ballsy move so I'm curious to see how she executes it.

I would be so frustrated being the husband. He just opens up about something non aggressively for the first time in this session, correcting her that devastating is not the right word, that this is not what he is describing, but no one is listening, the wife just jumps the scene laughing and calling him out rather than just letting him finish his points. That is her strategy of devaluation for him

@@lillimango51 given his description, he actually is devastated, but the use of that word is emasculating (in his mind). Very fragile ego, that one.

@@lavinder11 my point was more, that none of the two actuaöly shows honest empathy and interest in what he is saying by starting to talk themselfs instead if letting him explain.

I agree.

Yeah. Wait until you watch his other videos where he encourages and covers for abusers. He is an enabler when he finds an abuser he likes. Don’t be fooled.