Why Your Therapist Watches Trash TV

Why would a therapist, someone who has spent many expensive years pursuing an advanced degree, choose to spend their time watching the Housewives of One-City-Or-Another or a group of young people in a mansion who aren't here to make friends? Setting aside the historical devaluation of the cultural and economic impact of entertainment outside the realm of hegemonic masculinity as "trash", there's something compelling mental health practitioners to keep up with famous families or learn the secrets of the lives of certain denominational wives.

Therapists are inherently curious about people and the nature of life and humanity. Professionally, this allows us to perform assessments, track symptoms and patterns of behavior over time, and genuinely care about the details of our clients' lives (Yes, I do want to see a picture of your dog, your stepmom, and your ex-situationship, if you're offering. Feel free to play the voice note as well).

When we pair this clinically-backed curiosity with attunement, we have a strong foundation for therapy. Some of the most important parts of treatment come from noticing your gaze fall to the floor, your shoulders slump, and your subtle subject change when something is hard to talk about. Attunement is at the center of our clinical skill and what makes therapy feel like you're actually engaged with a person (and part of why a chatbot can only do so much. Chat, can you demonstrate genuine compassion while co-regulating with me and also challenging me in a way that leads to the insights that will ultimately facilitate positive change? In, like, 100 words or less?)

When we watch reality TV, we can apply our finely-honed observational and analytical skills to people and situations without applying all of our clinical skills or upholding the responsibilities we have for our clients. We are not compelled to explore the impact of getting engaged to a stranger in front of a camera crew or consider alternate conflict resolution skills to pouring a drink on someone's head.

We also know, on some level, reality TV is not totally real. Of course, the cast members on these shows are real people who deserve to be treated as such, and there are hoards of editors, producers, writers, and probably Andy Cohen himself, in charge of what we see. I can hear a Frankenbite, know that no one has actually said that series of words, and still suspend my disbelief. If anything, this is another metatextual layer for analysis. In this way, reality TV is just like any other based-on-a-true story piece of fiction. And what is fiction if not another way to explore the nature of life and humanity?

This is why entertainment centered around human behavior and relational dynamics is so compelling to therapists. We can utilize our analytical skill, curiosity, and attunement just for fun and as a way to connect to larger communities of people doing the same thing. Beyond that, so much of therapy is storytelling; the story of our lives, the stories we tell ourselves, and choosing where our story goes next. When we engage with stories we learn about ourselves through others. If we can gather all the disparate plotlines into a cohesive narrative we can create our own meaning. That sounds therapeutic to me.

This post was written without the assistance of AI or any generative technology.