90 Day Fiancé - (Brandon & Julia #21) - Confrontation - Therapist Reacts

hey deserving listeners it's time to continue watching 90 day fiance my name is dr kirk honda i'm a therapist and a professor and i'm going to react to this show as i watch it let's see if anything of interest comes out of my face julia gave me this ultimatum to either leave the farm or she's going back to russia so i told my parents i need to talk to them i'm worried about how my parents will react i know my mom's definitely not going to take it well but i now have to put my foot down because my relationship with julia's in jeopardy so this is going to be very interesting to watch i cannot imagine how this conversation is going to go i can't see brandon actually even telling the parents maybe he'll you know veer away from saying it at the last minute i don't know but if he does say it i also can't imagine what the parents are going to say now under most circumstances you would think that a 27 year old man would say i think it's time i'm gonna move out i know we had planned i'd move out in a couple months but i want to move out early and i guess one of the there's two choices here one is is he could say julia's giving me an ultimatum or another thing you could say is we came to a decision that we would move out that would be the better move right politically and diplomatically so and it basically is his decision because it's not like he's being coerced into moving out so there's that so i guess we'll see what he says here i i'm really curious as to how this conversation is going to go i could see it going so let's imagine what this could look like under some circumstances not this family but a different family it could look like this but i don't imagine well 27 year old man says we have decided that we're going to move out i know it was we thought we'd move out later but we're actually going to move out now and i know this is a little hasty i know that this might be kind of an adjustment for you and i'm sorry for that but we're just really ready to move on with the next phase of our life and i just can't wait to start that and so we're gonna move out and okay parents on the inside are like a little disappointed they're gonna miss their son maybe they have to figure out labor for the farm i guess but they suppress that because they see the bigger picture which is their son is moving on with his life which is a wonderful thing he's found the love of his life he's going to move out with her they're going to potentially get married it's it's it's you know grounds for a celebration there might be some bittersweetness i mean any parent out there that watches knows how it feels when your kid moves out on one hand you absolutely love the fact that they're moving out on the other hand it's sad you're seeing your kid grow up and the empty nest and the worries thereof are there but you suppress that in the moment you maybe you say it's like well this is a little bittersweet for me son because i'm gonna be sad to see you go but i'm really happy for you and i support this 100 that would be what we would expect to see unless there is some circumstance maybe in this conversation it will come out maybe all the questions will be answered like well you know that if you leave the farm you have a special kind of cancer that will kill you if you leave the farm i'm joking but maybe there'll be some major factor as to why they've been acting so let's watch hey guys hi hi what's going on so some things have uh happened and um i think that julie and i need to leave all right so a little bit of thumbs up on that for the start he said i think that julie and i should leave julia and i should leave so that's great instead of saying julia is forcing me to leave and triangulating her he's taking responsibility and saying i think it's a great start let's continue to watch what leave what yeah the bomb yeah why because is she wait wait wait wait wait no no no no yikes wait wait wait wait no no no no why why why why why she's not happy being here what's wrong she's only been here okay so then he just threw under the bus she's not i mean it is accurate but again given the emotional landscape a better move would have been to just say we have decided you know just to draw that boundary look i don't want to get into it but but we've decided that we want to go on to the next phase of our relationship and i'm really sorry but right away she's unhappy this is all her fault so now the parents are naturally going to target julia because he has not said i really want to do this until he says that then the logical answer is julia is a terrible person for pulling our son away unless he establishes which i've been saying from the beginning there's a possibility that that he is not in connection with what he wants there is an absolute possibility and i've treated people like this in my office who when they're around the julia's they will say okay okay let's do it. and when they're around the parents they'll say oh it's it's julia it's not me and you might say well which one is it is he with julia or is he with the parents he's only with whoever is intimidating him the most because he's terrified of disapproval terrified of independence because he was never allowed to be autonomous it's a bizarre situation why would the parents be upset i wish that i could ask them i could wait why do you not want him to leave maybe they'll say a few weeks what's the problem the animals apparently really yikes so the disappointment on his face the animals apparently yikes now uh in the psychological angle it makes little sense if he grew up under the um emotional control of his parents then he's going to default to them when you're intimidated when you're scared when you're not allowed to think for yourself and you are worried you're going to incur some kind of massive emotional punishment if you don't align yourself with the parents then i guess this is the tactic i mean if if we go with his tactic is to stay in his parents good graces then i guess this makes sense if that's his goal you know for us watching it might look like his goal is to get married that's the whole premise of 90 day fiance it's his goal to move on with his life it's his goal to get married and find love and to have a family but that might not be his goal his goal might be to actually stay in the good graces of the parents that might be his goal his 100 percent goal and everything else is a distant second to that and so if he if this is what his goal is then he is succeeding because in order to stay in the parents good graces in order to say well julia's forcing me to move out but parents it's all her fault yeah apparently she doesn't like taking care of the animals i don't know she's crazy so yeesh the animals yeah where where are you gonna get i don't know i'm gonna find an apartment really you think you can afford apartment right now yeah i mean i don't it's not great for our situation but i can manage it so me and my wife actually went on zillow which has rentals to see the prices of uh rentals in their area because they talk about i can't remember the name of this whittle or something but we looked it up and they were especially compared to seattle very reasonably priced you know one bedroom two bedroom apartments or even houses there were rental houses for very cheap and they looked fantastic now i don't know how much he earns but according to him he's saying yeah we can afford that so all right now maybe this is shifting dad's like so you can can you afford that and he's like i can afford it so maybe this conversation will go in a direction like well you know this is a little earlier than we thought but you know congratulations son i doubt it'll go that way but let's watch don't make a stupid decision i mean think about what you're doing what okay now if we could ask the dad what do you mean by that what are you worried about he's 27 he has a job he's moving out with his fiancee what disaster do you think is going to befall him now maybe he'll say something along those lines it's like well you know you have that heart condition that i need to help you with her you know i i don't think there's anything like that it just seems like the dad is just trying to coerce him now i haven't talked about this very much because i didn't know enough but this is in line with something that maybe i should bring up so in order to create dependent children children who think of themselves as incompetent children who do not really have a connection with who they are they don't have a connection with their needs their emotions their desires in life if you want to create children that just follow whatever you do and are scared of you essentially as a default they're not just temporarily they're constantly in a state of fear about you if you want to create that kind of child which brandon seems like a candidate for it's hard to know then the way you do that is you're you're an authoritarian style meaning you're very controlling and very critical and very harsh and you're very overprotective meaning that you don't let them play on playgrounds by themselves you don't maybe even homeschool the kids this kind of thing but you give a lot of messages to the child that the world is dangerous and that home is safe everyone else is dangerous i am safe in order for you to be safe you need to do what i say essentially what you're doing is you're telling the kid that if because one of the major aspects of parenting from day one is that your child is constantly trying to get away from you at the age of one they'll try to get away from you temporarily they'll come back you know because that you're a safe place and they want to be with you but it's just a matter of like you know one minute away from you 10 minutes with you one minute away from you 10 minutes with you and then when they're 10 years old it's you know five minutes away from you five minutes with you and then when they're 18 it's nine minutes away from you one minute with you so it's a constant vacillation between away and back you know that's this is attachment theory and it's scary for parents it's like oh you know you're going off another for a toddler it's like oh you might fall down on the other side of the room for an eighteen-year-old oh you might get in a car crash or someone might hurt you in the world so there's that constant tension and what do you do with that well some parents based on their traumas will default to always clamping down on that you know all parents even parents that are raising really well they have a sense of that threshold of like that's going too far that's going too far away from me you're going too far into chaos too far into danger for a one-year-old it would be like if the kid decides to you're at the park and the kid decides to go around the corner you're not going to let your one-year-old walk around the corner you want eyes on your kid right to an 18 year old it might be like uh well what would it be for an 18 year old well let me back up to like a like a 13 year old to allow a 13 year old to go on a trip for two months with people you don't really know that would be a little bit too far away and so when we parent our kids we will say to them no no no that's unsafe for you that's not okay that that makes me scared to think about you going that far i'm not ready to let you go that far and so we're teaching children and children listen to that children listen like oh so that's where the boundary is given my age that's where the boundaries to a one-year-old might the boundary is i need to be within eye sight of my parents that that's the safe zone if i'm outside of the eye side of my parents my parents are giving me very clear messages that it's danger zone and you'll see kids do this they'll learn that and by the age of one and a half if they can't see their parents they'll flip out there's also an innate nature of attachment there as well but anyway so a 13 year old might even be asked you know hey we're going on a trip for two months let's do it and the 13 year might be like oh even you know even though they're like i don't think my parents are going to not going to let me do they they might also feel like oh that's actually that sounds really dangerous why do they think that well because their parents have given them a lot of messages around what that boundary is and so when you treat a child as if the boundary is extremely tight then the child at the age of 27 will be terrified of what is beyond that threshold not only because their parents are telling them that it's terrifying on the other side of that threshold but also because they've never been allowed to go on the other side of that threshold the parents never let the child go out there and there's also some benefits to that for a kid because the kids like well you have kept me safe all kids want that it's like please keep me safe and there's always this tension of like okay don't keep me safe in this way but don't keep me safe in that way and so if you're really overprotective and you're terrified as a parent and you might be terrified for your child getting hurt but you might also be terrified of abandonment even from your own children we all understand that we can have traumas in our past related to abandonment and rejection and when we have children we can impose that fear on them we can impose our fear of being abandoned by someone onto our children and we will become overly protective of them and create a boundary around them that's too close and too close to us because we're terrified of them moving away even at the age of like seven years old for a seven-year-old to think differently for a seven-year-old to want to be away from you for a 27 year old to want to be away from to move out could trigger one's abandonment issues and then you're going to resort to the things you've always resorted to which is to terrify the child you are going to make a stupid decision you are about to make a mistake just like you always do remember that time before when you did that thing you're gonna do it again and when you keep beating someone like this mentally and emotionally they believe it because you're the one that defines their world because you're the one who has kept them in this tiny little bubble and so they look to you and they value what you have to say because they don't really have any other connections and so it's it's a way of keeping people very close you are incompetent you're gonna mess this up and i know what's safe and stay close and i will keep you i love you i'm gonna keep you safe just it's very interesting now one way to look at it the internet will look at the parents i'm guessing is you know having this insidious evil motive usually it's a result of traumas that the parents have gone through we haven't seen much from the dad and so he's exhibiting right now a lot of those messages of you are gonna do something stupid and by extension you are stupid i am smart you are stupid yikes you think you can afford apartment right now yeah i mean i don't it's not great for our situation but i can manage it don't make a stupid decision i mean think about what you're doing she's not she's not giving me a choice it's either that or all right she's going so of course now the parents are gonna lay into julia they're gonna start pointing out all the reasons why he shouldn't be with her ugh you know if he had if he only had a therapist if he only had a therapist they would have walked through this scenario with him okay how do you want what do you want first off let's start there we know what julia wants we know what your parents want what do you want brandon presumably he would say something like well i really want to sustain my relationship with julia and so i want you okay are you sure you want that are you really sure you want that are you are you want that because julia wants that for you or do you really want that now i've been in a lot of conversations a lot of therapy involves these kind of conversations i'm not berating people i'm just like are you sure you want that because you really have to sift through your decision-making process and your sense of other people's wants for you versus your own once for yourself and that can be really hard especially when you've been treated a certain way your entire life and so once that established then it's like okay you know your parents are going to lay into you about this how do you want to talk to them about it let's role play what i would try to get him into a space of look if you want your parents to attack julia then throw her under the bus if you want your parents to actually back off if you want your parents to adjust to your decision then you have to be the one making the choice and you have to be the one telling the parents this is your choice yes julia was a part of the choice but this is my choice and here are my five reasons here are my five reasons why i want to move out now maybe he would say in that moment in therapy i don't have five reasons for moving out then again we would spend a long time and we might not get to it in this you know scenario here we might spend the next five years getting in touch with who he is so he can explore what what he wants and why he wants those things as i've been saying from the beginning we have does he want to move out with julia or does he want to stay on the farm with the parents it's unclear or does he want some other life does he not want to be on the farm does he not want to be with julia i don't think he knows i don't think we and by extension we wouldn't know either but anyway he's continuing to triangulate her so triangulation and systems theory well you have tension right now between son and parents he's saying i'm gonna move out and the parents are like no and so the tension is regarding rejection the parents are worried they're they're gonna get they're getting rejected right now they're interpreting it that way which doesn't make a lot of sense seemingly that's how they're interpreting it and brandon is interpreting it as they are disapproving of this decision and so they're rejecting me and that's where the anxiety comes that's where the conflict comes up and to alleviate that tension a undifferentiated a maladaptive dyad or a maladaptive conflict will triangulate a third element they will tr they're triangulating julia he's saying bran is saying julia is the problem and then the parents will now attack julia and that will alleviate the conflict between brandon and the parents a little bit but it'll just move the anxiety now to julia and then that's not going to fix the problem and then the anxiety will just go around the way to stop this process which i just cannot see brandon doing is to say look never mind about julia she's a part of this of course but this is my choice i've been thinking about this before i even met julia so this is my choice this is between you and me if you have a client if you have a problem with me moving out tell me now and we can talk about it and maybe i'll be convinced then maybe i won't but talk to me let's leave julia out of it she's either going for the house or going back to russia so she told you that yeah is there something that happens specifically this makes her angry with us or is it just the animals so interesting that we're getting a very similar tactic or sort of mindset from the parents as we had from brandon brandon did not fall far from the tree as they say when julia was saying i hate you i need to move off i need to move you know away from this farm brandon's like what's the deal you just don't like the animals and now the parents are saying what's the deal she just doesn't like the animals it's interesting i i think it's half animals and half my mother uh with her neediness for me okay interesting so we didn't hear julia saying that in that clip and i think the mom's about to cry which makes me feel bad for her i felt bad for her from the beginning i've treated people like her before they have deep deep pain behind their behavior anyway he is saying okay half of it is the animals but the other half of it is and it's interesting the way he worded it let's let's hear that again it's the animals i i think it's half animals and half my mother uh with her neediness for me with her neediness for me with my mother's neediness for me my mother's neediness for me it's an interesting way to put it that my mother is needy for me like the mother is clingy is that what he's saying let's see if he elaborates all i try to do is do the right thing and love you and embrace her and bring her into our family we were hoping that we were all going to be able to like pass on the farm and okay so that's interesting there's a lot of interesting things happening right now i'm so glad that they've finally gotten to this point so we just heard that last bit that the mom is saying i was really hoping that we could pass on the farm so where did that seem to be the case for both the parents was that they were hoping that julia and brandon would stay on the farm where did they get that idea did they did they get that idea from brandon or did they just completely make that up i could see either one or i could see both honestly so that's interesting but another thing we're seeing is we're starting to see some vulnerability in her and i'm just going to take a guess and say that the internet or people when they're watching this normally will really hate her in this moment that they'll think she's being manipulative that the tears aren't really real i'm getting a sense that these tears are real one way to think about it is developmental stages the way the mother has been operating you might think of it at times as her operating from a much younger stage of life let's say seven years old i don't know this about her but this is a helpful way of seeing people sometimes so let's say you're seven and you desperately want your family members to be close that's not uncommon right you're seven years old and you just really love your siblings and your parents and your friends and you really want them to accept you and you really want them to be a part of your life and you don't like it when older brother goes off to college you don't like it when divorces happen and parents live in opposite you know parts of the city you want everyone to be close you want everyone to be with you all the time and that could one produce a immature delusion about the two of them staying on the farm forever even though they've never indicated that it could also create the wish for them to do that and it could also create this moment right here where the son is saying the reason why we're leaving is because of you that's what he's saying and to a seven-year-old version of the mom this could be her deepest nightmare that because of me i am driving people away because of me people are going to abandon me because of who i am people are going to leave me and i am going to cry and i'm going to speak from a seven-year-old kind of voice even and i'm only going to think about me you know when a seven-year-old has a meltdown they don't think about other people right they shouldn't they're seven they're developmentally at that stage we don't expect seven-year-olds to extend their empathy to their parents you know like an example might be that let's say older older brother doesn't want to play with the seven-year-old daughter's uh sister so older brother doesn't want to play with seven-year-old sister and older brother and you're there as parents and and the 15 your 15 year old son is like i don't want to play with her all the time i want to go play with my friends and the daughter is just like what did i do what did i i don't understand now an adult would be able to say oh well my older brother just likes to play with his friends we're in a different age group i should get my own friends but a seven-year-old doesn't think like that a seven-year-old only thinks how it feels to themselves and they don't think about other people's feelings usually especially when they're melting down and so keep that in mind and let's rewind it and let's watch this again all i'm trying to do is do the right thing and love you and embrace her and bring her into our family we were hoping that we were all going to be able to like pass on the farm and have it go from generation to generation and that your children would love the farm so she's talking about the farm but i think emotionally what she's talking about is me do you accept me not do you accept the farm do you like the farm i think for her it's do you accept me do you like me it's not uncommon that when we have complexes around abandonment and rejection that we will use proxies like this sometimes if you accept my farm then you accept me if you accept my art or the song i wrote or this other thing i created then you accept me if you accept my children if you think my children are beautiful then you think i'm beautiful but really what we're talking about is do you think i'm beautiful do you like me do you accept me do you want to be with me it just sounds that way to me i don't know i'd have to ask the mom if this makes sense to her but i i hope that y'all when you're watching can see the pain in the mom's heart it's real it might be of a seven-year-old regressive type but it seems real to me and i'm guessing that the internet is going to vilify her as some kind of manipulative crier at this moment uh that's a beautiful world you paint but what this is i wanted it to be gaining a daughter rather than losing my slime now that looks a little drummed up i'll put it that way i i'm a professional listener to people as they're crying i've had 25 years of professionally being there as people cry genuinely not only my clients but my students as well in my university we deal with a lot of real personal issues as you're becoming a therapist and it's normal to cry it's human to cry as a therapist in training or just a therapist at any stage of your of your it's of any human it's normal to cry and we therapists deal with a lot of things and so crying is a in the same way that we all laugh sometimes it's and we all get angry sometimes we cry again seven-year-olds will do this if y'all have a seven-year-old you've seen your seven-year-old do this where they start whining or they really try to pour it on to try to get you to change what you're doing because they've noticed that when they genuinely cry you actually will warm up to them a little bit so they're trying to do that again i don't know it just kind of looks that way let this i think the scene is incredibly illuminating i want to keep kind of re-watching some of these clips let's watch this again pass on the farm and have it go from generation to generation and that your children would love the farm uh that's a beautiful world you paint but but this has been i don't think that's the world we were hurting for i wanted it to be gaining a daughter rather than losing my slime now most of us would not consider this losing your son since i've been saying from the beginning you still have a son it's just an adult son it's a 27 year old son who doesn't live with you which is really common so you're not losing a son you're gaining a you're gaining a daughter-in-law they just don't live with you you can still have a daughter-in-law you still have a son but the mom i think this is how it feels to her i think the way this feels to her is a complete abandonment and i'm just gonna speculate that she has abandonment traumas in her life severe ones ones that she has never recovered from or healed from the way she comes across it comes across from that regressive place right a place of a child that is being rejected without any ability to kind of modulate one's thoughts as i've been saying from the beginning it wouldn't be strange for a parent to be like oh bummer bittersweet my kid's moving out that makes me sad that's normal but we have the ability to think from various different angles of like well my the seven-year-old feels rejected right now but my 25 year old feels like i'm really proud of my child or my you know my 50 year old feels i'm really proud of my child and my my 13 year old wants to just yell at him but my 25 year old says no that's ridiculous support him he's the one in need right now so we have these aspects to ourselves but if you've never been able to you know gain those aspects or develop those aspects of yourself then you'll or you're triggered in a particular way then you will regress to that place and that's what it seems like now i want to be clear i'm speculating i would have to talk with the mom for a long time to really figure out if any of this was even remotely close to the mark but anyway it's an interesting hypothesis let's continue watching you're you're my only son you're you're my baby i don't want you to go yes yeah that's part of the issue so we see brandon is kind of seems bored a little frustrated at least that's how he's coming across to me i don't know if he means to come across that way he's just like yeah yeah i think that's part of the issue so let's try to imagine what's going through brandon's mind right now it seems there's a good possibility who knows we'd have to ask him that in his mind he's like yep here it is this is what i always have to deal with this is what i always give into in the end because i want the love of my mom and i want the acceptance of my mom and so this this problem what we're seeing right now is what i've been dominated by my whole life and i don't have any sympathy for it i hate it it's been horrible so that's one thing he could be thinking another thing he could be thinking is i don't really know what i want but i'm pretty sure julia is angry at you because of this so he might be in his mind right now he might be completely leaving himself out of this like when he says yeah i think that's what it is i think julia is angry at you because of this and i don't know i don't know i don't have any stake in the matter that's the way it comes across so let's rewatch that again and think about that possibility or maybe even another possibility there's so many things happening in this this is really interesting you're you're my only son you're you're my baby i don't want you to go yes yeah that's part of the issue you need to sit down and and talk to her we've done that we've i mean you don't okay so it looks like it was the latter in that he's like yep look i'm just passing along the information julia wants me to leave she gave me the ultimatum and i think it's because she half doesn't like the farm in half because of you because of what you do and then the mom starts to express herself and he's like yep i think that's what julia is upset about and so yep that you got it right that's that's what you know what are we gonna do i'm stuck in the middle here so that appears to be how he's coming across which really does start to lend itself toward the hypothesis that he is not in connection with what he wants that he has no idea who he is and what he wants that if we pulled him aside in this moment and really tried to say okay if you could wave a magic wand what would you what would you want to have happen i'm guessing what he would say is that that's his first reaction would say well i want everyone to get along okay so that will be thing one but what do you want to do in your life you know well and a lot of people in his position will say something like well i don't mind moving out with julia okay that's good to know but that's not what you want what do you want well i know my parents want me to have the farm i'm not really sure about that though so you hear the back and forth i'm asking someone what do you really want and the other person will tend to search their soul for the answer to that question but they're always referencing other people though they're always that what they want the answer to what do i want is always in relation to others it's always in relation to an external force it's never in relation to an internal force now the reason for that is because they were never given a chance to connect with who they are and i've talked about this a lot but in summary when a child is two when a child is five when a child is seven you as a parent are attuned to your child and you're noticing their emotional state and you're curious and you're interested about them and you care for them and you respond to them in a way that helps them emotionally so you have a three-year-old who is playing with toys and say there there's too many toys around and they're getting a little frustrated and they start kind of throwing stuff around and you as a parent you notice that and you're tuned to it you kind of know what's happening and you might even say to three-year-old oh it looks like you're kind of upset that you have so much clutter around you maybe we could pick up your toys maybe see that but but the first part of that statement of like i notice what you're doing in it oh it kind of looks like you're frustrated with all the toys around you you're frustrated with the with the clutter okay to the three-year-old they they might not noticeably register that but they register what you just said they go oh very quickly they're they they hear you saying that to them they're like frustration i'm hearing the word frustration which is i i kind of know what that word means because i've heard them use it in context it's kind of like an angry feeling like a just like a like a this kind of feeling i'm frustrated feeling and when i would work with kids we would often do these kinds of you know like you can't use words with kids you have to use uh physical uh uh you know uh communication anyway so uh you the kid's like oh my my parent just said i'm frustrated that's what this is right now that's what this feeling is is frustration huh and it my parent also kind of noticed that maybe what i want is to get rid of the toys huh i guess that is what you know in the because in the moment the three-year-old didn't have any words for what was happening to them they were just like reactive like a lizard or something you know the way instinctual just just reacting but then someone put words to what i'm experiencing in my body and my emotions and my thoughts and then the child begins to reflect on the self the child is now two parts the self and the reflection on the the eye is reflecting on the emotions the the me is reflecting on their thoughts so they have two parts to to yourself you have the the observer and the observed and so the child in that moment is very quickly in a you know split of us you know split second very quickly saying oh that that's a thing to evaluate what i'm and to put it into words put it in the language and you repeat that and you do it to a five-year-old to do it to a seven-year-old do it to a ten-year-old and you just do that over and over and over again and over time the child learns without needing you to tell them how they feel and what they're thinking because they've had these opportunities with some guidance from the outside and and and with the addition of actually asking children how do you feel right now what do you want that's that's the other half of that is like a lot of time spending what do you want right now do you want to play with your toys or do you want to watch tv which one do you want to do and then the child gets to oh that's a thing you can you can make choices well how do i know what do i want well a three-year-old doesn't really know you'll notice that three-year-olds are just kind of random i mean they kind of know what they want but also they don't have a fully articulate if you ask them what career they want it'd be hard for them to answer anyway so you so you do those two things you reflect and you also ask and over time you and this happens thousands upon thousands of times and over time the child learns to be able to look inward find those resources refine those resources refine those connections and as an adult at the age of 27 they will without much effort know how they feel know what they want and be able to balance out not only what they want but what other people want for them that they'll be able to figure out like well i want this and they want that what's the answer here and maybe they'll have to talk about it with someone but they have the ability to answer the question what do i want what do i want to do right now like for me i'll just model this earlier today i was thinking i want to record a reaction video to brandon and julia 90 day fiance is on tonight and i want to watch it and i want to react to it how do i know that well it's not a magical thing of just knowing what you want it's because my parents spent a lot of time asking me what i wanted or enough time and spent enough time reflecting my emotions and helping me navigate that that viewer upon the self and so very quickly earlier this afternoon i was like i can't wait i knew that i wanted to in fact not only did i want to but i was really looking forward to it there's a chance that brandon has no connection there so to look at him and say what a hypocrite or he's gaslighting people or he is a mama's boy these kinds of accusations i think are unfair to the personality condition that might be present i don't know if it's present but it could be i have the money for an apartment chase you want a nice wedding and to do things to buy a house don't do it wrong do it right okay so now we're seeing the coercive style of both parents it's very possible that the dad has the identical trauma he is harder to read because he's less vulnerable in this moment but for the mom he she she tends to use guilt it looks like of i thought i was you know she'll cry and and say look what you're doing to me and then for him his his method is to put people down and to say you're doing the wrong thing you're doing something stupid right now let's rewind that and listen to what he said it's it's a clear message of you're making a mistake and you are stupid at least that's how i'm taking it let's rewatch that you need to sit down and and talk to her we've done that we've i mean you don't have the money for an apartment chase you want a nice wedding and to do things you would buy a house don't do it wrong do it right that's right don't do it wrong do it right you're doing something wrong don't do something stupid you know you don't understand so let's imagine this style of parenting throughout his life now i don't want to accuse the parents maybe they're wonderful parents behind i'm being genuine here i'm not i'm not just saying this i've evaluated enough families to know that watching something on a television show would not be sufficient in the ability to really know what a family is like but if we're going to use this as a jumping off point and say you know to our own lives or if you're a clinician out there i know many of you are and to use this as a learning experience for our own clients we could imagine this parenting throughout brandon's life of of and and what's the goal right now people say oh they're so controlling well there's always a reason for controlling people don't want to control just to control i mean there's some level of that some level of like i want power because because without power then i will be abused or something but usually control is a secondary thing to something more fundamental it's usually fear we usually control out of fear we're afraid of something okay what are the parents afraid of well the mom seems to be afraid of abandonment she seems pretty clear about that i'm just like i'm going to lose a son that was her primary thing to the dad he seems to be giving lots of messages around you're going to make a mistake i wonder if the dad has a lot of traumas about making mistakes i wonder if the dad has a lot of pain and humiliation in his past about mistakes that he made that he desperately doesn't want his son to make so he thinks he's doing this out of love maybe i don't know it's just a guess it's not my decision wow now they're just getting flat out aggressive the dad is anyway but brandon i mean it's not my decision i'm 27 and i'm moving out with my fiance to get married not my decision i have no say in this and the parents are like uh yes even the parents don't buy that one it's like uh no this is your decision but they're not saying it that way they're really digging in here so well this is interesting so we've actually seen them blow up before there's a possibility that in the end this is what they need to go through and maybe brandon even knows this that the parents always go through some big dramatic uh reaction but then they adjust so we'll hope for that family gosh either either i'm staying here alone or you better i'm leaving together can she do the fact that she's making you choose between us and her that just that makes me sad drummed up crying isn't something that people do for no reason they're they're doing it for a reason why does a seven-year-old drum up crying well it's because they're terrified or they're scared or they're there's something deep there's a deep sadness that they're feeling that they feel like if they expressed it it would not be heard so they have to do something dramatic in order to get the attention of people it's possible that the mom wasn't given that attention and so she had to drum it up more in order to get people to hear her so again i suspect that the mom deep down right now is terrified of being alone terrified of abandoned abandonment feels like this is a deep abandonment and wants everyone to understand how it makes her feel let me go into some detail on this so i don't know about the mom but there are a lot of people out there with abandonment traumas who have been abandoned by their parents or abandoned by other people or abandoned even by emotion you know your parents can be there but they can abandon you emotionally there's a there's a lot or you can be abused by a parent and that's kind of an abandonment as well because the the good parent has abandoned the child and the bad the bad parent has has entered the building so it so a lot of people walk around with a lot of abandonment traumas and when a small abandonment happens saying say a child moves out of the house that's a mild abandonment you know it parents feel that hasn't been saying it's like it hurts it hurts it's a little bit of an abandonment now parents normally will modify that feeling it's like i know it feels like an abandonment but this is a good thing i need i need to see the good side of this but it is a little bit of an abandonment now if if you have abandonment trauma then even a slight hint at abandonment will stab that old wound the whole body goes into distress mode high distress and you're terrified and you're hurt and you're panicking and and the solution is to not have the person abandon you if you can get the person to not abandon you then you can relax right well what if you are just seeing abandonment where it doesn't exist well then you're going to signal to a lot of people you're hurting me why are you doing this to me because from your perspective it feels like abandonment and it justifies it you know imagine if he was to say or let's just say any old 27 year old son were to say to a mother i'm never going to talk to you again i never want to see you again i hate you okay so that would really hurt a mother right that would really hurt them and they would be it would be normal for them to be very hurt and then to cry and to say no don't abandon me my son i love you okay so in that situation it would seem balanced it would make sense but what if you have tremendous traumas of abandonment and tiny tiny little abandonments feel like large abandonments well from the outside your behavior and your emotions are going to look kind of strange because you're very reactive and you're desperately trying to get that person to come back to you you might even yell at that person how dare you do this to me she might even go to julia and say how dare you take my son away from me and how dare you abandon me because i think the mom actually wants julia to accept her i think she feels abandoned by julia too so from the outside it'll look disproportionate but from the inside it feels proportionate in the same way that a war veteran when they hear a loud noise like fourth of july a firework goes off and then for a week they can't leave the house and they're shivering from the outside you would say that's disproportionate it was just a firework but it's on the inside it it is proportionate that the the behavior that you're observing from the outside is proportional to the amount of distress the person is feeling as a result of the traumas that they went through so when we watch the mom it's possible that that's what we're seeing i don't know i'd have to ask her i hate to see her like that when she's getting very uh teary-eyed but it doesn't change my mind and it doesn't really change the situation no matter what they say okay interesting so away from the parents he's saying it doesn't change my mind you didn't say that in person but i don't know i mean there's a possibility that all's well that ends well that maybe he does move out and the family does adjust and the mom learns that i didn't actually lose my son that i still have a son even though he just doesn't live at home and maybe brandon and julia will live happily ever after and they needed to go through this messy conflict in order to transition to the next phase you know it's a possibility i'm trying to see the silver lining i'm not even hungry now thank you indigo is there anything that we can do that could maybe change her mind or make her i don't know maybe i can throw on a bargaining chip maybe we can stay in the same room uh what no i mean i guess that makes that makes logical sense i guess i can see why brandon that would occur to him i'm just going to predict and say that julia is going to say no to that uh but that's interesting so looks like the parents are considering it last straw would you be willing to maybe let us stay together cause that's just comments no no no no no absolutely not stop stop no stop absolutely okay so the dad is coming across real strong there's another way to communicate this which is okay i hear that but yeah that's a tough one for me i'm real sorry i can't i can't go there my religion or my belief system is such that i just can't i just can't compromise on that one i'm really sorry yeah so you could just say that why do you have to say it like this now if you're saying it like this that points to a lot of emotions going on inside of him maybe conflict i don't know but we also see something interesting where the data you know he almost considered it and then he said no and then the mom is saying no let's compromise here let's compromise that's interesting so it sounds like that was mainly the dad's thing you know what my god because you know what i'm not going to give in to her you know what no stop no there's there's got to be some respect here brandon and that makes me angry because if this is what it's going to take you know what you guys do need to find your own place no i think so absolutely okay again it's okay now now the dad is starting to look like he's regressing to a younger stage of life uh an adult a mature adult would say like hey i hear that i've been hearing her say that and you say that from the beginning but you know i'm just not going to budge on that i'm real sorry but he's he's tr there's something triggering him in this moment i wonder what that is let's let's try to think about this so so brandon's like well there is a bargaining chip maybe if you let us sleep in the same room and then he presents it to the dad and then the dad the dad's in the motive like let's try to make this work so i think in his mind he almost considered that he turns to the mom and then the mom turns to him and kind of looks like well maybe we should give in on that one and then i if i was take a guess i would say that dad was triggered by the notion that no one was on his side that julia and brandon and the mom now are not on his side about this very important thing for him and emotionally that might feel like an abandonment for him or a disrespect or a discounting maybe that's the best word of that he felt discounted that he felt his belief his very firm belief system was discounted by everyone that's the emotional vibe of just like no one respects my boundaries no one ever respects my boundaries i wonder if he has traumas around that let's rewind that and keep that in mind as a possibility as we watch what he's his reaction as this happens last straw would you be willing to maybe let us stay together because that's just comments no no no no absolutely not stop stop no stop absolutely you know what god because you know what i'm not going to give in to her you know what no stop no there's there's got to be some respect here so i always like to think about what age of a child people are operating from when we all do this i do this i don't usually do it on these reaction videos but i do it all the time and what what age would you say is most indicative of someone going no no no i'm not going to no you can't make me no i'm not i'm not okay most of us would think of like five-year-old maybe you know you could say three you could say seven somewhere in that zone and that's that voice of like no you know black and white thinking of like you know i have rights and you are not going to take my toy and i don't want to go to bed no and i need to tell you that that's no and so that's the way he's coming across so i'm guessing that's where his traumas began around being disrespected again it's a lot of speculation when i work with people i will throw stuff out there and half the time they're like ah doesn't really resonate with me and half the time they're like oh let's go down that road of exploration so i'd be curious what the dad said to that we'll can maybe try and figure that part out if that's the compromise i have to make to have you guys stay i think if you i can bring that to her attention it's a step in the right direction you know she feels like she's gained some ground and she has in a way let me just mention bring that up to her and ah all right so it's interesting i wonder what will happen i don't think it really solves the problem though i don't think any of us think it solves the problem i i think that it it maybe solves kind of a problem but the emotional environment that the farm is i think is the bigger problem that's why i wish that julia would have identified that or why would i wish that i just assumed that that's what's really happening and i wish she would i don't know if that's true because she kept saying like i don't like taking care of the animal she kept really emphasizing that and the way your mom is and so i wish she would say something like your parents are so i don't know how to say this emotionally strange to me that i cannot relax when i'm on this farm i don't know what's going on with your parents but i can't relax at all around them the way that they behave the things they say it is intimidating it's i'm afraid and so unless they somehow change their personality i cannot be on this farm i i'm guessing that's what julia is coming from and of course there's a language barrier but in in lieu of that conversation she emphasized these other things and now brandon i think is under this impression that if they sleep in the same room somehow that will solve the problem i don't think that will really solve the problem for julia but we'll find out it's a it's a bargaining chip it should not be a bargaining chip but you know why that bothers me betty that keeps him on the farm i know he needs to talk to her and say dear listen to me he has to he has to take control i'm just shaking my head i'm just staying positive whatever whatever whatever so another interesting interaction between the parents it's there's just so many questions i have i guess as i see them interacting i have so many questions for the parents really i do i've so i feel like i understand julia pretty well i kind of feel like i understand brandon but i don't i'd still have a lot of questions for brandon but the parents there's just so many questions that i want to ask them and so many things that if they were willing to explore it's let me get out of here let me talk to her all right and i want to be clear there's nothing wrong with having a rule that your kids who aren't married don't sleep in the same room i i want to be clear on that i would imagine a lot of places around the world have that rule in their house so that's not strange what i'm saying is the way in which it's being communicated the way it's being negotiated the interpretations they seem to be taking the inflexibility that that's what i would really want to ask them about [Music] all right well that does it for that episode of psychology in seattle in which i watch this tv show and react to it everyone out there please take care of yourself because you deserve it you really really do

Channel: Psychology In Seattle

Views: 98,752

Rating: 4.9454741 out of 5

Keywords: 90 Day Fiance, 90 Day, Brandon and Julia, Brandon's parents, Brandon's mom, moving out, confrontation, Psychology, Therapy, Counseling, Self-Help, Education, Wellness, Relationships, Season 8

Id: bG-MvXcpcVA

Length: 59min 8sec (3548 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021