90 Day Fiancé (Stephanie and Erika #2) - Therapist Reacts

hey desert me listeners it's time to continue our journey with Stephanie and Erica let's get to the show so what are you up to what are you doing today the finals on this weekend I feel sometimes like the crazy jealous girlfriend because you know you you know a lot of people you have a lot of friends and some like well who is that okay interesting already with the jealousy even though she's just saying that she's gonna hang out with friends we've seen these red flags before on this show that blossom into terribleness later so there's that the other thing is is this is what I was talking about the last episode for Stephanie she talked about how when she was young she came to United States and could speak English for a couple years she felt completely ostracized and like she didn't she didn't belong and so one develops a schema a very firm idea of the self or the world that I don't belong and for outsiders looking at 70 be like well once you learned English you made friends and you you belong you you you don't stick out in a bad way and you know people probably would like to be a part of your friend group or whatever or would like you to be a part of their friend group but the problem is is that once you develop that schema of I don't belong the when you're given a chance to belong you might not do things to belong because you're afraid of being rejected about belonging and so you end up shooting yourself in the foot by being too shy or by being too sensitive or by being too clingy or something and then people reject you so that maladaptive schema of I don't belong often will perpetuate not belonging and I wonder if when Erica talks about her belonging that for Stephanie she one feels once again I'm on the outside even though it's irrational for Stephanie to be upset about that she barely knows Erica really and Erica has friends in Australia so how could Stephanie belong to that group but but when you have a schema like that it's a very real sore spot and so when you see that it's like if if you have trouble having kids like you're trying to get pregnant and you're having some trouble and you're walking down the street and you see a mother with her young infant it it and you feel angry at that person it's irrational that you're angry at a mother for having a child but it makes sense right because it stings it stings to see other people having what you want and maybe for Stephanie that's what's going on here so we're seeing that belongs belonging schema speculation maybe being triggered but then this other part of the jealousy that let's listen to our words because it escalates very quickly she's because she's being kind of cues like God and then she has this sentence right there it's like what's going on their suspicion that's watch it yet I feel sometimes like the crazy jealous girlfriend because you know you you know a lot of people you have a lot of friends and some like well who is that I have no plans I mean I might like eat some cheese and like watch a movie so Stephanie's you know she's not being mean with her jealousy she's expressing it and there's nothing horrible about that but it does lend itself to a red flag in that if you're jealous of Erika spending time with her friends going to a football match like she feels jealous and then she expresses it I find it funny by the way that in this show that they will often blur out things I'm guessing because a trademark or something it's clearly Erika with Donald Duck I don't think anyone mistakes who Erika is with it's it's clearly you know Donald Duck right and so the the guy who blurred out that needs to ratchet up the blur effect Oracle lives a much more exciting life than I do she's always going out and partying with her friends but like honestly most of the time I'm just sitting at home watching TV with my dogs and I'm worried that those differences might be a problem later on down there so a little bit of a yikes there in that she is worried that this woman that she's dating has friends like that worries her that it's gonna be a problem down the line I suspect that Stephanie for her this isn't the first time she's had these feelings that in the past she has I told the speculation obviously I have no idea but I can imagine someone like Stephanie being involved with other partners in the past having this belonging schema of a problem and also maybe a schema of people will abandon me and and often that will manifest as as romantic jealousy sexual jealousy and that anxiety causes problems and conflict in a relationship where this person the target of that anxiety and anger and accusation will say well I don't want to be with you I would rather be with my friends than I would be with you because you're always yelling at me and so this person hangs out with friends which triggers Stephanie's traumas more which causes her to be more angry and and the vicious loop happens often and I wonder if for Stephanie this has happened to her a lot and so right away she's like oh no Erica has friends I've been with people in the past who had friends and that was a big problem these are some pretty big red flags from the way Stephanie is talking we have hit it off so well online I kind of worry that I'm gonna get there and it's gonna fall short of my expectations I have built it up in my head so much is this like incredible amazing thing it's like can we even replicate that in person this is something I think I was talking about in another episode of my question in which I was speculating and I often think about this with when it comes to the people on the show is there's a lot of different venues one can date particularly when you're younger right you can date people in your own town or you can date people halfway across the world most people date people in their own town Stephanie could date people in her own town why is she dating someone halfway across the world well and why do a lot of these people on the show date people halfway across across the world well one of the reasons told a speculation that could be at play and obviously there are many reasons because you just be attracted to someone that just happens to live halfway across the world but one of the factors that could be a play for some of these people is that they worry about relationships to the degree that they want a relationship but they worry about them not working out and they're they're worried about being rejected they're worried about it not going well because it hasn't in the past and so to be attracted to a fantasy ie someone who lives in another country that you actually can't interact with and find out if you're actually compatible or not it remains this wonderful thing in your head that it it's this all good wonderful because you know we see this a lot in the show and I wouldn't have known this because is it something that I study but we see this a lot in the show in that when they're you know over Skype or zoom or video chat or FaceTime or whatever they're using they are often really Pleasant they're really nice and they have almost no conflict and then they actually meet for the first time boom tons of conflicts so there I think there's something about FaceTime that doesn't have a lot of conflict or doesn't lend itself to conflict and so you can have this fantasy of this idea this idealized a relationship like oh my god we get along so well this is my soulmate everything about this is so wonderful because it it there's so many blank spaces the you know the vision of a relationship you so much is obscured because you're not actually meeting each other in person and so when you have desperation because of traumas or schemas or something you will fill in the blanks you know it's like well I can barely see anything about this relationship because we're only facetiming there's this vast fog of war around here and I'm just gonna fill it in with my idealized version of a relationship oh my god my vision of this relationship is perfect well because you filled in a lot of the gaps of the the unknown with with something that's ideal rather than saying you know what I don't know what's happening here this relationship could be awesome this relationship could be terrible I have I just have no idea we've only been scanned in facetiming and that's some data but not enough data so I wonder for a lot of people on the show how much traumas they've been through how much abandonment trauma how much self-esteem trauma how much relationship failure trauma that they've been through that makes them so desperate to have an idealized vision of the future that they will you know paint a glorious picture of the future because it gives them hope when they have very little hope on the inside pumpkin spice stuff and they don't really have pumpkin spice stuff in Australia she loves Halloween so I got her like this cute little soap dispenser thing see like I feel like I know so much about her I know she's gonna like everything I got her in relationship Stephanie definitely leads with her heart I think she tends to jump in because she's concerned about her own mortality [Music] interesting so her friend her speculation about her conceptualization of her friend is that Stephanie jumps headlong into relationships because she's worried about her mortality that's interesting and we'll take her word for that that there's some data there that for Stephanie due to her traumas about worrying about dying at any moment that she would want to rush things that she wants to get that she's inpatient she doesn't have a whole vast life ahead of her to play around with that if she's gonna have love she's got to have it now cuz she could die next year so I wonder if that's also a factor in and Stephanie may be having you know issues with shooting yourself in the foot or with conflict in relationships I don't we'll use that as we move forward after my last relationship ended I decided to be celibate I realized that in relationships I give myself emotionally and physically to people that hurt me and screw me over so I decided that the next time I want to know that that person really really cares about me okay interesting so more data that for her she has a narrative that she has been screwed over that she has been treated very badly by relationships in the past that I you know who knows what what that means in reality I've seen that mean a lot of different things I've seen it mean that she just had the unfortunate luck of meeting some very very terrible people but more often what I've seen is that she and whoever her partners were participated in something where they triggered each other and then they both hurt each other and both people walk away with narratives that the other person was crazy or terrible or a psychopath or something that's usually what happens so this is another data point as we move forward that for her she believes that she she was screwed over in the past and and that lends itself to a betrayal schema of people are out to betray me people are going to betray me so let's keep an eye on that as well as I always say everything that I say about these people is speculation and I would have to ask Stephanie I'd have to say like does this make any sense to you she if if she were sitting next to me she'd be like nope that doesn't make any sense to me let me tell you more data and I'd be like okay because the show shows us a little bit of information so you know who knows if you would have told me a year ago when I started talking to this girl that I was going to be going Australia to meet her I would not believe it but I'm going to me an incredible person who has made me so happy I'm really in love with her and I took me to see her so I don't know but that crying didn't look super genuine as a therapist and as a professor that talks with people who cry pretty much every day but might you know obviously my clients are invited to cry and let that out in session so there's a lot of that but also a lot of my students a lot of my supervisees will cry as well it's a lot of pressure to be trained as a therapist and to be a novice therapist and so when my supervisees talked to me it's natural to just be overwhelmed or to have a personal issue in your life supervision involves talking about that and to cry so I am a professional observer of people crying if you will and I so I'm very experienced in knowing the the markers of genuine crying versus not so genuine crying I don't know about Stephanie I have no idea but that just didn't look super genuine to me now maybe she was kind of crying and she accentuated it for the camera I wouldn't be surprised if someone felt like they had to do that I mean I can't imagine being on a show like this and having the cameras pointed at you and all those sorts of things now I will say that as a society we have a track record and I'm a part of that society of pathologizing expressions of emotion that don't look quite right to us and saying that there's something wrong there and being wrong about that accusation you know people express emotion differently so I don't want to say anything with any kind of assuredness or any kind of confidence but I wonder what would be going on so so let's just speculate let's just say that for Stephanie she is amping it up or even just fabricating this moment we know why would she why would she do this well all these people on the show know they're going to be evaluated by the public as they are on this reality TV show they they know that their past seasons and there are people that are loved by the show and there are people that are hated by the show there it seems to be no in between your either your other loved hated or ignored I guess is another category and so it stands to reason it everyone on the show would want to be liked and she has a youtube channel and so her her livelihood might even depend on people on the internet liking her so maybe in this moment she's thinking this is this is my moment to show my you know that I have a soft side or that I have a dream that and and if I cry maybe people will be able to empathize with me I don't know maybe everyone out there when they see this display they're like oh yeah it looks totally normal to me but let's watch it again I'm really in love with her and I took me to see her [Music] so I don't know I mean there's nothing wrong with trying to play it up for the cameras you know you're being filmed so I'm not saying this is it's this huge problem but it's just another observation as we move forward with watching Steffie America the other thing I'll say is that it's totally possible that for Stephanie she genuinely has shall we say crying in her heart and so it's not as if the fact that she might be fabricating or exaggerating or trying to play up a certain emotional expression for the cameras that she lacks the emotion behind that because you might have the emotion and then try to exhibit the emotion so I'm not saying that she doesn't have the emotion I'm just saying that expression looked a little odd to me anyway I think that's the end of this episode so let's just end it right there everyone out there thanks for joining me and please take care of yourself because you deserve it I'm pointing at you you deserve it and wait what take care of herself take care of other people please do that we all deserve that

Channel: Psychology In Seattle

Views: 66,194

Rating: 4.9694929 out of 5

Keywords: 90 Day Fiance, Before the 90 Days, Stephanie and Erika, reality tv, analysis, therapist reacts, reaction video, commentary, couples counselor, psychology

Id: Kh0l-G6hMh4

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020