Why Can’t You Do Regular Therapy by Dr. Deb Hirschhorn

Dr. Deb

Why Can’t You Do Regular Therapy

By Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.

Avery intelligent person not too many months ago asked me a question that I first thought was obvious and then after examining it for a while – that’s how I am; things need to percolate inside sometimes – realized that it was a great question and deserved a wellthought-out answer.

Here’s the question they asked: if your course teaches us everything we need to move into being a happy couple, getting along well and things going smoothly, then why do you need extra trainings that are in a Facebook group?

And the corollary question that comes up a lot, too, is: why do you need a course at all? I just want to have regular therapy sessions.

So since I think both questions deserve complete answers, I want to explain to you why the system I’ve set up is far superior to what I used to offer as “traditional therapy.”

Question 1: If It’s So Good, Why Do I Need More?

The short answer is: You don’t.

The proof is that before I came up with all the new additions to the course, people were succeeding beautifully in learning how they work, understanding what triggers them, learning skills to no longer be triggered, learning skills to feel good about themselves (even the parts of them that they never liked), harnessing that learning to have fruitful, calm, and honest conversations, increasing understanding and compassion for their mates, and starting to work together in a harmonious way.

However, if I could impart that knowledge in a way that: a. made the information more understandable on a deep level b. made it possible to more quickly utilize the information in different contexts c. made the process much less painful than before – then wouldn’t it be worth it to learn new ideas and tools?

A good comparison that came to mind is this: Suppose you’re in New York and you want to fly to Chicago. You can book a seat on a plane that will absolutely get you there. Now suppose a different carrier came up with a faster way to get there, or a way with much more legroom, or (my favorite) a way that enabled the seat to recline more without being in your neighbor’s lap in the seat behind you. Or perhaps the trip was guaranteed to sail smoothly through air pockets without those stomach-churning dips, or the food was actually good and catered to weird diets like kosher-gluten-free-nondairy. And so on.

Wouldn’t you rather take the trip with the amenities of the second carrier?

So that’s the idea of adding new learning to the course as we go along.

Let me give you a real example that students in the course and all graduates for all time have access to now:

I’ve been writing here lately about Internal Family Systems (IFS), created by Dr. Richard Schwartz. The idea of parts was not his own discovery. Prior to his advent on the scene, parts were believed to be associated with a terrible malaise called “Dissociative Identity Disorder” (originally called “Multiple Personality Disorder”). What Schwartz brought to the attention of anyone interested to know was the idea that we all have parts.

That is, you don’t need to have a diagnosis of any kind to recognize that you may have different notions, ideas, and preferences within you that vie with each other at times.

When I created my course, I was not familiar with IFS. The doctoral program I went to did not even have a page on it. And, to make matters more interesting, there is no one else but Schwartz who talks about the fascinating experience of a couple working on recognizing their own and their partner’s parts. In fact, Schwartz wrote the only book on it in existence, “You are the One You’ve Been Waiting For: Bringing Courageous Love to Intimate Relationships.”

And what I did was spend two months going through Schwartz’s book on my live Facebook trainings even though I had added three modules to the course (that’s three weeks) and intensive twice-a-week one-to-one therapy during those modules.

In fact, I now do two trainings a week which are all on new ideas that I come across which will enhance the course learning and help couples cement their relationship. Today, for example, I spoke about the idea of how we often use the same catchphrases in our interactions and how powerful it would be if we found catchphrases that represented our true goals and mission for our families rather than un-thought-out and unhelpful remarks. I included as well several research pieces from the book I mentioned in my last column, Daniel Coyle’s The Culture Code.

The side that gets some people down is that I do these trainings on Facebook. Well, I have some opinions about Facebook, too. But you know what? To me, it’s just like the internet. I would not be able to reach out to help more people, discover new things to read, or put up my

course without it. Use it for good and it will be good. (We are supposed to elevate the mundane, after all.)

Question 2: Dr. Deb, why can’t we just have plain vanilla therapy sessions?

I actually scientifically tested that one.

I’ve been saying that there are a number of reasons why traditional therapy is not as effective as the program I created, so I’ll outline those here: 1. There is no accountability for the client; they can do their homework or not. This wastes prodigious amounts of time. Think of all the learning a person misses simply because they didn’t practice new skills. Or because they forgot what they discussed the minute they leave the therapy room and now another week is lost. Again. 2. When the going gets rough – such as looking at those annoying parts of ourselves that cause anxiety, disgust, fear, and anger – people may quit. 3. There is no between-session support. On the contrary, therapists believe that support between sessions will make a client dependent on them. This could be true with

traditional therapy. But in a course in which a person is required to look inside himself for answers and understandings, the support merely helps redirect someone who was briefly off-track. 4. There is no group support. Yet, the ideas and applications that come out of a group are phenomenal and far more varied and rich in ideas than I could have dreamed up by myself. After all, they’re the ones who are struggling – and they can share what they did in those struggles.

5. And of course, the idea that the course material is laid out in videos which are clear and helpful is a fundamental difference between unadorned therapy and my program. Add to that all the exercises that go with it, and it leaves therapy in the dust.

Mind you, there also is therapy, private sessions of it. But you get all the rest, too.

So, as I mentioned, I tested it out. I had a couple divide up. One took the course, and the other had parallel therapy sessions. At the end, the one who took the course said that their spouse didn’t understand the deeper things that they were explaining. So I suggested the one who’d had the plain vanilla sessions – which, by the way, I thought were actually pretty good – take the course, too.

And what do you know? That individual said the course made all the learning become part of them; it registered in a way it hadn’t previously.

Make sense?

Think of all the learning a person misses simply because they didn’t practice new skills.

Dr. Deb Hirschhorn is a Marriage and Family Therapist. If you want help with your marriage, begin by signing up to watch her Masterclass at https://drdeb. com/myw-masterclass.