Opening Up

The card-sending fizzled out and was long forgotten until my recent chat with Amanda Cox, a psychotherapist and star (though she’d baulk at such a label) of the powerful reality TV series, Couples Therapy, which, well, does exactly what it says on the tin. When I ask her if it’s common for former clients to keep their therapist updated on their progress, her response surprisingly fills me with guilt.

“It doesn’t happen as often as I’d like,” comes the reply with some sadness. “Every now and then I get an email out of the blue from a couple, and that’s so lovely. I often wonder how they’re going.”

It’s proof of how much she cares, I say, and she says that she cares a lot. And even on the rare occasions she doesn’t click with a client, then she’ll “search for something within them to care about.” It must be difficult, I suspect, to remain outwardly neutral when it’s clear that one half of a couple is the main cause of their issues. Her focus, she says, is to always bring it back to the couple, as a unit, though she does admit to sometimes finding herself getting irritated with one person and not the other. Watching her show back, Amanda says she worried that she may have come across as being a little too harsh on some of the men. I ask her why.  “It’s often the women that that will bring the complaint, and then we work from there,” she says. “So, usually the first port of call is trying to get the female to be heard.”

Is the stereotype true that women are the better communicators in a relationship?

“I think women are more verbal, generally speaking, but there are plenty of ways to communicate things, such as the Five Love Languages which involve the likes of physical touch, acts of service, and words of affirmation.”

Can you generally spot which couples will and won’t make it?

“Sometimes I find myself kind of thinking that we’ve got a lot of work to do here, but generally speaking, no, I’m never quite sure. Some couples really surprise me.”

I ask Amanda if all the couples are still together from the show, but she’s not able to say. Getting free therapy sessions was obviously a big lure for the participating pairs, but baring their souls in such a public fashion was still an extremely brave move. Sessions don’t just revolve around their joint stories, but their histories of past trauma, and even childhood abuse. Compelling and moving as it is, the programme is not without a sense of voyeurism.

“Having never worked in television before, there was the issue of trust,” she says. “There was a leap of faith. But everyone in the production have been lovely, and they did a beautiful job.”

With Amanda having some editorial input (“I wanted to make sure there was nothing alarmingly wrong that didn’t sit right with me”), the leap of faith was arguably even greater for the couples whose only protection was the very partial anonymity of not revealing their last names.

The feedback has been generally positive, but Amanda reveals that some within her industry have misgivings about making something so private, so public. Indeed, this was a reservation that Amanda initially shared, but decided it more important to “demystify” therapy and encourage more people to seek more help.

All couples in the show are parents, which, says Amanda, is commonly the time when “the shit really hits the fan”. I ask about other common times for seeking therapy, and she says that the seven-year itch, give or take a year, really is a thing, as well as around the two-year mark (“once the initial romance has worn off and you start to learn the realities of each other”), and, more surprisingly, later in life, once the kids have grown up and fled the nest.

It’s also industry practice for therapists themselves to take part in ‘professional supervision’ – essentially wellbeing sessions with superiors to discuss experiences with their clients, a process that Amanda describes as like a “confidential quality control”.

Amanda – whose husband is also a psychotherapist – is also honest about having been in therapy herself, something she opens up about when asked about what led her to her chosen career.

“The standard answer is ‘because I wanted to help people’, which is true, especially as I was previously a nurse,” she says.  “But I think there are always more personal reasons for those that become helpers.” She says that one of the most powerful aspects to her training was delving into the reasons why she wanted to pursue therapy. She asks if I’ve ever heard the term ‘wounded healer’, which I haven’t, though can take an educated guess.

The youngest of four children, Amanda was just seven years old when her sister died. “No one in our family processed the grief,” she recalls, “and I remember attending to other people’s needs a lot.” Her father worked away for much of the week and her mother was understandably “depressed and shattered”. They later divorced. “I learned to check in with everyone around me, and I ended up becoming a registered nurse, continuing to help others, and reached a point where I realised that I had to tend to my own needs as well.

“It was trying to get this balance of how do I feel? Of what do I need? This was a lot of my process in getting to the point where I became a therapist. I’ve never shied away from therapy. I’ve had years of it. It’s vital to be able to sit with my own feelings and my own experience and in my own grief, my loss, my anger. And now I can help other people with it.”

Not being able to attend to one’s own needs, she adds, becomes very detrimental to relationships. So, does it make things smoother being married to a therapist, too?

“Yes, it does – in our case anyway!” she says. “Like any couple, we had to get to know each other, but both being psychotherapists we are both very aware of ourselves and each other, and we have a lovely relationship.”

And with that, it’s time for our session to draw to a close, and I make a mental note to send my old therapist a long overdue card.

All 10 episodes of Couples Therapy NZ are available to stream on ThreeNow.