Why This Therapist Loves Reality T.V. Shows
By: Cynthia Siadat
Tags: Reality TV, Humans, Funny, Therapy, Psychology

Photo by Josh Kahen on Unsplash

by Cynthia Siadat, LCSW

My husband often initiates a our near nightly ritual by saying this grammatically incorrect sentence that I find totally adorable,

“Want to watch a something?”

My stomach flutters just thinking about it.What ensues on those evenings can best be summed up with binging the latest Sci-Fi show and homemade popcorn. However, we rarely if ever watch the programs I watch on T.V. when I’m on my own.

Reality T.V. Shows.

I judge myself real hard on this one. Why? Because I’ve arranged my life in order to be perceived as evolved, cultured and mature. Reality T.V. unveils the truth of the matter as I cry-laugh at how a random guy from Spokane bakes to recreate a masterfully made unicorn cake and presents what looks like a googly-eyed toilet paper roll covered in leaking paint and chocolate.

Watching these shows highlights a side of myself that’s taken me a long time to understand and accept. I just didn’t get my fascination with reality T.V. I’d question my competence as a therapist based off of how tickled I get by the spectacle of two strangers getting to know one another with a wall between them with the aim of getting engaged to one another before getting to see their fiancé for the first time. (BTW, if you’re one of my clients reading this and you feel doubt, that’s normal and healthy. If you’re up for it, let’s talk about that at our next session.)

So, what is it? What’s with this fascination I have with the three impossibly-good-looking-actors-wearing-white-lab-coats that I’d mistaken for professional researchers or with fashion designers who have a not-so-subtle love-affair with leather, studs, and plaid fabric?

I imagine my loved ones may think I love to watch these because of my fascination with human behavior and psychology. Sure that’s the nice way of putting it, but I only think that’s only partially true. I’m noting now that the look-good part of me that wants it to be 100% true. However, there are parts to this affinity I have for reality shows that may not be so obvious.

Starting with the fact that generally, I’m not one to take risks. Much to my pierced-up-20-year old self’s disappointment, I’ve found out more and more in the last few years that I’m actually highly risk averse. I like to know who’s coming to a party, what kind of mood they’re in, and what there will be to eat in case I need to snack ahead of time. It’s important to me to know when and if I have a chance at success, otherwise I likely won’t do it. Even writing feels risky. I’ve got a roster of about 6 or 7 unfinished pieces sitting in my “writing” folder because I don’t know how they’ll “land”.

Shoot, I can’t even publish a piece about someone not talking to me on the phone without panicking — mean while there’s a man proposing to a woman he doesn’t know on the other side of a wall.

I regularly acknowledge the piece of my work that is an extra-ordinarily generous gesture for anyone to let me into their intimate life as a therapist — reality stars do it exponentially so and with millions of strangers. I have an admiration and respect for individuals who face the drama of life head on and tackle it’s inevitable and sometimes self-made challenges. Not only that, it takes a certain kind of person who will willingly put themselves and their life on full-display for others to watch. In an obscure way, I think I’m honoring their generosity in a world where we’ve become increasingly isolated and crave knowing that there are others out there like us. The most SNAFU’d events in a reality show let us know that we’re not so bad or abnormal after all as we live on our scale of life. So that’s part one.

Part two is that… well, I laugh. This is where my brain chastises me because it seems ridiculously simple and cruel to laugh at another’s misfortune. Nevertheless, I like it because my days can sometimes be heavy. Most days, I’m working with my clients to talk through some really difficult life challenges; other days I’m dealing with my own episodes of depression.

Laughing when someone gets caught trying to sabotage their show-mates helps me to feel like it’s ok to laugh at life and all of our human foibles. It helps me to have a broader lens to see how those foibles once tackled, lead us to our triumphs.

We humans are an oddly designed bunch. I’ve seen us boast confidence when we’re the first designer to get cut from the show; I’ve seen one of us think we’re being sly and inconspicuous when we are being flirtatious with another persons newly minted fiancé; I see one of us singing songs that we’ve made up in the moment to help people learn a new idea; and I’ve witnessed others of us do crazy-impossible baking challenges in hopes to win $10,000 to raise money for a cause that matters to us. There’s nothing quite like this to me. No other every day media experience allows for such in-your-face exposure of our shared humanness and it certainly doesn’t hurt that it’s entertaining.

At the time I wrote this article, I had just started watching the ninth season of Married at First Sight and I was hooked. I enjoyed learning that the people doing the actual match-making are sociological experts and relationships therapists by training. I found myself agreeing with their assessments each match of these four couples based on a well-rounded view of their values and lifestyles and appreciated their honesty about choosing the couple who had a chance, versus the couple who may have been more entertaining to watch. It’s still a wonder to me that this show was in it’s ninth season but I have to add that to the docket. I’m waiting for the next season of Discovery which I haven’t decided yet whether it will come before or after the documentary about Princess Diana.