Dr. Jenn Berman has been counseling people and offering advice to people in need for some twenty years now, but on VH1′s Couples Therapy, this marks her first time working with a group of ten celebrities whose relationships are in desperate need of repair. We’ll be checking in with Dr. Jenn each week to chat about the progress of her patients on the show, and what she really thinks of their behavior. We begin our behind the scenes look at the show this week with a brief chat about how she got her start as a therapist and then move on to the couples, and she fills us in on what’s really at the root of their problems. Plus, find out which couple she thinks has a love that’s “magical.”
Can you give me a little information about your background before we chat about the episode? I know some of our fans will recognize you from your appearance on Basketball Wives L.A. when you worked with Laura Govan, as well as all your other TV and radio appearances.
I got started when I was a journalism major in college, and I did a story for my journalism class about rape on college campuses. I interviewed four women who had been date raped by a student who went to prison and was going to be getting out of prison, but nobody knew about it and I was concerned. As I did the story and word got around, I became kind of obsessed with the topic and students, teachers, everyone started talking to me about their experiences and I come from a real activist background, and I couldn’t just sit by knowing this was such a huge problem. So for my last semester, I volunteered as a rape and battering hotline counselor. As soon as I started counseling, I knew I found my calling. I went to graduate school shortly after to study psychology and while I was in grad school, I was very outspoken in one of my classes and my teacher was going to be interviewed on the news and they wanted two other people to come and talk, and she invited me to speak and they ended up using a lot of my footage, so I thought “Wow, if I can affect one person in my office, I can potentially affect millions of people on a much bigger scale,” so that’s what got me excited about working in the media.
So it seems like you ultimately got to combine your passion for counseling with your original journalism major.
It really has been the culmination of everything, it was unexpected, I didn’t study psychology when I was in undergrad, I thought I was going to be a journalist and I would write for a newspaper, but that just became part of what I do. I am a writer as well, I’ve written three books and I love writing, and I feel like…I love that I get to help people in so many different ways. With my radio show, I feel like sometimes it’s my clinic and I get to reach people I wouldn’t otherwise reach who couldn’t afford to come in for therapy or who aren’t in my area and I get to help them, and I’m incredibly lucky that my Cosmo radio fans are the nicest, most wonderful fans. I get so many amazing emails and tweets saying “You’ve changed my life” and thanking me, and it’s just the most amazing feeling.
Do you think that your television fans will be as kind?
You know, TV fans are harsher critics than radio fans. In my experience, sometimes people get stuck on the lipstick color you wear or how your hair is done or what you wore and that contributes to the viewing experience but in what I do, what’s most important is am I helping people? Am I providing a therapeutic experience? And I know I did that with this show.
We met the first four couples in episode one, so why don’t we discuss the first impressions of each of them. The first two who arrived were Angelina Pivarnick and Chris Nirschel, what did you see in them, and what were their issues?
What I saw in them was that they were a very high-conflict, intense, passionate couple with strong personalities and strong opinions which can be really exciting in a relationship but it’s really important for couples like that to be able to listen to one another and speak respectfully to one another, even at times when you disagree.
Do you think that the two of them coming from a reality show background affected their relationship?
I think yes, it affects the relationship. For all of these couples, and this is something that came up in a number of group sessions, when you’re high-profile or have magazines and shows doing stories about your personal life, it’s very hard to trust the person you’re with, to trust that they’ll take the high road, and not share information about you with someone else and that was what this couple in particular struggled with. As did Kasey and Vienna, that was a topic that came up quite a bit.
Angelina also considers herself to be very honest, but to a fault, bordering on meanness.
Yes, one of the things you’ll see me come down on Angelina about is the way she spoke to Chris because there’s nothing from with the honesty, where her problem came was in the delivery.
And DMX and Tashera Simmons had a lot of those same issues, too, I thought.
Absolutely.
…Although his honesty was more harsh. How do you deal with someone who has their own truth about things? His reason for his actions was that that’s just how he is.
Most people have that reality based on their childhood, so when you’re not used to being spoken to in a sensitive way, you don’t tend to speak sensitively. I think it was an eye-opening experience for these couples that you can be honest without speaking this way, in a way that is cruel or hurtful or disrespectful.
Does he maintain relationships with the mothers of his children? Does that affect his relationship with Tashera?
He does address it, it is something that is touched on toward the end.
When he tells Tashera he never wanted to be married in the first place, that’s pretty brutal.
I think that was very painful for Tashera to hear that and I think that was something that may have been said in anger and frustration, I’m not totally sure that that’s how he felt. You’ll see in the show, the connection and bond between the two of them is nothing short of magical. It’s surprising and amazing and inspiring in a lot of ways and they’ve been through a lot together. They’re childhood sweethearts, there’s something very special between the two of them.
Like you said, Kasey and Vienna are reality stars and living their lives so publicly seems to have taken a toll on them. In their case, since they were actually on like, match-making reality shows, has that messed with them and what they expect from healthy relationships?
I think it’s less that it was matchmaking and more what the experience was like being there, the alcohol and production experience. It was a completely different experience from this show. But I think it was an experience that was painful and difficult and had some long-lasting repercussions for both of them, personally and as a couple.
When they’re discussing this act of alleged violence, Kasey is incredibly vague and he actually says at one point that she’s holding a grudge. For me, to say that the person you may have physically harmed is holding a grudge about it is crazy, how do you deal with that as a therapist?
I think at the time, notice I say “at the time,” he did not realize the magnitude of what had taken place. I think he was in a very different head space and it was hard for him to accept that when he was drinking, he behaved like such a different person. The Kasey that he is when he is not drinking is a very different person, he’s very much a gentleman, he’s very caring and loving, and it was hard for him to accept that after drinking, his behavior was so different. I think that was a part of his reaction.
Obviously you’re treating the patients in a substance-free facility, so for you not seeing the drunken behavior firsthand, how do you gauge it and put it into perspective?
I got plenty of information, I did not need to see it firsthand. I did not need to see how any of these people behaved, I got plenty of information from them and from their partners about that. It was crystal clear.
With Linda Hogan and Charlie Hill, for me as a viewer, I feel like they’re the most solid couple on the show. Is that fair to say?
Yes, it is.
Is their biggest issue the age difference?
When they came in, they were saying their biggest issue was trust. Linda had been cheated on in a previous relationship, and she was having a lot of trouble trusting that that wouldn’t happen again, and here was this young, hot boyfriend and you know, obviously being young and hot, he has opportunities and she thought she couldn’t necessarily trust that he would not make use of those opportunities. But another part of the issue was the age issue. What does the future look like, how do you make peace with it? You’ll see as the episodes progress that she really struggled with trying to figure out if having a future together would hold him back. Is it fair to him? They wrestled with that a lot in therapy.
Did you have any preconceived notions about any of his cast before meeting them?
I had literally not seen any of their shows, so I really didn’t have preconceived notions, I had heard of some of them, but not enough. I didn’t watch Jersey Shore, I didn’t listen to DMX, so I really didn’t have any preconceived notions, and in a way I think that was really lucky. The only thing I knew about was that Linda was dating a guy who was much younger and I had my judgments about that and I disclosed that to her and when I saw their relationship, it opened my eyes. I learned as a therapist to put away my own biases.
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