The Virtual Couch

Tony shows how putting the 4 Pillars of a Connected Conversation, one of the key components of his Magnetic Marriage Course ( http://tonyoverbay.com/magnetic ) together with your abandonment and attachment programming from childhood can create a pretty incredible conversation, relationship...and birthday! And did you realize that returning Christmas presents could actually be a way to connect? Ple...

Feeling stuck? Tony has the answers. Using Dr. Steven Hayes book Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life ( https://amzn.to/3cBAw8Z ) as his guide, Tony talks about the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) principles of "pain of presence" and "pain of absence" and why attempting to avoid our challenges, our struggles, our pain, is not only putting off the inevitable but how it is also keeping us...

Do you want to know what's worse than divorce? How about running a daycare with someone you used to date and calling that a marriage? Do you feel like you and your spouse are more ROOMMATES instead of lovers! Have you ever thought: "Is the spark fading?", "It's getting harder to talk to them...", or "All we do is talk about the kids, schedules, and chores (daycare stuff)?" If so, it's time to take...

How important is family birth order in creating your personality? Tony references the article “Birth Order Traits: Your Guide to Sibling Personality Differences” by Jocelyn Voo  https://www.parents.com/baby/development/social/birth-order-and-personality/  and “62 Interesting Birth Order Facts”  https://www.factretriever.com/birth-order-facts  in this episode. - Sign up at  http://tonyoverbay.com  ...

Are you in need of a parenting upgrade? Even from the most well-intentioned parents, our kids can still walk away from key parenting moments feeling shame, feeling alone, and often, even as we’re trying to teach life lessons, we more often than not end up not only missing an opportunity to show our kids that we’re truly there for them, but we miss key chances to model empathy, ownership of our own...

Today Tony shares some mind-blowing data about “kids these days” gathered from a couple of consulting jobs with extremely large companies who are losing young, new hires at an alarming rate compared to just a few years ago. He talks about how attachment and abandonment issues from early childhood manifest in our teenage years, and then he gives several tips on how to connect, and communicate bette...

Using the power of story, or a colorful analogy can be an amazing way to help someone understand what YOU are going through. But often story and analogy are weaponized, leaving the listener not only NOT listening to the story, but exactly the opposite...looking for ways instead to debunk the story which only drives distance in what initially may have started out as a well-intentioned conversation....

Well, life has truly handed you lemons, not just one or two, but a truck full of lemons has backed up to your driveway and not even rang your doorbell and asked you where to put them. No, the truck just dumped them all in the driveway, there’s no use complaining about them...what do you do with them? We’re making lemonade...a lot of lemonade, because you truly do have it in you to take a driveway...

Tony welcomes his friend Nathan to The Virtual Couch to talk about dating. Why is it so difficult at times to muster up enough strength to date, how to navigate the world of online dating, are online dating profiles something you can trust? And Nathan takes us into the lab, he is a successful, single guy who has a hypothesis, a hypothesis that Tony hears often in the comfy confines of his office,...

Acceptance can be both liberating and confusing. To accept that you may not be a professional baseball playing astronaut who marries a supermodel and lives in a mansion overlooking the beach can in one sense be the end of a dream (OK, a pretty far fetched dream, to be fair). Often our brains are afraid of accepting our current situation because we fear that with acceptance comes apathy. More often...

Tony talks about how to get to the deeper parts of a conversation with your spouse using his 4 Pillars of a Connected Conversation. Without the right communication skills, and techniques, you’re not simply having an unproductive conversation, you’re missing out on an opportunity to truly connect, and grow closer to your spouse. And these techniques are not as difficult to put into practice, they j...

With the New Year soon approaching, it’s time to talk habits! Inevitably millions of people will start to look at creating new habits, and breaking old ones and guest Abby Green has done all the research on habit formation so you don’t have to! Abby is a certified Tiny Habit’s instructor, successful life coach, wife, and mother of four vibrant children so she understands that sometimes you only ha...

Relationship and sexuality expert Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-fife ( http://finlayson-fife.com ) returns for her 3rd time to the Virtual Couch! On today’s episode, Tony and Jennifer discuss the challenges that occur in relationships when one partner finds themselves often feeling like they are more invested. Tony shares his observations from over 1,000 couples that have come through his office, as well...

Liar, Liar Pants On Fire! Do you lie? Come on, we all do right? Or do we? What’s the difference between a pathological liar, a compulsive liar, and somebody who just tells a little white lie because they don’t want to hurt anyone's feelings? - This episode of The Virtual Couch is sponsored by  http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch  With the continuing “sheltering” rules that are spreading a...

For most of us, when we think of our marital relationships our minds don’t immediately go to the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy, but according to some marriage researchers, there is definitely a correlation. According to Stephen F. Duncan, entropy suggests that “starting on your wedding day, your marriage will begin a slow downward slide--that is unless you take action. Entropy is caused...

Have you ever heard that you can somewhat easily choose to be happy by simply switching all your thoughts from unhappy, to happy? Sure, that sounds fantastic, but unfortunately, it's not that simple, and there's plenty of data that shows that for some, it can make matters worse! Within the day, or the hour, or even the minute, chances are your thoughts have been all over the map. Happy, sad, angry...

Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-fife ( www.finlayson-fife.com ) a popular relationship and sexuality counselor, joins Tony on the podcast to talk about the challenges around sexuality that women face growing up in a faith-based culture. Dr. Finlayson-fife is a licensed psychotherapist with a Ph. D. in Counseling Psychology from Boston College. She wrote her dissertation on LDS women and sexuality, has taug...

What if your thoughts, even ones that you previously considered to be negative, harmful, unproductive, or even toxic, when put into context weren’t the monsters that you have made them out to be? Welcome to the world of Functional Contextualism.” This key principle of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) will help you understand that often even our most unproductive thoughts when put into the r...

These two simple words can do more to diffuse a potentially charged situation than almost any other in the English language. Personal accountability is a skill that can be developed, and when acknowledged, “owning it” can cause a ripple effect in your life, and can have a significant positive impact on your relationships. In today’s episode, Tony references the article How To Help Your Child with...

Do you always feel like you’re never going to get what you want? Do you continuously find yourself thinking, “I should have done that differently?” (Knowing that NOBODY likes to be “should on?”). Or have you ever found yourself in the midst of what feels like a pretty good day, when one thing goes south and then you feel like your entire day is shot? Welcome to the world of “cognitive distortions....

How can a couple rebuild trust in a marriage? Is gaslighting really as big of a problem as people make it out to be...come on, really? (See what I did there...I was gaslighting!!). And what if I honestly, truly, at my very core believe that I know my spouse better than they do...can I tell them what to do about it? And what is the difference between an impulse, and a compulsion and why is that ext...

In this special BONUS episode, and in preparation for the coming announcement of Tony's upcoming Magnetic Marriage communication course, he tackles the frequently referenced but rarely understood 5 Love Languages. Back in 1995, Ph. D. and Marriage Therapist Gary Chapman released a book called "The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate." In the book, Chapman outlines...

Years ago a fascinating study was conducted where two groups of people were randomly assigned some rats. One group was told that their rats were “Maze-bright,” meaning that their rats had been bread to figure out how to get through mazes fast! The other group was told that their rats were “Maze-dull” and that they had just your standard, run-of-the-mill rats. Both groups of people were given 5 day...

Is self-care self-ish? Or is self-care an absolute necessity in order to put yourself in a position to succeed in any, and we’re talking ANYTHING you want to accomplish in life? Today Tony talks about the “Emotional Baseline” a concept he developed over a decade ago that has helped thousands of people make positive strides toward accomplishing THEIR goals...not the goals placed on this by those in...

Tony tackles the topic of pornography today in a completely strength-based, hold-the-shame, become the person you always wanted to be way. He addresses the age-old question of whether or not pornography addiction is even a diagnosable condition...and better yet, does that matter? Tony shares his views on “the voids” in one’s life that typically lead to the brain wanting to cope, or check-out, by v...