Where Should We Begin? podcast offers couples therapy in lockdown

It’s refreshing to hear an expert cut through years of stultified conversations to open up a new path through personal crisis.

Esther Perel’s excellent couples counselling podcast Where Should We Begin? was one of my first picks to cover when this column began. Perel, a Belgian psychotherapist who specialises in helping couples work through complex problems largely focused on sexual intimacy, has used the podcast as a way to offer free, one-time sessions that are recorded and edited down for publication.

Now she has launched a new series of episodes recorded in lockdown.

While it might seem an obvious pivot (given most podcasts are making coronavirus specials at the moment), Where Should We Begin? thrived on a sense of intimacy and immediacy that is clearly far harder to replicate with remote recordings.

In these new episodes, Perel guides her interviews over a video conference call. We know it’s not just a phone affair because the therapist often reacts to body language we can’t see, and at one point Perel tells a wife to use her face “as a GPS” to navigate a difficult monologue of truth telling.

The shift in audio quality does take some to adjust to, but the indelible magic of this show has been preserved even with the new logistic challenges. There are some breathtaking moments of vulnerability in these new episodes, which speaks volumes about the skill of both the host and the production team pulling this together in isolation.

This is a situation where crumbling marriages are suddenly forced to persist in the close quarters of isolation.

It seems like a hopeless scenario, but Perel promotes this moment as an opportunity to reset and renegotiate the roles we all play in a household.

This isn’t some naive hope that everything will be OK.

These conversations are very much grounded in a realistic view of what these couples are facing, but it’s incredibly refreshing to hear an expert cut through years of stultified conversations with a careful prompt or two, and open up a new path through a personal crisis.

Listen to Where Should We Begin? on your favourite podcast app.