The Virtual Couch

Using AI as a therapist? Your chatbot might be building a great plan for the person you’re hoping to become. When a client’s chatbot asked if he was an extroverted go-getter, he answered as the man he’s working toward, and the AI wrote him a solid plan he couldn’t stick to. Tony explores why AI tools tend to agree with us, what that has in common with the people-pleasers in our own lives, and what you can learn from reading your side of the conversation out loud. Then he and his daughter Sydney

Tony starts with a kid raised in an East Coast fishing town and another raised hiking Arizona trails. He uses them to show how beliefs tend to form through family, community, and identity, with the reasons showing up later. Then he brings the same lens to politics from a neutral place. He looks at how a trusted "Uncle Mike" can shape which questions feel worth asking, and why changing your mind can get psychologically expensive when your people are on the line. Along the way he makes the case th

Most couples sign an unwritten contract about sex and intimacy, and the terms rarely get said out loud. Greg and Amy Langford, certified marriage and intimacy coaches and hosts of the “Undressing Intimacy” podcast, spent seventeen years as good partners, good friends, and good parents, but they couldn't figure out the intimacy piece. Amy's first no was hard to get to, and what came after it was the longer work, because saying no meant she then had to answer what she actually wanted, in a marriag

Was it narcissistic abuse, or were you the problem? Why does the fog lift after a divorce, and you still can't trust your own judgment? In this second live therapist Q&A, moderated by Tony's daughter Sydney, almost every question came from someone in the middle of something: a divorce after ten years of marriage, an only child clearing out her late mom's house, a man texting a grieving partner and hearing nothing back, a listener whose therapist of eight years had died. Tony opens with why the b

When someone you love tells you, “Something you did hurt me,” what happens inside of you next? Do you become curious about what it was like to be on the receiving end of you, or does your brain immediately start building the case for why you did what you did, what you meant, what they misunderstood, and what they did first? That difference may quietly shape almost everything that happens in a relationship. In what may be one of the most important episodes of The Virtual Couch for anyone who is i

Anxious-avoidant attachment, emotionally immature in-laws, panic attacks, and what if the unicorn has rabies? Tony tackles his first live Q&A in a year, where you’ll hear answers to these questions and many more. Recorded live with daughter Sydney moderating, Tony takes real questions from real listeners: what happens when you spot narcissistic traits in your spouse's parent before they do, how to stop reacting and start building the pause, and the complete origin story of the anxious-avoidant l