Physician, heal thyself

I sympathise with the kid, of course. There are dozens of therapists with all kinds of credentials on T.V., most of whom espouse some form of this theory, or something that makes even less sense. I'm not against the concept of therapy itself, but what happens when people who may well be quite competent in fixing your problems face-to-face need to summarise, condense and make broad generalisations of complicated concepts that may or may not be applicable to your particular circumstances, for television. The only discriminating factor is whether or not the fat lady cries. Ultimately, what your problem, or someone else's is, is far too personal to be applied to a rigid system, which is why most of them are either simplistic or nonsensical. Yes, Dr. Phil is often right, but the problems are usually kind of dumb as well. A chat with a good friend might also convince you to stop letting your kid beat you up. You don't really need to be told on T.V. that that's probably bad parenting.