She Used To Be On The Reality TV Show Wife Swap And She’s Speaking Out About The Traumatic Experience She Had

Heidi Mae took to Tik Tok to share her traumatic experience filming the TLC show, Wife Swap. In her first video, she told viewers how the show mistreated her family.

“It was the worst mistake of our lives,” she revealed.

When Heidi’s family was on the show more than ten years ago, producers had them sign a non-disclosure agreement or NDA. But now, she finally feels free to share her story.

She described the process that would happen before filming even started. “To be on the show, you had to take a 700 question psych eval and an hour-long interview with a psychologist.”

She said the purpose of this was “to make sure you’re mentally sound enough to be on the show.”

But the consequences of what producers learned through participants’ answers and interviews were far-reaching and deeply upsetting.

They asked Heidi, “what is something that makes you sad?” She answered that moving around a lot growing up made her feel lonely.

But while Heidi was on the show, it seemed that producers had briefed the other family on how to trigger her with core traumatic memories.

TikTok; pictured above is Heidi in one of her videos

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Heidi’s first conversation with the other mother quickly escalated into a fight. Finally, the mother looked her in the eyes and said, “you are alone. Nobody cares about you.”

Heidi instantly knew that the show had used both families’ psych evals to locate sources of sensitivity and pain. They then exploited that pain to entertain audiences.

The producers had also cast and practically scripted the show, though the participants didn’t know it.

They had cast one family as the “bad family” and the other as the supposedly “good family.”

In a later video, Heidi expanded on these roles. “Producers would try to get my family to be mean to Tara,” she shared. But clarified that this effort was “never overt.”

She stayed awake at night, trying to find ways to avoid the fights producers planned for the following day.

But there were clear expectations for how each family would speak and behave, and producers often riled participants up off-camera to get them to engage in conflict during filming.

Those familiar with Wife Swap might remember the “house rules” that each family goes over at the beginning of the swap.

But these rules weren’t reflections of the family’s regular lives and were instead written by producers.

“You sign it. And producers force you to stick to what’s on the paper,” Heidi insisted. If the families did not follow this “script,” the show would re-film their scenes.

And any time they had to re-film, the families were liable to be sued for one million dollars. That’s right; if the families exercised their free will, spoke their minds, or left the set, the network could take them to court.

Why would anyone sign up for this process? Heidi’s family didn’t apply; they were contacted by producers and essentially recruited.

Producers and directors told the family they were “special and unique” and that the other family needed their “help.” But once the cameras were rolling, it was clear that producers had no concern for either family’s well-being.

One of the commenters on Heidi’s last video of the 4-part series echoed her experience. “I was on a reality show that was supposed to be on VH1 (it was dropped) and I had a similar experience.” The person wrote. “They pitted us against [each other] on purpose.”

https://www.tiktok.com/@heidimaetrix/video/7036168684817272111

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