Humor is an essential element of therapy. I once read that if you don’t have at least one laugh during a therapy session, it wasn’t a good session. A lot of my humor comes from my family. I was raised in a very loud, dramatic, funny Irish American family. My grandparents on my mother’s side were from Ireland. My father was ¾ Irish and one quarter French Canadian. My mother’s family was the dominant family in our lives. Much of the humor was fueled by alcohol, but there were many humorous incidents. Once one of my uncles convinced my father and the other brother-in-laws to help him at his lake cottage. It was a very warm day and the work was hard. At the end of the day he suggested they all go for a swim. . Since they didn’t have bathing suits they all went nude into the water. My uncle snuck out and got a spotlight out of his car. Every time one of the guys would try and get out of the water he would shine the spotlight on them so everyone around the lake could see them. This went on for about half an hour. They finally rushed him and threw him in the water with all his clothes. This was the same uncle who as a child gave all of his friends ExLax as candy.
I remember another family party when I was about 14. The men were in my cousin’s basement and one of my aunts wondered why I didn’t go down and “join the arguing with the rest of them!” I think laughter is one of the most important ways to work thru depression and anxiety. If you can find a way to laugh at yourself and your situation, it can be the start of a healing process. Obviously when there is a loss and grief is foremost that has to be dealt with, but laughter is often the way to begin. Irish wakes are an example. Many of the stories about Irish wakes are indeed true. Bars around funeral homes were often extremely profitable. It’s not so much that you’re celebrating death (although that was the case with some of my relatives), as much as recognizing mortality and celebrating the life of the person who died. James Joyce wrote about this in “Finnegan’s Wake”. This was his retelling of an old Irish story of someone waking up at his own wake because of the noise of the celebration.
I would often try and get my patients to smile and laugh. I would try and do this at my own expense or by gently confronting them about their own behavior. Confrontation is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean yelling, screaming and insulting someone. It just means presenting their behavior to them and asking them to consider alternatives. Salvador Minuchin had one of the best descriptions of how to confront someone. He said “Before you hit someone over the head, you have to pat them on the back three times”. There has to be a relationship first before any confrontation can occur. It can happen in the first session depending on how it goes. I would often try and “join” an individual, couple, or family by imitating their speech patterns or language. I would try and share an experience they had by telling one of my own just to become part of their experience. I think my own belief in not trying to take myself so seriously helped in this. I always thought that it wasn’t me that was getting someone better—that was up to them. My job was to present an accurate picture of their lives and their problems so they could work on making a decision to change.
The decision to change is often very difficult. Often even the thought of change is overwhelming. There were even some people who came in and saw death, even suicide, as the only solution. I would always take this seriously and try and get them to make some type of agreement with me to not hurt themselves. If they couldn’t do it, I would hospitalize them. Sometimes people would lie and make attempts to kill or injure themselves. Unfortunately some of them were successful. This was always difficult to accept and work thru. I am probably still working thru some of it. I often remember my failures more than my successes. The ability to laugh at myself usually helps. I know that over the last seventy years I have provided myself with enough material. I just have to keep working on the jokes.