One of the most common sounds to come from my therapy room is laughter.
I’m certainly no comedian, and I take my job very seriously, but that’s exactly why I’ve come to understand the value of a joke. For a start, it is impossible to have a panic attack and a belly laugh at the same time. These reactions come from two opposite parts of the brain. The anxiety response is hyper-aware, always assuming the worst-case scenario and searching for anything that could be perceived as a threat. The laugh response is a social bonding phenomenon, infectious and stress relieving, with even nervous or courtesy laughter being subconsciously used to diffuse tense situations or maintain relationships.
When someone decides to make an appointment with me, it is reasonable to assume that they have a chemical imbalance in their brain. 90% of the time, this will be an excess of cortisol or adrenaline (which cause the sensation of stress, or anxiety). During their first session, my job is twofold; 1) to combat that chemical imbalance as best I can, and 2) to build a good, trusting relationship with them as a foundation for the work we’ll do. There are numerous exercises that I can take people through in order to relieve nerves, but the most efficient way of doing this is to share a laugh. Laughter releases serotonin and endorphins, sometimes replicating the effects of certain antidepressants. Regular laughter can even prevent heart disease.
However, one of the most important aspects of humour in therapy is its ability to make us feel safe. So many of my clients come to me in such a serious state of mind, and the first thing they want is some kind of reassurance. I have no interest in playing to a TV therapist stereotype, all serious in a suit and asking about your parents, I’m in this job for a simple reason; a lot of people feel bad, and I want to help them feel good again. I want them to understand that there is still fun to be had in life and that everything can be alright again.
An old therapy joke, which is a personal favourite, goes like this:
‘A man arrives at Heathrow after a 12-hour flight. He disembarks, goes through the terminal, and, severely jet-lagged, heads for the taxi rank.
“Where to, guv?” asks the driver as he piles into the cab.
“Away from the airport,” says the man.’
As I previously established (and have now proved) I am no comedian, but there is a point to telling this joke.
All of my clients are the foremost world experts on what is wrong with them. They come to me because they want something resolved. Usually, they’ve spent so long focused on what is wrong, that when I ask them what their goals are for attending therapy, they get a blank look. They have never envisaged what their world would be like if the problem just wasn’t there. Sometimes they say “for things not to be this way”, to which I reply “so how would you like things to be?” and the blank look returns.
It can be a hard question. That’s why people need a trained professional to help them work out the answer. We can talk all day about neurotransmitters and brain chemicals, but that’s not how people think, we think in actions, words, and pictures, and we have to figure out which of those will translate to the serotonin and dopamine we need. A potential tall order for an anxious individual.
But here’s another great thing about laughter; it stimulates complex brain activity. It fires neurones that were previously inactive and gets them moving. It helps us, excuse the buzzwords, to ‘think outside of the box.’ How amazing is it that I could tell a silly joke, and it directly helps someone figure out where their ‘away from the airport’ is?
Do you get it?