人妻少妇专区

Master Class

My interest in laughter therapy really began during my first career, as a science and health reporter. I was working for Genetic Engineering News. I was doing research on monoclonal antibodies, and my newspaper was sending me to conferences where I was meeting all these immunologists. I met an immunologist who was interested in psychoneuroimmunology, the study of how thoughts or emotional states cause chemical reactions in our bodies, affecting our immune response. It captivated me, too, leading me to clinical social work, and eventually to laughter therapy.

Laughter therapy isn鈥檛 about avoiding, denying, or being evasive about grief. I talk about grief work in the very first session. I have meditations my clients do, writing exercises, journaling. I have a grief workbook for them. I use a quote from Golda Meir. She said, 鈥淭hose who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don鈥檛 know how to laugh either.鈥� And that guides me. If you can鈥檛 access the grief and the pain and trauma in your life, you鈥檒l have a superficial laugh. It will be the cocktail party laugh. We don鈥檛 want that.

What I joke about with my clients is, it鈥檚 important to have a DES鈥擨鈥檝e coined this term: daily ecstatic seizure. I also call it the laughgasm. All of the neurotransmitters are affected very powerfully by laughter, more powerfully than with medication in some cases.

My specialty is actually geriatric mental health and I serve a lot of caregivers, in addition to elderly clients. I speak to groups at hospitals and nursing homes, mostly on two topics: Laughter for Caregivers or Teambuilding with Laughter. Mental health among these groups is about being able to embrace the absurdities and paradoxes and incongruities of aging. You have a head full of knowledge and wisdom and a life full of experience, but your body鈥檚 falling apart. It鈥檚 crazy. And it can be very frustrating. But people who can laugh at the absurdities and paradoxes of their lives are tremendously resilient.

The therapy I do in my office, with individuals, couples, or families, is often based on paradoxical intention. This is a technique popularized by the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl that goes along well with laughter therapy. I ask a dramatic question, or give a paradoxical assignment. For example, a couple comes to me and they鈥檙e fighting constantly. I say to them, 鈥淭his is your assignment. I want you to go home and fight for an hour every day. Set a timer. Pick a subject, then fight.鈥� They鈥檒l look at me like, Are you crazy? They鈥檒l leave mumbling to themselves, laughing. I think maybe they won鈥檛 come back. But they do鈥攖his has happened several times. I say 鈥淗ow was your week?鈥� They say, 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 fight.鈥� I say, 鈥淲hat do you mean? I gave you an assignment!鈥� And they laugh. And then the discussion gets very deep.

My experience is that most people do not like being told what to do. So I鈥檝e come to understand using paradoxical intention often works better. Underneath all the nonsense, people want to get well.