Playfulness and humor in therapy

“I’ve been much better,” says my recently bereaved client. She has been coming for therapy for more than 10 years, on and off, and lists where it’s all gone “tilt, wonky, off,” since he died. Much time passes with little input from me, beyond listening with compassion and holding space.

“I can’t eat white bread,” she finally declares.

“No one should have to,” I deadpan.

She turns, eyes and mouth wide: “Oh!” She looks at me and surrenders to the joyous eruption of laughter, re-connecting with me and her life force. (You know that scene in the first Alien film? Yes, that one! The delight erupts from her stomach.) It’s a purging, cleansing moment, and I return her gaze, delighted and amused with us both. Her laughter feels like redemption.

For a while there, she’d been submerged in a Part I’ve now just named in my head: The Chronicler. An important Part for her with energy, lineage, and purpose.

We continue with the white bread: “Oh, but it tastes so good,” she says.

“Sure,” I admit, “wrapped around bacon and tomato ketchup.”

“Ooh no, I like it toasted with lots of melted butter.” (Does it show how British we both are?)

We confirm implicitly that we are both women of a certain age who have suffered losses, including our guts, which can no longer tolerate sliced white bread.

The exchange above might seem off to some readers. “You can’t joke in therapy,” Parts might be muttering, berating my client and me. Or perhaps: “Playing is for kids. I work with adults and couples in crisis.”

One of the 5 P’s of Self-leadership, however, is “playfulness.” From my perspective, this P can cover a multitude of delights, including humor, play, and “hamming it up,” when I roleplay Parts. My system allows me some playfulness in service of other P and C qualities, like presence and connectedness. As someone whose foundational psychotherapy training was Humanistic Integrative, I also perceive that playfulness plays a role in co-creating relationships and meeting the Eight Relational Needs highlighted by Erskine et al. (1999):

• security.
• valuing.
• acceptance.
• mutuality.
• self-definition.
• the need to make an impact.
• the need to have the other initiate.
• the need to express love.

Erskine et al. explain that when the eight needs are consistently attended to (with sensitivity to which need is to the fore), the overall experience is one of being loved—and me of loving.

Naturally, therapeutic use of humor is timed and appropriate to the client’s sharing and never just “lobbed over the net” at random. In the client case above, The Chronicler’s tale involved processing the client’s own playful humor, typically sharp-as-an-elegant-dagger and enjoyed by most. Recently, though, it had landed badly with a coworker. She had “sliced” them and caused some pain. What to do? How to respond? How to repair the rupture? A medley of her Parts was aflutter about the situation. Is it any wonder that humor rose in me? I used it to risk self-disclosure, to reach across the temporary abyss. Yes, my own inner permission was necessary. Otherwise, my tongue would have been bitten and my jaw held more tightly by own Parts.

What are your practices, fears, pleasures in this area of playfulness and humor? Do you feel confident to take the risk to be playful or crack a joke? Does humor or play ever feature in your choice of Continuing Education?

I feel blessed that I spent time engaged in a form of dramatherapy called Developmental Transformations (DvT) developed by David Read Johnson. In this form of therapy, groups members and therapists play together in a mutually created “play-space” with healthy boundaries. People are encouraged to embody Parts of themselves with whatever level of blending feels comfortable, initiating pieces of play that other group members can join in with. I hope my Parts never forget the feeling of delight from being “met.”

In the book Internal Family Systems Therapy: Supervision and Consultation, edited by yours truly, Sharon Cooper and Kimberley Corey contribute to a chapter titled, “Serving Those Who Served: Providing IFS-Informed Supervision and Consultation to Clinicians Treating Military Veterans.” They remind us that the number one desire of an unburdened exile is to play. Connecting with our playful and liberated younger Parts can reunite us with Self-energy and reduces burnout and compassion-fatigue.