Episode: When you can’t help laughing
Speaker 1:
This podcast is not training or supervision. This is an invitation to delve into these really big topics. When we are talking about clients, please know it is not you. It is a weaving together of stories that come up over and over again.
Speaker 2:
With Edge of the couch, we are here to create a space to delve into the topics that were either shied away from or dismissed because they were too big, too nuanced, too risky, or too uncomfortable to discuss in school or even supervision. We are two passionate therapists sharing our personal opinions about the therapeutic process.
Alison:
Hello, and welcome back to Edge of the couch. I am Alison.
Jordan:
And I’m Jordan.
Alison:
Today we are talking about what to do or what happens when you, the therapist, cry or laugh in a session. That’s right. Let’s start by talking about crying.
Jordan:
Crying is part of being human.
Alison:
Yes.
Jordan:
And yet, in our profession, it is something that is stigmatized.
Alison:
It’s so heavily emphasized in training and understandably so. Still, it’s so heavily emphasized that crying in a session with a client means that you are somehow making the session about you and not about the client anymore. Those two things have been so enmeshed.
Jordan:
There is so much more nuance to these topics that are seen as black and white when we’re in training, which I can understand on some level.
Alison:
I get why the teachers have to present it in this way. First of all, the nuance could take ages to talk about. But also, so many of my clients, when they’ve come to me and said, yes, I was seeing another therapist, and I stopped seeing them because they made every session about them.
Jordan:
Yes.
Alison:
And so I get, if I’m learning this, I think, okay, just don’t cry because then you don’t even have to worry about making the session about you. Of course, there are times when it’s bad. Of course, there are clinicians who are not doing it well.
Jordan:
You can sometimes know in hindsight when it maybe wasn’t the right moment or just that the person doesn’t respond in the way you aimed for them to respond. I think that in a lot of ways, that can still be a useful moment, but let’s say that somebody is talking about their dog passing away, and then we talk about our dog. Suddenly, it does become about us, which is very stark, and the person is comforting us all of a sudden; that is not right.
Alison:
No. Those situations have happened to me less. I don’t know about you.
Jordan:
That’s never happened to me.
Alison:
I don’t think so either. I was saying fewer, but I actually meant never.
Jordan:
Not that if that happens, that means that you’re a bad therapist.
Alison:
If my dog had just died, first of all, I’m so connected to my dog, and then the next day, one of my clients talked about their dog dying; that would be very hard for me to not weep about my own dog. But I do think that there is a way that you can cry in relationship with a client that is about being real, but it’s not about, okay, now you ask me if I’m okay.
Jordan:
Therapy is most useful when there is some form of mutuality, even when we are paying attention to the fact that there is a power dynamic. We’re humans; we’re people, we’re real people. When we’re in training, sometimes it feels like we have to squeeze all the humanity out of ourselves and learn how to be just about empathy.
Alison:
And also contained and show up as a robot, unaffected by what their client is saying and can stay cool, calm, and collected because that’s your job - to hold the space for the client solely.
Jordan:
A larger conversation is about how therapists aren’t allowed to be human for bringing themselves into sessions, and so crying, I feel, is a part of that.
Alison:
Yes, it certainly fits under the umbrella. It feels artificially cold to swallow down my tears if they come naturally in a conversation with the client. If I am allowing myself to feel what I’m feeling, I’m modeling to the client how to show up authentically, even when it is uncomfortable.
Jordan:
Yes.
Alison:
Not that I always have to be modeling to them, and I’m certainly not the perfect model, but I’ve had these moments where I felt myself begin to get teary-eyed and feel like, Oh no, Alison, shut it down. How funny we’re literally sitting across from a client saying, don’t shut down your feelings; feel what you’re feeling. However, there, I am literally policing myself. So I’ve tried to stop that and allow myself. When I say crying, to me, it means getting teary-eyed.
Jordan:
Yes.
Alison:
I think very few times have tears fallen down my face. You can feel the little burning behind your eyes, and your eyes filled with tears. Then you wipe them away. I’ve just been allowing myself to get teary-eyed.
Jordan:
Yes, me too. But on some level, I feel that if we’re both colluding in shutting down our emotions, it squeezes the humanity out of the interaction. I think that therapists have this idea that sometimes talking about your emotions is enough.
Alison:
Yes.
Jordan:
And that feeling your emotions may be too much, dangerous, or inappropriate. I don’t think that people really believe consciously talking about things verbally is more valued than the moment-to-moment feeling. Even when people feel and cry, there is this pressure to say, what is this? What are you feeling? Let’s put this into words. There’s so much power in naming emotions, but at the same time, this is also a different way of communicating.
Alison:
It’s such a beautiful way to communicate. What are some of the moments if there’s a pattern of times when you find yourself becoming teary-eyed?
Jordan:
Much of therapy is about these very specific; I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Alison:
Sure.
Jordan:
Some part of me knows that the other person is shutting themselves off to feeling some, let’s say, horrific abuse that they’ve experienced or some form of violence.
Alison:
Yes.
Jordan:
That person might be feeling out whether or not this is something traumatic. This is something that actually does count as childhood sexual abuse, for example. My tearing up - allowing that to happen is also saying this is real. You shouldn’t have had to experience that. I am standing with you, and you know that it wasn’t okay.
Alison:
It was so not okay that it’s deeply saddening to me. Though you weren’t sure, I’m here to say that was bad.
Jordan:
It’s also a better connection. I care about you so much that I’m sad that you had to go through this. I say this to people. I think about younger you five-year-old, 13 years old, 16 years old, 20 years old you, having to go through what you went through, and I feel it in my gut. I feel my eyes start to tear up, and I feel sad.
Alison:
Even now, I can feel the emotions coming up. I’m not talking about one specific person. This is something that happens over and over again.
Jordan:
It comes from my care for the person.
Alison:
For me, that tends not to make me feel teary-eyed. I find I get almost choked up when I am telling clients how proud I am of them or a client comes to a place that feels like a revelation to them or clarity, or they tell me about something that they’ve done that is different from the pattern of behavior that they started therapy in. That tends to make me quite emotional, saying to them, wow, you are transformed. This is amazing. I’m so excited for you. Also, at the therapy termination, I often will thank a client for allowing me to journey alongside them. There’s something about being on a journey, and there’s something about that metaphor that feels so soft and tender to me. As I say this to you, often my voice cracks, and I’ll say it makes me feel so close to you to have been here with you, and I feel sad that our time has come to an end for whatever reason. So those are the moments. Every once in a while, with no specific context, there are some clients; just the way they cry makes me tear up. It doesn’t even matter what they’re talking about. That has been true from day one, something about the way that they become emotional - mirror neurons; it’s so outside of consciousness, I don’t fight it anymore. There’s just something about the way you cry that makes me want to cry.
Jordan:
Yes. I also cry when I’m saying how much working with them and knowing them has meant to me, and then they reciprocate, and they talk about how much the relationship means to them; we connected in an unspoken way. I get into this embodied place of mutual care. It’s like love. It’s this cool love for each other.
Alison:
Yes. I use the word adoration a lot because I just adore my clients.
Jordan:
Having that moment of being with each other is so moving to me.
Alison:
That’s a moment so worthy of tears. Like happy me with that mix of bittersweet, whatever it is, the stuff that’s all in there. Let it come out of your eyes.
Jordan:
Yes.
Alison:
The first time I become teary-eyed with a client when I go to do a check-in, I’ll say, hey, I noticed myself becoming teary-eyed. How was that for you? Generally, people say it was fine, or I felt blah, blah, blah. But then I had had the experience when I was a practicum student, a person screaming at me, telling me that it was not mine. You don’t get to cry. This is not yours. It’s not hard for you. It’s hard for me. This didn’t happen to you. It happened to me.
Jordan:
Yes. How do you make sense of that?
Alison:
At the time,I said, I’m a terrible therapist! I was 23 years old; we did so much to provision around it. Now I make sense of it; one, I didn’t have the skills to do the here and now processing with that person to say to them, what was it like for you? I hear you. And this is what’s happening for me at this moment. I just didn’t have those skills. Two, sometimes clients articulate this to me. Clients almost would prefer if I were unfeeling because to see me cry connects to the part of them that is feeling or the part of them that they’ve disconnected from and don’t want to feel and talk about mirror neurons. If I’m crying, then they might feel like they have to cry. And if they’re not ready to go there, it feels very uncomfortable.
Jordan:
It can be a self-protection mode. There is a very understandable and useful, and normal mode of survival when talking about trauma, especially when there aren’t those protections or safety for people to ground themselves. When those moments happen, it can be overwhelming. Even somebody talking about their care for you can feel overwhelming, right? Somebody’s crying - whoa- to connect that deeply with somebody might feel too scary. Tears coming from a therapist might feel dangerous, or some part of them might perceive that as dangerous. So, of course, this is something that we have to attend to and maybe acknowledge and work through with clients and our own supervisor. But in my opinion, that doesn’t necessarily mean that crying was the wrong medium. It can often be, especially if the person stays, that moment of, okay, now we’re getting to a place of, rather than talking about what happened, we’re talking about your experience talking about what happened.
Alison:
Yes. It also makes me feel like I sit in more of a personal integrity place because I don’t feel like I’m shutting myself down either.
Jordan:
I’ve had these moments before where I feel my self-critical part comes out, and those ideas about what a therapist should be and then stepping out of that box is bad. That’s really internalized.
Alison:
Yes. Sometimes you tell even peers that you cried a little bit in session, and they say, Ooh. Why, Ooh? Why that sound? I think internalizing the messaging is still very present in our field.
Jordan:
Getting supervision, also taking a breath before, especially if you’re noticing the tears; I think it’s always good to take a breath and have some self-awareness to say, “Oh, I’m tearing up, and that alone can be grounding and that this is a choice that I’m making to open up and connect with this person and connect with my own humanity. Addressing it with that person at the moment and maybe also in the session after, but exploring for ourselves or in therapy, what was it about that moment that made me feel so teary. If there is some small part of it connected with my story, it also could be another invitation to say, okay, this is something that I also want to do some work on.
Alison:
Personal work.
Jordan:
Yes. Not saying that it’s the wrong time to cry as much as it’s self-understanding.
Alison:
So then switching gears a little bit, and this I’m really excited to talk about because I think unlike crying, which gets talked about quite a lot, but through a negative lens, laughing in session as a clinician ever gets talked about very rarely in my experience, do other therapists talk about this. So let’s dive in.
Jordan:
Let’s do it. It can be moments of connection and then somebody who is super funny.
Alison:
Sometimes they’re hilarious.
Jordan:
I might be more wanting to stifle my laughter in that I don’t want to collude with the client in escaping to stop from going into that deeper place. For some people, it is a super funny joke, and I want to laugh and yet not that I need to pull them back down.
Alison:
This is what just happened.
Jordan:
We’re noticing how we’re coming out again. I can see that maybe it is harder to stay connected with our feelings. Let’s talk about that.
Alison:
Yes. Sometimes clients are joking and making these zingers, but they’re doing that within this story that is really not funny.
Jordan:
Yes.
Alison:
They’re talking about something that is not funny, and they’re laughing and joking, which maybe makes them feel protected, but we don’t have to go there with them if we don’t want to. Okay, I see you making jokes, but I don’t think it’s funny.
Jordan:
Even if we do think it’s funny, though. That’s what I mean. Sometimes it is really funny.
Alison:
You want to laugh.
Jordan:
There’s intentionality with it. Maybe one part of me finds it so hilarious and wants to laugh so hard, and then another part of me says, okay, there’s self-protection happening here.
Alison:
There are layers, I think. The joke that they said, the words that come out of their mouth may be funny, but the context of the situation is not. You’re sitting in that dichotomous place of Holy crap, that was really funny and what your mom did to you was not. We’re sitting in that, and I’m going to name that. Maybe let’s talk about when you and I have struggled because we either laughed or wanted to laugh, and it was not the moment.
Jordan:
Yes.
Alison:
I can start with mine if you like.
Jordan:
Sure, yes, let’s do it.
Alison:
I can’t even think about this story without wanting to laugh. So essentially, during a session, I fell out of my chair onto my knees. My head almost landed in my client’s lap. It was so bad. My heels got hooked on the bottom part of the chair, and then I was leaning forward toward them because they were in such an intimate moment.
Jordan:
I’m laughing because I’m thinking about you brushing your lap off, fixing your hair. Please continue your story now.
Alison:
Oh my God. It was probably one of the funnier things that have ever happened to me. I had to do that exact thing; I had to just stand up and say, I’m so sorry. My heels got hooked on the chair. They were right in the middle of a very poignant, very important, very emotional story, which was why I was leaning towards them in the first place. I had to sit back down, and you know when you can feel laughter in your chest bouncing around like a bouncy ball inside you? That was what was happening for me, and I had to be so present. I cannot believe that I didn’t laugh, and it stayed with me for so long. Not only was it embarrassing and embarrassing things are funny. I love physical humor. I love when people fall. I think it’s funny, as long as they’re not hurt, I think it’s hilarious. So I had to sit there and not laugh. The client did not skip a beat. Are you okay? Okay. They were back in their story, which I was thankful for because I said, Oh good, this didn’t disrupt the flow, but it also meant there was no permission to laugh. That wasn’t what the client wanted to do.
Jordan:
I think if the client did want to, it’s completely fine to laugh. Even though they are in that deep story, you just fell on the ground.
Alison:
And your head almost landed in his lap!
Jordan:
Yes.
Alison:
Absolutely. I thought about it afterward. Had this person started laughing, I think we both would have devolved into laughter, and it could have been this moment, but that’s not what they wanted, and so I had to pull myself in. There’s only that one time where I fell out of my chair, thankfully to a lesser degree; there are these moments sometimes when, either something that the client does not do - the chair thing, or now that I’m doing virtual sessions, my cats do something hilarious, or the dog does something hilarious that have nothing do with the client. There are those moments. Then there are these moments where the clients say or do something really funny; that I perceive as funny that maybe they don’t think is funny or they’re not trying to be funny. I have to swallow the laughter down in those moments too. I’ve not always been able to swallow the laughter.
Jordan:
That’s happened to me. I’m going to say something about myself as a therapist that I feel sensitive about. I feel a bit hesitant to share because there is this idea that we should be a certain way as therapists. I feel fine in my ethics around it; it’s more about my fear about what peers might think.
Alison:
If I’m a new therapist and hear this story from you, it gives me permission to do the things that aren’t beautiful therapy; that aren’t perfect this-is-how-you-do-therapy moments.
Jordan:
I have a couple of stories. I think it’s happened more than once, but there’s one time that’s sticking in my mind where somebody is telling a story of horrific abuse. I think it’s the numbed-out way they were saying it or just something about how they said it that made it feel so funny. When you talk about that ball rolling around in your chest, if I had permission, I would have been on the floor. At the moment, I had no idea where it was coming from. I knew that it was not appropriate, so I swallowed it, and I’m sure they didn’t know. I didn’t feel like it was a moment to be like, I feel like laughing. What is that about? I felt like it really needs to be processed before bringing it if I could bring it into the therapeutic space. Looking back, I do wonder if in those moments where I feel like there’s a story being told about horrific abuse and I want to laugh; on some level, it may be about my discomfort. This felt more than that. This felt not like, hahaha. This is uncomfortable for me because talking about abuse; I can absolutely sit there and be present a hundred percent. Also, I wonder if there’s a part of them coming out in the way that I’m showing up. I feel like there’s something there in terms of interaction.
Alison:
That’s a stand-up genre - deadpan, but they’re talking about really deep things, and it’s funny.
Jordan:
Yes.
Alison:
One time in my own therapy, I could not stop laughing.
Jordan:
Yeah. I remember that.
Alison:
I cannot know how my therapist did not laugh because when I see someone belly laughing, I had tears streaming down my face. I could not stop laughing. I kept saying, I’m so sorry I want to stop, but I can’t. There was stuff coming up therapeutically, obviously, but the fact that he could just sit there and not laugh. Looking back now, that would be very hard for me.
Jordan:
Do you think it was that that person was swallowing their laughter, or do you think it relatable - to be numb?
Alison:
I don’t know. Maybe I should ask him in my next session because I have a curiosity about that. I don’t know. I don’t think I could sit across from a client full-on in a laughing fit and not at least smile.
Jordan:
Was it something funny that happened, or you really didn’t know where it was coming from?
Alison:
All I can remember is that I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. All I can really remember from the session was an inability to stop laughing for about 15 minutes. It was absurd.
Jordan:
To me, that’s not self-protection, maybe on some level, but it’s not nervous laughter. It’s finding something gut-busting funny, and it makes me wonder if that’s some level of what happened when I felt like I could not stifle my laughter when somebody’s talking about something really horrific. I do have another story. Sometimes I laugh when people share dreams. So I am somebody who, I don’t know if I’ve shared this on the podcast before, but I run a dream group for peers, for friends of mine. You’re part of it, Alison.
Alison:
I am. I love it.
Jordan:
I’m sorry if I outed you.
Alison:
I do not feel outed; it’s fine.
Jordan:
We all bring our dreams, and then we talk about them in a very specific way. So I hear dreams all the time. I’m very interested in dreams, I keep a dream journal, so I understand how absurd they can be. I’ve had a couple of experiences where somebody is sharing a dream, and I cannot stop laughing. In this case, I could not contain it. The client was not laughing.
Alison:
Oh, yes.
Jordan:
It has happened before when we’re laughing together, but I’m thinking of one particular instance where I was laughing, and the person was not laughing, and I had to apologize for laughing. Again, maybe I’m trying to justify it, but I do wonder if there’s some image about that that resonated with me beyond just, Oh, that’s absurd.
Alison:
Yes. If we believe that all of these responses are part of something, then the laughter has to be about something.
Jordan:
Yes.
Alison:
Or maybe it’s, I don’t know. It’s hard. Is the laughter indicative of something deeper, or is it just a silly moment? I think the one thing I’ll say is that sometimes there can be almost this energetic shift. It happens less now because I am not seeing clients face to face, but there used to be this moment; oftentimes, I would feel there was such an intensity in the session, and then I would kind of open up the door and transition the client out to the waiting room to pay and to book the next session. You would almost feel a lightness happen, and in that space, I felt so much more willing and ready and able to laugh and joke with the client. Clients transition back right into their real-life after a session. A lot of my clients came in the middle of their workday, and I think you acknowledge the same thing, but there can almost sometimes feel as you begin to shift to the end of the session, like a lightening up that happens so that the client is above the surface of it before they leave. In my head, I guess it’s a made-up rule that when a client is paying, we’re planning their next session; that I’m down to joke and laugh with them.
Jordan:
Yes. I think that there is room to do that. We’re tracking the depth and the feeling place throughout the session, and I think going towards the end of the session, we’re coming up for air; we’re coming out of the water.
Alison:
Yeah.
Jordan:
But I also think that that happens throughout the session sometimes. If you go really into the depths, we have this intense work, and then the feeling place almost transforms, and there’s an experience of lightness or delight or clarity. Sometimes there’s a little bit of laughter. I’m laughing because I’m surprised, or I’m laughing because we’re feeling with the person in terms of, is this laugh part of self-protection or is this a laugh, a part of insight and delight in oneself or delight in the connection.
Alison:
Energy movement.
Alison:
Yes. I have to laugh just to let go of this, remove it.
Jordan:
Yeah.
Alison:
So any last words that you would say to new clinicians regarding laughing or crying?
Jordan:
Be kind to yourself if you laugh or cry. Get supervision. You can also do peer supervision or your own self-reflection and that you’re human.
Alison:
Yeah.
Jordan:
There can be therapeutic value in laughing and or crying.
Alison:
Yeah. Love that. Beautifully said. Part of me hopes that every single person has a falling on your knees experience because it was so funny. But then the other part of me hopes that no one ever has to have a falling on their knees situation because it was horrifying and really embarrassing or as a reminder that you are human, you are going to do ridiculous things that like you’re saying, friends and peers are for, because, when I left that space without the client, I could laugh about that. I had people. I could share it also with my partner and reenact it for him. Funny things are going to happen.
Jordan:
Yes. Well, this has been Edge of the Couch podcast. I’m Jordan.
Alison:
And I’m Alison.
Jordan:
Give us some feedback on what you think about this podcast, and we’ll see you next time.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for listening. We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email@connectatedgeofthecouch.com to tell us what you think, ask the question, or let us know what type of episode you’d love to hear. You can even send us a voice note for us to play. In a future episode, you can support us by giving us a review on Apple podcasts, sharing the show with a friend, or supporting us on Patreon. Join us next time at the edge.