How Therapeutic Bloopers Can Lead to Client Change

Professional Experience Article

I have no clue how I became a person who could laugh at herself. Though my father loved to kid around and my mother got a kick out of jokes, neither had the knack of laughing at their own foibles. I’ve found this gift enormously useful, especially as a psychotherapist treating serious people with serious problems.

The rat incident

One of my initial experiences with self-deprecating humor was during my first job after social work school as a therapist at a Boston methadone clinic. My client, Stan, was 62, out of work and homeless and, though he never missed his morning dose of methadone or a mandatory therapy session, his resentment of me, a newly minted graduate, was evident. His shrugged responses to most of my questions implied that I couldn’t possibly fathom what he’d gone through in life or care enough to listen to his answers.

One chilly morning I arrived at the clinic just as Stan did and we silently trudged up the stairs to my office. I unlocked the door and was hit by a noxious odor as I spotted the tail of a large (what turned out to be) dead rat poking out from under my desk. My freak out caused such a ruckus that my colleagues dashed down the hallway to check on me. But Stan had the situation in hand in an instant. He sat me down in my chair and told me he’d deal with the rat. I don’t know exactly what he did because my eyes were clenched shut, but in no time flat, he assured me that the rat was gone and we could begin our session.

I started by apologizing for being such a ninny and a wimp and thanked him for stepping up so heroically. Somehow, that broke the ice between us and for the rest of our therapy relationship, whenever there was a nip in the air between us, we’d have a chuckle over what we dubbed “the rat incident.”

My fall from grace

Fast forward 30 years and I’m in private practice in Sarasota, Florida treating a senior couple, Lil and James, for what seemed to be intractable marital problems. They could never seem to be, let alone stay, on the same page. If she loved a movie, he trashed it. If he raved about a glorious sun-shiny day, she complained about the hairfrizzing humidity. It was hard to believe that these two were ever in sync—or in love.

Then during a session, I must have shifted my weight weirdly in my expensive, but old Ekornes recliner because the seat slipped out of its side grooves and deposited me on the floor mid-sentence. Unhurt and unfazed, I quipped, “Momma said there’d be days like this,” referring to the title of an early Sixties song by the Shirelles, which got a laugh out of the two of them. I even half-joked about the collapsed chair symbolizing our having hit rock bottom in therapy.

I then watched in amazement as the two of them came together—without even a hint of friction—to reassemble the chair, a tricky bit of business. It was as if they’d been working in synchronicity all their lives. The rest of the session was spent talking about what was different in their relationship while fixing my chair that made them able to work as a team and how they could harness that synergy for the future. What we came to call “my fall from grace” became a positive turning point in their relationship.

In both cases, having a sense of humor made the situation less shameful for me and less uncomfortable for my clients. Perhaps most importantly, I got to model what to do when fallibility strikes. If I’d gotten defensive about my initial rat hysteria or unduly embarrassed about my chair dropping out from under me, what would I have been teaching my clients? Laughing at myself gave them an opportunity to see me differently and to see themselves differently as well. When we can learn to laugh at our therapeutic bloopers, it’s win-win all around.

Written by: Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, M.Ed. Karen is an eating psychology expert, 8-book awardwinning, international author and blogger. Her books focus on improving our relationship with food and our bodies via enhancing self-talk, learning life skills, resolving internal conflicts, revamping personality traits, developing rational beliefs, and managing our feelings. In practice for 30-plus years, she’s based in Sarasota, FL. Her latest book, "Words to Eat By," is about speaking constructively and compassionately to ourselves to eat “normally.”