@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:46

Laughing till you Cry, Crying till you Laugh - You FEEL me?

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When you see that happening, when someone's deflecting with their humor, how do you play with that and then go in? And is that something that is part of the work you do, where you sort of intuit that someone's kind of staying on that surface because it's where they're comfortable?

LMFT - does the L stand for laughter? Let’s talk with therapist, Julie Mermelstein #recovery #therapy #humor #DBPconvo

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@julesmerm
Julie Mermelstein
@julesmerm · 4:42
That's all I do, really, is listen, observe, and reflect back. So that's something I've been doing a long time and have kind of an intuitive ability to know when, where, how to bring in some humor. And I look at it kind of like conducting an orchestra or choreographing a dance, where you just have to find the right spot and the right opening to bring humor in
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:55

@julesmerm time and timimg

But in your experience, which is so vast and over a few decades now, I'm sure you have a sense of maybe taking a general stab at this with regard to the healing of deep pain and accepting that it's a process and not like a door you open and close over the time that people heal. Do you feel like there's a time when ending therapy is a good thing? And do you have to introduce that yourself or does somebody do that for you?
@Swell
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@julesmerm
Julie Mermelstein
@julesmerm · 4:55
Short of, you know, the therapist moving, retiring, being sick, you know, some life tragedy or challenge or you're a short term you're a brief therapist. Short term therapy, brief therapy. You work in a treatment program. There's a time stamp on it. Short of that, it's really, in my view, it's up to the the client. And I have three clients who I've seen probably over ten years now who call themselves Lifers
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:55

A two parter - holding back laugh, and the boundaryless client

The first part is anecdotal and if you'll just make me laugh if you can, which is, was there ever a situation in a session where you had to hold in your laughter so hard because there was no K to laugh, but you were literally peeing in your pants? Not literally, but your pilots peeing in your pants because you're so like, oh, my God, that's so funny. The person is weird or funny, but you cannot laugh because that's wrong
@julesmerm
Julie Mermelstein
@julesmerm · 5:00

@DBPardes

Neither do people with borderline personality disorder. That's a big part of the disorder, is not having boundaries. So again, it's back to, like, observing diagnosing, figuring out the situation, then figuring out, why don't they have this boundary? Is this a developmental thing? Is this societal thing? Is it a cultural thing? We're not supposed to accept money, gifts, anything
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@julesmerm
Julie Mermelstein
@julesmerm · 3:16
And I was like, I got on another call. I can't get off it now. And we need to reschedule because you were 30, 40 minutes late. But he couldn't accept that boundary and he left therapy. So that happened. Sometimes if that happened at work or he was late for an important meeting, his boss might write him up or he might get fired or those kinds of things happen. So we're role modeling it in here, and then hopefully they can tolerate it
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:13

@julesmerm laughter and tears

And then we have tears of sorrow and we have laughter that is nervous and we have laughter that is joyous, and we have laughter that is coming from a self deprecating, evil place. But there's all sorts of ways human beings express and it's really profound to think about it as we're like these mammals that have these sounds that come out of our body, these fluids that come out of our eyes, and they're all jumbled up in a lifetime
@julesmerm
Julie Mermelstein
@julesmerm · 4:54
There's all sorts of trauma in the trauma world. They call it big t, little T. So lots of people have little teas and they don't think that it's trauma. A lot of people were not role model to feel all their feelings, that it was okay. There's a lot of shame around the harder feelings. A lot of people didn't talk about feelings at all. There's cultural issues, gender issues about feeling feelings
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@julesmerm
Julie Mermelstein
@julesmerm · 3:15
And it doesn't have to be either or, like, in order to laugh and have a good time for an hour, hour, or just have a good chuckle with a friend or at a comedy show doesn't mean that you're not in pain or that you're not going through something tough. I had to put my beloved cat, Julie to sleep a couple of months ago. And it was awful. And it still is awful. And I'm still grieving and I'm still mourning
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@brittonderby
Britton Derby
@brittonderby · 0:18
What a great program. And it was great listening to Julie, who's one of my best friends and colleagues, and we laugh together more than we talk about business. And that's who Julie is. She's wonderful. And it was great to hear you. It was a great program
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