When Therapy is Your Favorite Crowd Work

Why do I enjoy making my therapist laugh more than the open mic crowd?

It's more common than we think. 

My first answer to my own question was “there's more gratification in winning over a ‘tougher’ crowd”. But I was immediately proved wrong by the grating memory of the typical open mic crowd in NYC I know so well.

The 6 PM slot at the Stand or Pine Box Rock Shop sometimes feels worse than recounting events of abuse to a professional.

Once I described bombing at an open mic in Brooklyn as bad as sharing an armrest with someone at the DMV who plays TikToks at max volume, but I think I was wrong. 

It's often times worse <3.

Maybe it's my grumpy disposition towards these situations that made me favor the sympathetic chuckle during a service that I pay too much for?

What makes open mics and the DMV great in theory is that everyone is miserable together, joined by a greater shared mission of dick jokes or a name change on their ID. 

This shared camaraderie should make me feel inclined to find more joy in those moments of community with strangers, right? Wrong.

For some reason, getting a hearty giggle out of Christina during our 6 PM sessions offered a different thrill for me.

“Well”, I asked myself, “maybe it's the possibility that you're always following a tough act in therapy; everyone with a shitty set loves an even shittier opener”.  I could be the runner-up to a married couple in resentful turmoil, a traumatized teen, or a woman on the edge. 

Another plausible point was presented to me: one of the reasons I pay Christina $70 every Wednesday at 6PM, is to tell me I'm a good person. That could also be it.

Ultimately, whatever motivation I overanalyzed so successfully to discover was a failure.

Facing these thoughts eventually led to late-night scrolling, which landed me where all emotionally healthy comics rest their head: Reddit. 

It turns out I'm not alone! Comics, regular citizens, even therapists with therapists all experience this joy ride I keep getting on when a middle-aged woman with a PhD laughs at my pain. 

Different people had different reasons: masochism, the life events that landed them in therapy, suspected narcissism, boredom, and the inability to get more than 5 minutes at the mic.

Whew! 

Thank God I've found a new mode of camaraderie with a group of people who also spend too much time thinking about themselves and asking if it's normal.

That was a close one!

All of my personal pondering led to one truth I have to become comfortable with: I like to share a laugh with people I shouldn't, more often than with ones I essentially beg for. 

And for the price of $70 weekly, I'll take a laugh where I can get it.

So thanks to Reddit and my (healing) anxious attachment, I'll be here all night, folks (and for 50 minutes, Christina).