Humor in therapy

A client of mine,Rina, who was deathly afraid of snakes, had a 15 year old son who one day brought home from school a glass cage with a snake that was his biology project. She was petrified, came to see me and proceeded to create all sorts of scenarios with the snake. She made a list of these scenarios and described each one in detail. After each description, she talked about how likely it was to happen and gave it a grade from 1 to 5. (1 was unlikely to happen and % was extremely likely to happen). This was the VOC of each scenario (validity of concept). Then she described in each scenario how bad it would be for her. She then also took the part of the snake and how he felt, and how bad it was for him. This reduced her fear somewhat. At each stage she reported her SUDs (subjective unit of distress, how uncomfortable she felt, from 1 to 10, 10 being very very distressful). Identifying with the snake and creating a narrative of how she looked to the snake and how difficult it was for him, even made her laugh, and she said, "how can I be afraid when I am laughing?" She also described how she would cope and what she would do, and then what the snake would do, and how he would cope with his fears of her, the giant woman in his eyes. By this time she was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes.

As you can see, I am a great believer in the part of humor in therapy. She described the ending of each scenario and how long it took to get there. Everything was fine and I thought we had resolved this fear, when a few weeks later she came to me very upset telling me that the snake had gotten out of his glass cage, which was in her son'[ room, and was somewhere in the house. She chose a picture to demonstrate and symbolize what she was feeling and what she was going to do, and how she could cope. She chose from KEG cards (keys to emotional growth), the picture of a man jumping from one rooftop to another and said that she was going to run away to another house and was not coming back until they found the snake. She described what would happen if she stayed in the house, what she would feel, and then talked about how the snake felt hiding away, perhaps under the bed, or in a closet. She imagined and narrated what would happen when the snake was found. She described the finding of the snake, who would find it, where it would be found, when, the finder picking it up and putting it back in its glass cage. After and during this detailed narrative, I asked her several times what and how she was feeling. And of course, how the snake was feeling. She ended up laughing and going home to the house where there was a lost snake that had climbed out of his glass cage.