Thoughtful Thursday: Laughter

Today is many different things - Christmas Eve, December 24th, Thursday. I've been living with this quotation for the week, and find that it speaks to me on many different levels.

If you don't know, Victor Borge was a comedian, composer, and pianist. He was born in 1909 in Denmark, and died in the year 2000. Many of his routines included him sitting at a piano and using it to illustrate the rest of his routine. Here is a link to Borge at the opera. Anyone who has ever had to accompany another person can find something to relate to in this sketch. Another link includes Mr. Borge illustrating how people from different professions play the piano. Another link has Mr. Borge showing how to punctuate music for the listening ease of the audience. If you check out the link at the bottom of the page, you will find much more information about this wonderful man who brought music and more to many in a way that made it memorable.

Anyway, this quotation seems extremely apropos for me when I think about my work with adolescents. 

There are some adolescents (I call them the "too-cool" kids) who just don't think that music therapy is for them. They are not engaged in what I offer at the beginning and are often loud and disruptive during sessions. I think there are feelings of inadequacy behind much of the bluster, but I don't always know what the feelings behind the emotion actually are, so I try different things to see if I can make a connection. Many times, the way into a therapeutic relationship with this "type" of client is a joke or a game or something silly.

Before my surgery, I was working with a young man who has spent some time in juvenile detention, who is a follower of persons with stronger personalities, and who is "too-cool" for just about everything. No one was having any luck getting him to engage in any type of therapy - he wasn't interested in group therapy, art therapy, music therapy, or anything. When he first walked into the music therapy session, he started posturing right off. "You're not going to make me do anything this stupid." My response? "That's fine, you don't have to engage. Feel free to just sit and watch." So he did.

The next week, this young man came in and tried to posture again. I repeated my prompt and went on as usual. Peers spent time playing games, singing songs, completing projects, and engaging in music therapy. This young man made several comments about the things we were talking about and was acknowledged each time.

On week three, when he entered, this young man looked at me and said, "Don't do that thing with your eyes. It freaks me out." I said, "What thing with my eyes?" He said, "You just do things with your eyes. It freaks me out." (Now, I actually think that he means my eyebrows, but he's not able to verbalize that fact. I use facial expressions with my clients lots, so I have a wide variety of expressions that utilize changes in my eyebrows to express emotions. I do this almost unconsciously.) For the rest of the session, he stared at my face and labeled when I was doing the "freaky thing."

The next week was the final breakthrough. Knowing that he had some interest in my facial expressions (and my monster eyebrows), I wore a headband over my eyebrows when his group walked in. He took one look at me, laughed, and shook his head.

Since that time, this young man has not played an instrument, still brings his "projects" to work on during group therapy, but does not do anything on those "projects." He doesn't seem to mind my dancing eyebrows anymore, but still makes comments about them. He initiates interaction with me everywhere we see each other. He smiles, he laughs, he gets involved in singing and composition TMEs. Others notice that he interacts with me in a way that he doesn't interact with any of his other staff members. When he is struggling, all I have to do to interrupt the struggle and start him back into a positive interaction is to put my hand over my eyebrows and look at him.

He starts to laugh, and we start again.

Never underestimate the power of laughter. 




Victor Borge. (2015, December 13). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 5:14am, December 24, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victor_Borge&oldid=695106903