JNJ Talks to David Granirer!
August 31, 2009 by karynbuxman
David Granirer wears many hats. Counselor, comic, author, speaker, and a funny, funny guy, he is also the driving force behind Stand Up for Mental Health, an innovative program that is truly therapeutic humor in action. We’re thrilled to have David join us for this conversation!
JNJ: For those who are not already familiar with your work, can you give us a little background about what you do?
David: My project, Stand Up for Mental Health, teaches standup comedy to people with mental illness. We’ve been doing this since 2004, helping people build confidence and fight the stigma of mental illness.
In my own background, I’m a counselor and a stand up comic. I also have mental illness, I have depression, which in a way makes me the perfect person to do this work!
JNJ: What inspired you to do this?
For the last 11 years or so, I have been teaching course at the local community college to people who want to do stand up comedy. Everyone has their own reason for taking the course. Some want to be comics, others want to build confidence, that sort of thing.
And over the years, I’ve found that students have these sorts of life changing experiences taking my course. One woman had this tremendous fear of flying. The next day, after we’d done our class performance, she had to take a flight — and as she told me later, the fear was gone. She said, ‘I figured if I could do comedy, I could do anything!’
And that’s when I thought well, wouldn’t it be neat to do this in a therapeutic setting? So I started trying it out. One of my first groups was in a recovery house, working with people who had addiction problems. There were 15 clients, 6 of whom performed. The other 9 wrote and helped out, but not to the same extent.
As soon as the program was over, the 9 non-performers relapsed right away. Of the 6 who performed, only one relapsed.
And I worked with cancer patients, but mental health was always kind of a goal for me. I mean, these are my people: it’s kind of a perfect fit!
KB: Now your program has a lot of pieces up on YouTube . One of my favorites is when you talk about stigma.
David: Well, there’s a lot of fear surrounding mental illness. And I do this bit about how people are afraid of mentally ill people — but those of us who have mental illness are way more afraid of so-called normal people than you’ll ever be of us. Think about it. 5% of crimes are committed by the mentally ill. That means normal people commit 95% of the crimes! You never know, they could snap at any moment!
What does this kind of humor do? I like to think it brings out that hypocrisy, that it shines a light on that lack of understanding.
KB: What do you think that it is about humor that helps people – not just people with mental illness, but those of us who are neurotic, or just go nuts time to time?
David: My theory is, that at least for the folks in my class, is that humor does some really powerful things. They’re taking stories about experiences that they feel shame around, things that have happened to them, and turn those into comedy.
When they perform, they see people laughing. Afterward, people come up and they say, “Hey, that bit with you and the psych ward, that’s hilarious, I can really relate!”
And they begin to say to themselves, “Hey, I’m not a bad person, people can relate to me, here I am talking about these moments, these experiences and nothing bad is happening.”
That’s very powerful. Humor allows you to take these experiences that may have had a very negative effect, and through humor have the chance to have the last word. How often after the fact do you say, “I wish I had done that, said this, stood up for myself?”
Humor provides that second chance.
One of younger comics, a young man who has schizophrenia, was telling us about an experience where he bumped into some friends from high school. When he was in high school, no one had known about his mental illness, but now everyone knew he’d been diagnosed, and when they bumped into him, they blew him off. That hurt his feelings, but he wrote a joke about it, and got the last laugh.
The truth is that we can’t change the past. But humor allows you to change the story inside of you: you’re the victor, not the victim.
Also, and we can’t forget this, is that the ability to make people laugh, to get up in front of two hundred people and make them laugh, is a huge boost to self esteem and confidence.
KB: Oh, you are so right. I remember at one point, I was doing group work with chronically mentally ill. I’d asked everyone for their favorite jokes. One woman didn’t have a joke, and she asked, “Could you teach me one?”
So over the course of six weeks, I taught her a joke. At first, I had these high aspirations. I would figure out her progress from how well she was doing by her ability to understand and tell the joke. But what I came to understand, humbly, at the end of six weeks, is what she wanted was a social skill.
David: Absolutely! One of my students, who is also a chronic schizophrenic, has issues with public transportation. When she’s on the bus, her voices are telling her that everyone is looking at her and thinking she’s a freak. But after taking the course, she discovered she had a sense of humor. And she decided to use it on the bus, joking with people on bus, so called normal people, and everyone was laughing, and it worked for her. She was empowered. Her mastery of humor changed the experience for her.
KB: Not to mention that doing standup is a skill people greatly admire.
David: I think that’s part of it. Doing stand up gives people another identity. Mental health consumer isn’t the most prestigious identity — and I say that not belittling it, just telling them the truth. But when you’re a comic, people say, “Wow you’re a stand up comic, that’s amazing! You must be brave!”
People get a different set of feedback from outside world. It gives them a new identity. And so much of what we are is what people say back to us. To get this positive feed back, they start to say, “Maybe there’s something good about me!”
The beauty of it is that the changing of self esteem doesn’t have to happen in a therapy session. It just happens as part of everyday life. What a beautiful way to do therapy!
KB: To be able to create humor for yourself is your own portable skill. It’s something you can use for yourself even when not on the stage.
David: Right. Let’s say something frustrating happens, traffic, there’s a hassle at the grocery store, you fight with your spouse. But you make a joke, you laugh, you feel better, and that frustration’s not so bad any more.
This can be huge source of self esteem.
Being able to somehow see something differently, to make yourself others laugh — it’s how we make ourselves feel better. That’s why people take drugs, to feel better. But humor offers ways to feel better that are completely natural, without the drawbacks of drugs.
Humor is such a wonderful way to alter our mood. I’ve had a friend tell me that after a performance, their voices significantly quiet down for about a week. I’m guessing something chemical happens. And for those of us in a caring profession, this is really good news. We’re always looking for means to help people find a healthy way of coping; so many patients have unhealthy means of coping, whether it’s drug abuse, alcohol, isolation.
One woman I worked with had just separated from husband. Her pattern was that when something bad happens, she’d isolate. She’d go in a room and shut door, for a couple of weeks. But this time, she wanted to write jokes about the experience. Now, comedy wonderful way to get back at spouse you’re angry with! But the important thing is that she took an stimulus that would normally lead her to use negative coping skills, and instead, she used this alternative to cope. Now she had a different way of releasing those emotions.
KB: I have to say that this particular piece was absolutely wonderful.
David: Now the story behind that piece is that she’d worn that gown twice. Both marriages failed, she’d been divorced twice, and had tremendous feelings of shame and inadequacy about it. By doing comedy in that wedding gown, she was able laugh at that situation. The wedding game that had symbolized failure, now symbolized success. It gave her some sense of internal control over situation.
KB: To go back to the story I was telling, when I was teaching that patient the joke, I’d selected a really complicated joke. (Knock knock! Who’s there? Banana. Banana who? Knock knock! Who’s there? Banana. Banana who? Knock knock! Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?) And she must have found 2017 ways to mutilate that joke — but she wanted to keep at it.
We spent 6 weeks on joke, and I’ll tell you what, we laughed until we were sick. We weren’t always laughing at the same thing, but we were spending time laughing, having fun.
The day came where she wanted to tell her joke, and she sailed right through it like a pro. It was one of my most gratifying experiences ever, because she was so empowered. She had this skill, and she could use it.
David: Not only that, but you spent time with her, laughing. There are not a lot of places in the mental health system filled with laughter and delight. That you spent time with her on a regular basis laughing, what a huge thing for her to have.
So many times, you look at patients, and their affect is flat. But they have no chance to use humor. Give them a chance, and that personality comes out.
JNJ: This has been such a delightful interview. Is there anything you wish we had asked you, something you’d like to say to the nurses reading this?
David: What I’d like to say. It’s amazing the spark that lies in people where we don’t expect it to be.
I’ve looked at people coming into my program and thought, they’re dead, they don’t have a sense of humor, nothing. But people I thought would never do very well, often excel.
It doesn’t matter how they present or what they history. If they really want to do this, they’ll do very well. We have to give them the chance to show that spark. As helpers, if we can tap into that spark, give people the opportunity to express themselves, that’s huge for us and for them. Our modes of helping don’t usually have that place where we can tap into that spark. And it doesn’t have to be stand up comedy — not everyone has to do stand up comedy — but a chance to tell a joke or humor group that meets once a week, something like that can release that spark. And that is so rare. So rare and so important, so very important, to give people that experience.
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