Well now that I realized my goof I'm more confused.by Mischief Maker 08/18/2011, 10:34am PDT
laudablepuss wrote:
Mischief Maker wrote:
Well I'm no therapist. I know that if you force yourself to smile (spreading the feeling all the way to your eyes) your mood involuntarily perks up a bit, so maybe that's what the therapist was trying.
This IS a useful thing, but if you're using the smiling muscles for serotonin, you shouldn't display the exercise to people you're talking to. IMO. It's still not a *real* smile.
Now that I realize it was the clerk who was wrong, it seems less that Jerry has a crippling fear of social interaction and more that Jerry has a crippling fear of conflict, the potential for which lurks in all social interaction. Makes sense, given what we know of his youth. I'm just wondering why his therapist is pushing him into social situations and making him put on the confidence facade when the problem lies elsewhere.
Jerry's problems are outside my range of expertise, as conflict-phobic people rarely if ever come to my door. But hey, if there's one thing I've learned over the years about comedy, it's that every great comedian has demons, and they feed their troubles into the comedy. Nothing defuses a tense situation like laughter.
Jerry is funny, maybe he should harness his hangups and put them to work. Burn it out! Jim Norton makes no bones about how he was basically Taxi Driver in his youth and instead of withdrawing into his shell over it, he turns it into comedy gold:
Kathy Griffin was molested by her brother as a child. In interviews she's said that that's the reason she doesn't consider any subject taboo for comedy because "secrets fester." Even today, when something horrible and humiliating happens to her in real life, her immediate thought is, "How can I make this funny?"
Even Louis CK takes the psychic scars of his youth and puts them to good use. Listen to how unburdening himself in a funny way just brings this conversation alive.
So maybe instead of taking baby steps toward hanging out in social situations, you should take baby steps into toward joking your way out of potential conflicts.
Read a book like this, or watch things like Ricky Gervais' Talking Funny and start learning the craft of comedy. Then start putting your demons to work. Keep making jokes about your life on Caltrops, then maybe start your own blog, then once you get some fans, hang out with people in real life in public spaces and make them laugh.
No guarantees it'll work, but it's gotta be more fun than breathing deep and bugging your eyes into the checkout girl's. "Sorry, I live in a building with coin-op laundry. Where I live, quarters are as valuable as cigarettes in prison." Conflict defused!