Ricky Gervais: Healing With Humour

I adore Ricky Gervais. He is smart and funny and an animal lover. He's also a comedian, so I suppose some people don't take him seriously--or worse, they take him seriously when he's joking. I recently watched an interview of him on a show with Pamela Anderson. The judgey part of me was annoyed with the host's lack of sensory acuity as well as:

Follow-up question?  What's that? 

I'm sure this comes from working for a former talk-show host--who when he reads this, will point out that this is a Squirrel Moment. But I digress . . .

I was struck by the genuine interaction between Ricky and Pamela. She reveals that she had a stalker and Ricky shows her the absurd humour in it. She's describing the event and he asks her questions (pattern interrupt) and then says something funny (re-frame) and she laughs (anchor), which changes her association to the event. I'm guessing that after that interaction with him, she couldn't think of it without thinking of his hilarious observations. He's a master NLPer/hypnotist without knowing it!

I think it's the best thing that could have happened to her. Healing doesn't have to be difficult, traumatic, or take a long time.  In this case, laughter was the best medicine.

You can jump to segment HERE or watch the whole interview here: