Ways to Stop Your Therapist from Blackmailing You – Excerpt from ‘LIFE WANTS YOU DEAD’
You’re a terrible person. You think terrible thoughts and do terrible things. You hurt the people you love, and you once climaxed to the Mucinex monster when a banner ad popped up at the worst possible time.
Nobody knows this better than your therapist. You’ve loaded them up like a Pez dispenser with life-ruining stories about yourself, so it’s just a matter of time until they try to blackmail you.
But you don’t have to take this lying down on a fainting couch. Here are some ways to protect yourself from the person you pay to nod at your pain
Communicate exclusively through squawks and chirps. Birds rarely get extorted, so if your therapist asks about your relationship with your stepmom, just twitch your head and feather-pick your wing lice. If that doesn’t work, fly south with the other geese that are also avoiding self-examination.
Splice veiled threats into your stories. While discussing how your week went, mention your impulse to smack disloyal therapists with pipes, then mention you went pipe shopping. (Keep your receipt so you can return the pipe after smashing their end table!)
Bottle up your feelings. Ketchup, root beer, repressed trauma—all the best things come in bottles! What, you think you’re better than pickles? I’d rather munch a gherkin than hear you yak about your shopping addiction.
Go to a deaf shrink, and grow bangs over your mouth. Hair is a shield that comes out of your head for free! If you can’t find a hearing-impaired therapist in your network, pick one with good ears and fire Civil War cannons next to their head for six years. For added security, headbang dandruff into their eyes.
Whisper your secrets into a shame sack. A reliable shame sack should have a drawstring to cinch the secrets inside. Drop in a few decoy potatoes to ward off therapists who hate potatoes. But before you get too candid with your sack, pat it down to make sure it’s not wearing a wire.
art by Weekly Humorist staff
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LIFE WANTS YOU DEAD
A Calm, Rational, and Totally Legit Guide to Scaring Yourself Safe
By Evan Waite • Illustrations by Paula Searing
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EVAN WAITE is a co-executive producer on FOX’s Family Guy. Prior to that, he wrote on the Emmy nominated final season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, NBC’s Sunnyside, The President Show, Our Cartoon President, Fairfax, and Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History. He won a Writers Guild Award for his work on Adult Swim’s Three Busy Debra’s. In the print humor world, he contributes to The Onion, the New Yorker‘s “Shouts & Murmurs,” and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He has also written for MAD magazine, ClickHole, and Funny or Die. He lives in Los Angeles and can be found on Twitter at @TheOhBits.
