“They make you do some bizarre things in therapy. To build my self-esteem, this one therapist said I should look in the mirror every day and say, ‘I love you,’ to myself. At first it was really weird but after a while I got into it, I was doing it 40, 50, 60 times a day. But I think it got a bit much,” said comedian David Granirer.
“Because after a while my reflection went out and got a restraining order.”
David introduced five comedians at the Observatory, Algonquin’s on-campus bar, who are part of his program Stand Up For Mental Health on Nov. 24.
The AC purple couch was at the event. The crowd was smaller and consisted of a few people in seats and others in the booths.
“Stand Up For Mental Health is my program where I teach stand-up comedy to people with mental illness,” said Granirer. “As a way of building confidence and fighting public stigma.”
Emily Olding, Heather Bruce, Victoria Higgins, Andrew Wolgemuth and Sonja Cronkhite are the comedians from Garnirer’s group which he started in Vancouver after Garnirer taught a stand-up comedy class.
“I would see people come through there and have life changing experiences doing stand-up comedy,” said Garnirer. “And I thought ‘wow wouldn’t it be great to give this experience to people who wanted to do comedy but also wanted the experience and it gave me the idea to start stand up for mental health.’”
“I think being able to talk about some of the most painful parts in your life and to do it in a funny way and having people laugh with you is really therapeutic for a lot of reasons because here you are telling these people and they’re accepting you for who you are,” said Garnirer.
“And you’re also doing it in such a way where you get to tell your story the way you want to tell it, and that’s very therapeutic.”