How Bad Bunny Saved Therapy This Week

I probably should have expected it. Given how excited I was to watch the Bad Bunny show, I should have expected that it would show up in the therapy room. Session after session touched on joy, loneliness, grief, anger, history, immigration, representation, and so much more. And that felt especially striking given what most weeks in my office look like.

Joy, Pride, Inclusion

I’m not sure if you know this, but generally, folks aren’t doing super well? Rates of people who will admit to being treated for adult depression are at their highest levels since 2015: close to 1 in 5 adults. And we know there’s way more adults who aren’t being treated or won’t admit to feeling depressed! Over half (55%) of women and 41% of men say politics negatively impacts their mental health. 

Which is why I didn’t expect that a Superbowl performance could regulate most of my caseload. The PURE JOY that came in last week when people recounted the Bad Bunny performance was so delightful. Clients shared the joy of watching people dance, the infectious beats and rhythms, the pride of seeing your country of origin's flag, the delight of hearing your native language–it wasn’t just “analysis,” my clients felt it in their bodies and in their hearts. And feeling that? It was a little bit of relief from what most clients are carrying every day.

Loneliness, Political Stress, and Collective Grief

But joy rarely arrives alone. 

For some individuals, the feelings of joy, pride, and inclusion also came with feelings of loneliness, grief, and anger. During an epidemic of loneliness, with 1 in 3 adults between 30–44 years saying they are “frequently” or “always” lonely, not having any people you could watch the halftime show with raised feelings of aloneness and isolation. When we can’t share our joy with people, we feel sad.

In addition, clients who had experienced such joy watching the show also carried a lot of grief, anger and rage at the response from the Far Right and conservatives. The litany of attacks against Bad Bunny’s show were hard to take: from attacking his performance in Spanish to mocking the symbolism of the performance to attacking his politics around ICE and his choice not to tour in the US. Many clients sat with an irreconcilable grief: grief that celebration could be met with hostility, that a performance that gave them so much joy could also engender so much hate from others.

Cultural Representation and Identity and Visibility

Which only underscored why the performance mattered.

Some clients with close ties to Puerto Rico or who love Bad Bunny immediately understood the history and symbolism and the Easter eggs in his performance: from sugarcane fields to the piragua stand to choosing to say God Bless America and then naming the full breadth of the Americas. Other clients didn’t and later read the think pieces that helped to share the depth and layers of Bad Bunny’s performance. 

Clients of color who loved this show spoke over and over again about the importance of the performance. To see Puerto Rican culture shared in such an intentional, beautiful way–regardless of a client’s ethnic or racial identity–resonated in the bodies, hearts and minds of clients who so rarely see their own cultures celebrated with such joy. So many of us are starving for cultural representation that is grounded in our understanding of ourselves, seeing Bad Bunny’s careful performance curated with such love for his people was a balm.

Therapy Documentation, Client Privacy, and Cultural Identity

All of this richness? It was delicious.

Now imagine translating all of that into a clinical progress note.

As a therapist, I have to write notes about my sessions. These notes are required by law and often by insurance providers. Generally, notes cover content from sessions in a broad way, like “client explored thoughts and feelings about conversation with sibling” or “client explored ambivalence about career choices.” Most therapists keep it broad because A) we don’t think anyone is owed the content of our client’s sessions; and B) session notes can be subpoenaed, so keeping things general can be helpful for clients. In this political climate, many of us are adding a C) we don’t want our notes to be used to target our clients due to their identities.

So, my notes from sessions where Bad Bunny came up are hilariously generic. 

The truth: In his Superbowl halftime show, Bad Bunny dismantles colonial narratives, centers Puerto Rican pride, and co-regulates tens of thousands of people at once.

My notes:
- Client started week off with somatic experience of joy.
- Client experienced validation of client's multicultural identities.
- Client reports decrease in depressive symptoms this week.

And yet, IFYKYK.