Paul Scheer was abused as a child by his stepfather, his memoirs reveal

Paul Scheer knew he had plenty of funny stories from his childhood: The comedian (“The League,” “Black Monday”) had regaled audiences with them for years on the podcast “How Did This Get Made?” with his wife, June Diane Raphael, and his friend Jason Mantzoukas. But as a memoir reader, he understood that a collection of funny anecdotes did not make a book.

To create something worth reading, “I would have to dig deep and tell stories I've never told,” Scheer, 48, said in a recent video interview from his Los Angeles home. Those stories largely focused on the abuse he (and his mother) suffered at the hands of his stepfather and the fear and shame that caused, especially when his mother and father did not intervene to save him. . Still, Scheer insisted that his book not be therapy. “I've read books that almost seem too private. I didn't want that; I had done that work before I started writing.”

“Joyful Recollections of Trauma,” Scheer’s essay memoir, combines the horrifying and the self-deprecating fun, often within the same chapter, sometimes within the same sentence. “Writing this was a process of refining and discovering what the book wanted to be,” Scheer said.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did writing the book change your understanding of your past and yourself?

These are all things I knew about myself, but wrestling with the details gave me a good point of view and actually helped me incorporate certain things into therapy. Obviously, I'm not surprised by the stories, but I am surprised that some of the connections I didn't see until they were on the page. There were things I had taken for granted and never really examined. As a kid, you don't know any different: I grew up in this situation that was violent and scary, but it was my life, so it was also very normal.

What surprised me most was the anger I felt toward my parents. I love my parents and I have a great relationship with them and they have supported me in countless ways, but I made excuses or just said, “It's okay.” But as a father, as I told those stories I thought, “If I were in their shoes, I would do something.” So this book made me see things differently. I think it gave me a better relationship with my children. I think it also gave me a better relationship with my parents.

Did you moderate what you wrote about your parents and how you felt?

It was something I struggled with. I don't think the anger towards my parents comes out in the book. I just laid things out without trying to sugarcoat the edges or make excuses, but this is not a book I wrote to settle scores. I have a good relationship with my parents. My parents' friends will read this book and I wanted to protect my parents from taking slings and arrows from their friends.

Was writing about your stepfather and the abuse cathartic?

I don't think it was cathartic because I had already dealt with all of that in therapy and I wasn't going through it while writing it. What it was for me was a release of a burden, an opportunity to tell this story and feel like I had complete control over it. What I claimed was the power of my voice for my childhood; I have already been free from those moments, but now it is something that I do not have to hide, I can talk about this. Oh, maybe that's cathartic.

Was it difficult to find the right tonal balance?

I thought of it as a conversation. I'm going to tell you these stories. I'm not going to undermine the dark parts, but I'm also going to keep an eye on the valves. Nobody's life is just one thing: there are ups, downs and fun. My childhood had some very traumatic moments, but they weren't the only things that defined me, so the funny stories are here.

I always kept the stories of abuse aside. But I told other stories that I remember as fond memories, and I would see Jason and June's faces and they would be surprised. And I was like, “This is funny,” and they were like, “That's traumatic.”

When I'm telling one of those stories and I see someone tense wondering how to react, I inevitably recoil and deflect. In writing the book, I was able to push and pull and guide the story, going through the parts I want to tell while finding a balance.

Did moving from New York to Los Angeles help you grow or find yourself?

Moving to Los Angeles changed my perspective on many things. It's the self-help capital of the United States and people here do crazy things. There is a culture in which people like to talk about their problems and there is a lack of judgment. Los Angeles is open to everything: scream therapy or this or that. They say, “My healer does this” or “I did this ceremony” or “My myofascial release removed the trauma.” I have a friend who went to Peru and took ayahuasca and it changed his life, but I also have friends who do ayahuasca one afternoon around someone's pool and I tell them, “You're just doing drugs.”

So Los Angeles has freed me from a certain amount of self-criticism.

You got your start in improv and wrote about your days in the Upright Citizens Brigade. How did improvisation shape you as a person?

Improvisation for me is truly life. It's about collaboration. And for me, as a human being, every relationship is about collaboration. To be a good improviser, you must listen and react, following other people's cues and giving your partner equal weight. Since it's about communication, it forces you to be a kinder human being.

The most important thing in improvisation is trust. I was a person who had trust issues and for me improvisation was a continuous loss of trust. In a scene I'm making a decision and I'm going to believe that someone is going to support me and catch me. For a long time in my life I didn't have that person who caught me. I always protected myself from falling. Improv opened me to believing that I can surround myself with good people and then I can do anything with them. Those principles have really changed my life, and that's something else I didn't realize until I wrote the book.