Has anyone ever told you that you’re too serious? Seriousness can cause problems like inflexibility, burnout, fatigue and bad breath. While I can’t cite data for the bad breath, I’d bet my couch it does cause it.
But perhaps worse is what seriousness excludes: humor and laughter. There is tons of research out there which says they improve relationships, physical health, and emotional well-being. For everyone.
But since it’s one of my specific and very serious missions in life to apply this information to people who are compulsive, obsessive, perfectionistic and Type A, I’m going to focus on how humor heals the psychology of those of us who try too hard, and how a dearth of humor multiplies the psychological challenges we bring on by being too sober.
Compulsives as a lot tend to become more serious over time. Crusty, rusty and blustery. So, we need humor to dissolve the rigidity that grows on us like rust on a padlock, years unopened.
Contents
Melting the Frozen
Here are two images to illustrate what I’ll be conveying:
• Laughter creates warmth that can melt personality traits that have become frozen and unhealthy.
• Humor serves as a vacation from the cold emotional climate that seriousness creates.
So, imagine a lubricant like WD-40, but it smells like strawberries, feels like warm water, and sounds like people having fun together. Humor melts the tension we carry around.
Or, imagine humor as a Caribbean island where you go so that the sun can melt away all the rigidity that has built up during your efforts to be so perfect, without even having to get on an airplane!
The compulsive personality can either flow like water (healthily), or become frozen stiff like ice (unhealthily).
Humor can help melt that ice and return us to our natural, healthy state. Admittedly, it is not a complete or permanent solution, but what you can learn about yourself from how you use humor and seriousness can contribute significantly to lasting change.
British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott suggested that if things are difficult when we’re young, we may put our true self into cold storage for safe keeping until it’s safe to come out. Well, it’s time to come out.
Humor can help melt the false self so the true self can come out again.
Humor can melt the idea that if things aren’t perfect, they can’t be okay.
I had wondered if I might be going overboard with my melting metaphor when I came across an article in the journal BMC Complimentary Medicine and Therapies. I’m going to paraphrase them here and say that blood flows more freely in your brain after watching a comedic video as opposed to a video that’s not funny. Humor activates the parasympathetic nervous system, that’s the brakes of the nervous system, and thereby reduces psychological stress levels.
So my metaphor isn’t so unrealistic after all!
You Can’t Be Serious!
A defining characteristic of people with obsessive-compulsive personality is that we feel we should make things a certain way, and this tends to make us very serious. We believe that we can’t relax until everything is resolved, and we buy into the idea that getting things resolved requires us to approach life with gravity, solemnity and urgency. No time for jokes.
Perfection, order and control are experienced as moral imperatives: don’t relax until everything is just right. Otherwise, you’re stooping to unacceptable levels of laziness and indulgence. Bad, bad, bad.
The result is a serious demeanor which communicates that there are potential problems, if not actual dangers, that we have to focus on. It’s like a severe cold front coming in to ruin your outdoor dinner at that fine restaurant.
We tend to take ourselves, especially our compulsions and our obsessions, very seriously. As if civilization is dependent on us maintaining our solemn stances on maintaining some degree of decency while in public, organizing the cupboard, and parking properly.
Seriousness is seen as a virtue. Picture Puritans in 1600s Salem, Massachusetts. God’s frozen people. Truth is they didn’t actually wear buckles on their hats, but we came up with that image in the 1800’s as a sign of restraint and austerity—all buckled up. Otherwise, if they weren’t so on guard, someone, somewhere, might actually enjoy themselves. Heaven forbid.
Being so serious may not only keep you from actively and creatively using humor, it might also keep you from receiving its benefits from others.
Please don’t take this personally, but you need to take yourself less seriously.
Pitfalls and Benefits of Humor and Laughter
While humor clearly has benefits, it also has pitfalls. So, to keep you from tumbling into that pit like something out of a Laurel and Hardy film, here are some things to watch out for:
Defensive Avoidance
Humor is known as a high-level defense, that is, while it might be adaptive in some cases, it can also be used to avoid difficult emotions or subjects. So, we need to ask ourselves, am I trying to dodge or deflect something disturbing, or am I actually helping us to come to terms with something through humor?
If your therapist or partner asks how your mood has been lately, making a joke at that moment may be a way to avoid talking about your anger, depression or anxiety.
Interpersonal Pitfalls
Compulsives tend to use humor to chide others when they don’t follow the rules, a not-so-subtle way of saying “You buffoon, you screwed up!” Teasing can help us build resilience and express affection. (“Hey Bill. I see you’re boycotting the barber.”) But a constant barrage of it that hits below the belt erodes the self-esteem of its targets. (“Hey Bill. I see you’re still boycotting the gym.”)
Using humor can be a win-win. You might feel proud of your joke, and others benefit as well. Self-esteem goes up, seriousness goes down. But sometimes, to deal with our own insecurity, we use humor to put others down and elevate ourselves. Humor becomes a performance intended to raise self-esteem at the expense of others.
Since compulsives are usually focused on getting stuff done and resolving the unresolvable, they don’t always pay attention to how they come across to others. So, the humor they do attempt may not go over well. Or it might offend.
My own default is to use humor that’s absurd or ridiculous. The more unlikely, the better. But a lot of people don’t get that, and my penchant for the ludicrous has led me to attempt a few jokes that were insensitive. For instance, I once asked, indirectly, if a 60-year-old woman with cancer might feel nauseous because she was pregnant. Absurd? Yes. Funny? Definitely not. So I’ve learned to be more discriminating in my humor.
With those cautions in mind, let’s move on to the potential benefits.
Interpersonal Benefits
Sharing laughter with others can improve connection, intimacy, and trust. As pianist Victor Borge commented, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”
Used consciously and compassionately, humor, and even teasing, can improve communication by disarming conflict and tension. When things get intense with others, humor can soften criticism and help resolve disagreements without escalating hostility. It melts the ice of cold relationships.
One study, in the Journal of Personal Relationships, is particularly explicit in how humor helps romantic relationships. The authors concluded that negative humor, humor that was self-deprecating, aggressive or inappropriate did not support the relationship. But humor that was positive, and co-created with the partner, had a positive effect on the relationship.
Benefits for Mood and Stress
Humor puts things in perspective. Since we tend to get caught in the details, it can help to step back and look at the big picture so that we aren’t consumed with the negative aspects of life.
It also communicates that things are okay—despite appearances.
Laughter and humor can decrease anxiety, depression, and grumpiness. Mahatma Gandhi, who suffered from despair and self-doubt, and who experienced lots of very dire circumstances, said, “If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”
Humor helps us to increase resilience and endure the difficult. It helps us to achieve distance from the things we obsess about or feel we need to fix. It helps us to recover from challenging or merely annoying experiences.
The monster becomes less threatening when we imagine it with a plastic gun and a “bang” flag coming out when the trigger is pulled.
Physical Benefits
Humor and laughter can melt stress, and since we tend to stress a lot, there is a lot to melt. Laughter reduces levels of stress hormones, and activates the release of endorphins—natural mood boosters.
And since compulsives tend to use their bodies as pack horses rather than as a source of pleasure and wisdom, a good laugh can go a long way in regaining a loving relationship with your body by lowering physical tension.
Humor can boost your immune system, increase pain tolerance, improve cardiovascular health, blood vessel function and blood flow. A study published in the journal PLoS One indicated that laughter can significantly reduce cortisol levels.
And just in case your muscles ever get tight, a good laugh can help to release that tension for up to 45 minutes.
Cognitive Benefits
I know. Who has time for jokes? But what if I told you it could actually help you to be more effective and efficient? Would you like to think better and improve your ability to solve problems? Apparently, humor stimulates parts of the brain involved in insight and flexible thinking.
Because humor can lower tension, it can also raise learning and retention.
I’m not sure that this metaphor is biologically accurate, but it may help to think of humor as creating a warmer climate in your brain that encourages the growth of new neural connections, connections that can override the old ones that kept you from thinking more flexibly.
I’m not a naturally witty person, but I try to use humor when I can summon it in this blog, partially because I enjoy it, but also because it lightens things up in a way that improves thinking. That way readers can take in and hold onto any insights they may get from the ideas. I’ve taken my cue from figures like Jon Stewart and John Oliver who systematically sprinkle their political commentary with humor every four minutes. It turns out there’s good reason to do this.
According to a study published in the journal Advances in Mind Body Medicine, watching a humorous video improves learning ability by 39%, and improves delayed recall by 44%.
And just one more. In a study done in China, using puns to measure our reactions, humor was also found to improve comprehension and make thinking more flexible.
Melting the Ice: How to Use Humor Effectively
Here are some ways to use humor more effectively. And please note: there are times to be serious. These suggestions are to help you to use seriousness and humor consciously and adaptively rather than habitually and destructively.
What’s it for?
• Ask yourself whether being so serious has helped you to reach your goals. If it has, ask whether it is worth continuing to carry your seriousness with you. It is, after all, very heavy.
• Remember what you want to use humor for, e.g. improved relations, mood, cognitive capacities, physical health, or to communicate that things are okay, even when it doesn’t seem that way. You may even use it for the pure fun of it—seeing Aunt Betty succumb to delirious laughter after giving you trouble for your outfit.
• Jokes don’t have to be brilliantly funny, unless your goal is to show how brilliant you are. But for the benefits outlined in this post, dad jokes and groaners are just as effective.
Take your humor seriously:
• Make time for film, literature, comedians and television to take a vacation and melt the seriousness.
• Make it a custom to start family meals with a joke.
• Ask for jokes as gifts for birthdays, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day.
Joke gently:
• Before you make jokes about others, ask yourself if the teasing is meant to subtly convey reproach for something they’ve done wrong. Humor may be a good way to communicate that there was a better way to do something, but be sure you’re highlighting something they’ve done, rather than who they are.
• This goes for you, too. If you make yourself the object of humor, take the edge off. Do it without being self-deprecating. One technique is to sing destructive thoughts in order to depotentiate them. For instance, try singing “I am really, really, really bad” to the tune of Happy Birthday. It becomes hard to take yourself too seriously while doing that.
If you can use humor constructively to take yourself less seriously and melt the rigidity that comes with too much pressure and responsibility, it’s a win-win.
Otherwise, the joke’s on you.
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