I recently had an interesting couple of experiences on Facebook. They weren't abusive, just misguided and lacking an understanding. But it got me to thinking about how my father used to "diffuse" and thereby diminish painful situations by inserting what he considered to be humor into them. Because showing authentic empathy wasn't something that could ever be done in my family for some reason. Because taking a child seriously was something he was utterly incapable of. We had to take him seriously, but we were jokes and the joked upon, and almost always the targets for reduction and belittlement. My dad was your perfect example of a raving double-standard-hypocrite.
My mother was better at offering a bit of sympathy (even though it was apparently only momentarily authentic, until the next time she could find something wrong with me). She held me at times, unless I was too upset, then it upset her. So she let go and experienced her own triggers around it. She yelled and got quietly very very angry instead of using humor as my father had.
But any upset, any thing that I needed to hear validation for, any pain in my body that I felt, all of it was always redirected by my father using his idea of humor. And then if I got upset at the dismissal of my feelings by my father's attempts to change them, he would instantly become upset with me and *I* would suddenly become the problem... that I had no sense of humor. "Screw the pain you feel, if you don't like my joke, something is wrong with you" was the message I got over and over and over again. The couple times I was seriously injured, he kept his distance and spoke to me as though nothing had happened. Until he felt he could joke with me about it.
Yes, I used that graphic before, too, but it fits so well here.
If I had a painful body symptom -- a headache or a stomach ache -- or I was scared at school, it was all a funny ridiculous joke to be made light of. He could not bring himself to face any truly authentic feeling that made him in the slightest bit uncomfortable. He was utterly inept, incapable and impotent in this regard.
This has made my view of humor distorted over the years. I do not appreciate it when people offer up humor to try to "lighten" my mood. Because it is dismissive. It is reductive. It is your own discomfort at my pain or plight that is making you do it. Your wish to "cheer me up" is actually the only thing you know how to do because you can't sit with a real emotion, like pain. So anything you can do to distract from the hardness of those feelings you will jump to do. Empathy and compassion escape you, or you are incapable, or you are afraid, or you think you have a better idea of how I should be feeling. All this is wrong. The wrong way to use humor.
"Lack of empathy is a trademark of narcissistic parents. Empathizing with your children is feeling what they are feeling and acknowledging those feelings. It is the art of compassion and sensitivity, as well as the ability to give moral support in whatever they are experiencing. You do not have to agree with them but you are there for them. You put aside your own feelings and thoughts for the moment and tune in to their emotional needs to attempt to understand where they are coming from and why. Instead of citing rules or trying to give advice and direction, try this empathy exercise instead." ~ by Karyl McBride, Ph.D., How Empathetic Parenting is the Antithesis of Narcissism, from "The Legacy of Distorted Love"
Please believe me. It doesn't help to have anybody's serious feelings made into a joke, even with the best of intentions. That's like telling a terminally ill person to "think positive."
Thankfully, one of the people I admire deeply in many ways, Sandra Dodd, has a beautiful page up called "When Humor Isn't Funny" which contains of examples of ageist humor, humor used against children. Here is a quote from Sandra:
"When humor exists at the expense of children's dignity and self esteem, when humor is an indicator of the jokester's true feelings about the wholeness and value and intelligence of chidren, that undermines children's worth and their chances of being seen, heard and respected as the full and important humans they are."
Using humor in an attempt to change someone's authentic painful or strong feelings is never right. It's dismissive at best. To children it's worse. It screams that the problem lies not with the person being joked about, but the person doing the joking. The person deliberately minimizing another person's pain.
Being able to own and sit with the pain of any person is a gift we would do well to give ourselves, all of us. Blaming and shaming are part of the humor equation here, especially when done from an adult to a child, but that goes for any human. Avoidance and dismissing via humor has taken a profound toll on our humanity. Sometimes pain is just pain and it's okay to be in pain. It doesn't require my lips curve upward to improve my situation, except to make you feel better. Ultimately, I will feel worse because you dismissed or avoided my authentic feelings, and clearly, you were way more important and "right" than I was, yeah? You see where this eliminates me from the equation entirely, and makes it all about you and how good you can feel because you made a sad person smile or laugh without ever considering their actual feelings?
Can we say lazy and self-centered here? Yeah, that about sums up how my dad did it. And unfortunately how I see many others doing it to their children now. Our kids aren't jokes, their emotions aren't jokes, their pain isn't a joke. My pain isn't a joke, either, even though it was joked about incessantly for decades.
Let's call it like it is. Let's stop lying to ourselves around this issue and let's work on being able to sit with pain, allow it to exist, to be expressed, to be validated and empathized with. Because in the case of real authentic pain, laughter means little more than discomfort from the person doing the laughing.
Those who use humor or self-deprecation are subtexting pain they have never chosen to deal with. That's fine, as long as it's about yourself and you don't extend that to others. That's your choice. It's not everybody's choice, nor should it have to be.
Most of the comedians I've met over the years are really angry hurt people. For those of us capable of sitting with pain and acknowledging it, efforts at humor (especially the type of humor that provoked laughter at other people) from people who can't come face to face with pain, strikes us as sad and terribly unfunny. And when the jokes include degrading others, those of us able to tolerate authentic pain sit and watch those of you who joke about it with a sickness in the pit of our stomachs.
Humor about another human being, at their expense, I've found, is another flag for clinical narcissism. You want humor?
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| From: https://www.facebook.com/SurvivingChronicPain?ref=br_tf |
Like you, dad, the perfect clinical example. You made me sick to the pit of my stomach. And I never called you on it before you died. Of course, if I had called you on it, you'd have made light of it, or minimized my observations, or become angry and told me I didn't have a sense of humor (gaslighting, also clinical). I wasn't deserving of the same seriousness you were, which solidly places you in the land of hypocrite.
This is part of what is wrong with our culture. We run from pain, we assume privilege, which means that 'if it's not my pain and I don't have anything to do with it, then it's not my problem.' That is privilege. And that is something that is an ill in our culture. Insidious and pervasive.
People say they use humor to "diffuse" a difficult or painful situation. Is diffusion of someone's pain really what we need to be doing? How does it help? It doesn't reduce the problem, it doesn't help the person who is hurting, it doesn't resolve the issues that caused the pain. It blocks it. And it elevates the person making the joke above the person being joked about. It shows avoidance and cowardice in the face of difficulty. Dad, if you couldn't joke about my pain or anger or other feelings, then you'd run away with your tail between your legs.
If you want to laugh at your own pain, go right ahead. When you laugh at mine, or attempt to make me laugh at it myself, you are crossing a boundary into an area that speaks more about your own inability to function than mine. And I will know this. And I will tell you to stop crossing this boundary. And if you cannot, my door will shut. It's really that simple.
Obviously far too simple for my father to figure out.
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