Making jokes and finding ways to laugh about the difficult things you’ve been through can be a way to cope with hardship and connect with others who have similar experiences, but it can also make others uncomfortable or respond with concern when that wasn’t your intention. You might also experience a similar tone shift when you tell what you think is an unremarkable or only slightly interesting story, only to find other people think your experience was sad or very serious. Let’s talk a bit about trauma jokes, emotional mismatches, and the effectiveness of different coping mechanisms.

Sometimes we cope with humor and dismissiveness.

Making jokes about uncomfortable, unfortunate, and even traumatic circumstances can help us feel more in control of how we respond to the world, while also adding a sense of positivity and humor to difficult events. Whether by choice or as an automatic response, making light of hard experiences can relieve some of the pressure and heaviness we would otherwise experience. If we went through those hard times with other people, making jokes and laughing about something awful can reinforce the “foxhole bonding” we share (which is different from “trauma bonds,” but I’ll get into that in a different post). I’ve heard, and even said for myself in the past, “you can either laugh about it or cry about it, so I’m choosing to laugh.” It feels like a positive and empowered way to cope with, and separate ourselves from, a difficult past. So why does the room go quiet when we make our jokes or share what we think are funny stories?

The humor is only a filter for us, not others.

Here’s the issue: while we are relieving the pressure and discomfort we might have otherwise felt about a hard situation, the people around us weren’t already experiencing that same pressure and discomfort. Now we have exposed them to it, potentially by surprise and without their consent. We already downplayed the “bad”ness of our experiences, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are springing very difficult information onto other people. We’ve suddenly forced someone else to hear something really hard and heavyabout our lives. Many times we don’t intend to do that! We’re just so used to laughing about this funny little thing or that strange circumstances. But, it’s essentially trauma dumping in an accidentally passive aggressive way, because we are unloading our difficult experiences indirectly rather than assertively and from a place of honest vulnerability about ourselves.

For example, I’m smiling and I say “oh my goodness, you would not believe the strange looking fish and the funny things I saw them doing that time someone was holding my head under water.” People are likely to “miss my point” because the alarming part is that someone was holding my head under water! That is an alarming circumstance and isn’t okay. And I miss that point, because I got so used to it or have tried to move past it with humor or dismissiveness. Even when other people have gone through their own traumas and have their own experience with finding humor in bad situations, they may not laugh or see the “funniness” because they are used to downplaying their own experiences, but they can still see the sadness in our stories.

Emotional incongruity is a tricky form of coping.

“Emotional Incongruity” is when the emotions we are showing and expressing do not match the nature of the details we are sharing, or our potential internal state. A quick example of this is someone who has a smile plastered on while talking about really awful things that happened. It could also be, on the other hand, someone talking about something that could be happy but they look very sad or uncomfortable. Emotional incongruity means there is a disconnect between what we are saying and what we are feeling or experiencing, either in the past or in the present. When it comes to trauma stories and jokes, it is often the case that someone has chosen or even needed to smile past their difficult experiences for so long that it is their automatic and default response. We might genuinely not see the sad part about our stories because we have lived them and “accepted them” for so long. As much as laughing things off or waving them away as unimportant might make us feel like we are doing well, this goes beyond just “thinking positively” and may cause bigger problems. We are more likely to psychosomatize, for example, which means our bodies experience extra wear and tear because of the emotional expression mismatch. Emotions and emotional expression are valuable parts of our biological systems, so when there is a mismatch, there is residual stress on our bodies that doesn’t get processed and released. We end up feeling disconnected from our bodies sometimes.

Also, if we are so used to waving off sad and hurtful experiences, our brains don’t get the chance to process those events in ways that give us an accurate understanding of ourselves, our narratives, and our needs. As much as we’d love to never have experienced some things, the fact of the matter is: we did. It happened. And it wasn’t fair. But healing psychologically is not about just snipping out the parts we don’t like. It’s about figuring out how we want to put all the parts together, whether we like the parts or not. This way we have an accurate view of where we are now and how to get to where we want to be. Otherwise, we end up feeling disconnected from ourselves mentally and emotionally.

Accepting hardship means accepting it was hard and sad.

Let’s revisit the statement, “I can either laugh about it or cry about it.” Sure. The answer is: you’re supposed to cry about it, at least for a little bit. You cry about it and you let yourself experience the sadness and the hurt that exists there. Why? Because your brain needs to recognize the weight of the circumstances. This is important for a few reasons. One of the main reasons is: if, for example, I never process that my experience growing up was full of neglect and was “actually fine,” I am more likely to accept and inflict more neglect on myself. Because after all, it “wasn’t a big deal.” So why would it be a big deal if I experience it again? But then I have a hard time taking care of my own basic needs. My brain never fully learned that neglectful conditions are unacceptable. I am likely to struggle with the same type of events over and over again because I haven’t processed the full emotional meaning of what happened.

I want to make something very clear: I and you and anyone else are not at fault for the ways others have mistreated us. Not at all. We are, instead, responsible for the ways we treat ourselves. If you want to move on and be better for your experiences, it’s important to let yourself feel the sadness and hurt it caused so you can process and move forward.

–

“But Stephanie, that’s a load-bearing defense mechanism, and feeling sad or hurt sounds awful.” Hey, I get that completely. It’s a really difficult and uncomfortable process. If you’d prefer to not dig into it and will handle it yourself, without hurting others, that’s absolutely a valid choice to make. It can take a lot of time to change how you think about, feel about, and approach things in your life. It’s a lot of purposeful effort, very draining at times, and can feel really “bad” along the way.

That said, if that’s work you’re willing and wanting to do to have a better chance of feeling, thinking, and being differently, even if it’s not tomorrow but sometime in the future, the work can be worth it. If you’re wanting to get started or continue the work you’ve already begun, and you think we could be a good therapeutic match, please reach out!

Dr. Stephanie Bloodworth, PsyD, LMFT-S