“Listen, I’ve been thinking about advertising the book and thought maybe I should start an onlyfans account.  Do you feel like that’s onbrand?”

The other end of the line where the publicist had been talking about marketing strategies went dead.

What can I say?  

The ridiculous has always been pretty funny to me.

I can’t imagine living in a world devoid of humor.  As a kid, I could watch movies like Airplane! and Blazing Saddles over and over again.  Laughter got me through childhood heartache after childhood heartache.

I didn’t realize that not everyone enjoyed the same humor that I did until well into my professional career.  Things really seemed to go south for me when I worked for a local Catholic health care system and joked at a staffing that while I majored in psychology; I had a minor in ridicule.

I mean… that’s silly, right?  He doesn’t really have that… DOES HE?

Of course not.

Thankfully, my sense of humor has had tremendous effect in my practice to eliminate depression and anxiety with clientele.  So much so, that I wanted to focus on humor as a therapeutic aid in my writing today.

Did you know that psychology has been researching humor for awhile?  Believe it or not, Freud even wrote a book on jokes.  For real.

As I researched, the same terms kept coming up.  “Affiliative humor,” “Aggressive Humor” among others.  Aggressive humor?  What even is that?

It turns out for research purposes, these terms indicate what ‘kind’ of humor was used and the effect it had on whatever the researcher was exploring.  A dude named Dr. Rod Martin seems to have coined the following categories:

• “Affiliative” humor brings us together and has a universality to it.  So, for example, if someone loses their car keys and says “Man, I was so frustrated!”  An affiliative approach might be to say, “Well, I’d really be worried if you felt great about that.  We’d have to have a conversation about masochism.”  Losing one’s keys is, I think, pretty universally frustrating for most folks and the idea of being really happy about this is kind of strange and, frankly, laughable.

• “Self-enhancing” humor is a good natured laughing at oneself.  So an example might be, ‘If only I had had the wisdom of checking if there was toilet paper left before sitting down.”  This is relatable and is framed in a positive kind of way.

• “Aggressive humor” is usually deprecating another individual and can take the form of verbal bullying at times.  I’m reminded of a Gilda Radner (God rest her soul) character addressing a Bill Murray character on Saturday Night Live several years ago (“The Nerds” if you are keeping notes) in which Gilda recommends Bill lose weight by cutting off his head.

• “Self defeating” humor takes a similar disposition as aggressive, but instead targets the self.  Anything based around things like “I’m so fat, I’m so dumb” would likely fall into this category.  John Oliver bits about being British or pale could be candidates for this.

Dr. Martin even made an online quiz to see what humor styles you have!  Try it out here!

These categories are used in future research articles to determine the ‘kind’ of humor being studied.  Well, time to see what they found!

Menéndez-Aller et al. found in 2020 when they were looking to see if humor could be a protective factor for depression and anxiety that Men and women differ in their use of humor as do people as they age.

Men and women differ in the use of a more aggressive humor style, and the use of affiliative humor styles decreases with age.

They further found that:

Humor is a tool of everyday life and it can act for or against an individual's mental health.

In a study of 400 Japanese adults, Tsukuwaki et al. in 2020 found that:

affiliative humor served to safeguard people from suffering from depression induced by self-isolation during lockdown, whereas aggressive humor increased the likelihood of people becoming depressed during lockdown.

All of this corroborates what I’ve found humor does in talk therapy.  I find that humor is a great ice breaker.  Humor also does a fantastic job at dismissing gross automatic thoughts or hot thoughts.

Check out this brief hypothetical cognitive exchange:

• Client: “So, I thought that I was worthless.”

• Me: “So, even though you got engaged last week, your father called and said he was proud of you, your mentor sent you an email saying that your work was of ‘uncalculable worth’-”

• Client: “Yeah, I did think that.  Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense now, does it?”

There’s some evidence out there that even the physical action of laughing stimulates our vagal pathways to reduce stress and anxiety.  This can be so powerful that some people actually pass out due to laughter.

So, what can all of this teach us?  Humor can be a powerful ally in your recovery from depression and anxiety.  Humor can bring us together and make light of things that often feel very heavy.

Humor, in my opinion, can heal.

As a last note, allow me to recommend the following sources of laughter:

• Anchorman is probably one of the funniest films I have ever seen.  It’s ridiculous.  It’s absurd.  It’s amazing.

• The Naked Gun series is packed with visual humor and absurdity.  Speaking of which, much of Leslie Nielsen’s work is top notch, in my opinion.

• Mel Brooks body of work.  Young Frankenstein is a personal favorite.

Well, I hope this has been useful to you.

I look forward to seeing you soon!

Chris

P.S.  If you are looking for calm instead of laughter, check out Be Calm: A Guided Journal here.  Can you believe someone actually let me write a book?  I hope my editor got a ‘dealing with Chris for several months’ bonus.

References

Martin, R. Puhlik-Doris, P., Larsen, G., Gray, J., & Weir, K. (February 2003). "Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire". Journal of Research in Personality 37 (1): 48–75. doi:10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00534-2.

Menéndez-Aller, Á., Postigo, Á., Montes-Álvarez, P., José González-Primo, F., & García-Cueto, E. (2020). Humor as a protective factor against anxiety and depression. International Journal of Clinical Health & Psychology, 20(1), 38–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijchp.2019.12.002

Tsukawaki, R., & Imura, T. (2021). The relationship between self-isolation during lockdown and individuals’ depressive symptoms: Humor as a moderator. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 49(7), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.10248