Do you hide behind humor?

[Gekko2508]

I'm fine being the butt end of jokes, as long as people are laughing at the joke, not at me. I wish I was nearly wordly creative enough to hide behind good humour... I'm only stuck with severe sarcasm or abyss-like dark humour. There I have to be careful whom to be humourful with~

 

[Iamnotarabot]

The worst is thay you can say things people will take as humor but when it comes to you and someone says something supposed to be funny well many time I just find it cringy because I dont know how much the person is serious or sometimes if it was realy a joke at all.

 

[Lichi]

I use humor for many purposes, but as a shield, specifically? Yes.

When you make a joke of something that isn't easy to reckon with, you end up never having to own those things.

Painful memories? Regrets? Current and future problems? I make jokes about them, and take on a cavalier attitude. People think I'm not taking things seriously, but I am. I'm just using humor to keep from having to own the emotional baggage that comes with those things. I still deal with them any which way, but in that way, humor is my shield.

Fo' instance: I sing the "credit card debt" jingle from Family Guy when I think about the crushing debt I'm currently battling. It's either that and I laugh and proceed forward with the situation normally, or I worry as much about it as society says I should and end up with rolling panic attacks and complete paralysis for dealing with the situation. So in that way, I guess you could say humor is both my sword and my shield.

***

Just because I made kind of an esoteric reference, here's the "credit card debt" jingle:

Although my lawyer would want me to say that none of the words in that video nor the song are my own, when I sing them I do so purely for entertainment purposes, and I have every intention of paying back my $30,000 in credit card debt.

This is the exact thing I'm talking about! You don't find anything else that will help the situation so at least you can make it comical. Sometimes I narrate my own life when things go wrong and I always look at the funny aspect. That aspect is often a dark kind of humor, but at least it keeps me fuelled.

No, I don't use humor all that often, unless it's with people who have known me for a long time. Humor is difficult to do unless it's slightly flippant, I tend towards slightly sarcastic even brittle humor rather than silliness.

Sarcasm can also get very funny. Passive aggressiveness can also be very funny.

People often think that I don't have a sense of humour because I don't talk much, and don't get or respond to people's jokes. But it's not true, I do have a sense of humour. I have a 'childish' humour, silly slapstick, farcical, toilet humour, Monty Python. I can be quite sarcastic at times and one thing I do a lot is say something that is the opposite of the truth while indicating quotation marks with my fingers.

The difficulty I have is getting other people's jokes. I don't have whatever it is that they have in their mind when they are making the joke and don't know what they mean. Or they are referencing something and I don't get the reference: I don't watch TV and am unaware of the various memes flying around associated with TV shows or celebrities.

Also, I can't do banter. Banter is a very important social skill which, seemly, all people must have to be part of a social circle and and be accepted. If you don't have it, you are not considered one of them, part of the group. People think that you are boring, can't take a joke, humourless and they dismiss you, ignore you and make fun of you. It's so hard to know when a person is being serious or trying to make a joke, and it catches me out a lot. It's one of my major social skills deficits. When I was a kid, I had a very hard time because I never knew when someone was making a joke or teasing me, and took everything seriously. So the other kids caught onto this fact, and began to tease me on purpose to wind me up and make me melt down.

Slapstick comedy for me is the preferred version. Anything that can be viewed clearly in a physical form is easier. I also figured that either people laugh at you or with you. If the motivation is laughter then you win either way.

Well this is a very weird topic for me, I dont know how I use humor...

I mean some people say that I am sarcastic and that sometimes I use dark humor, or they even say that I am always using humor to defuse situations.

Like it depends on the setting I would say, but often I was considered like a funny guy at hightschool when I was younger or during vacation camp.

But most of the time, I just think of something and say it, and it comes up as humor for people around me, I have learned that I am using humor without being aware of it.

Like , for instance with my therapist last session, we talked about my psychiatrist tha gave me an appointement in 2019 while I was eager to get an official diagnosis as soon as possible.

And I said to my therapist that the psychiatrist was realy calm and try to confort me saying that eventually someone will give up an appointement before and I said that " yeah someone might die or whatever" and she laughed so I laughed back. But its actually what I was thinking like 1rst degree, i was not trying to be humoristic...

Or another time I was at the gym and the person managing our accounts at the gym told me that every month I had to re register my card each month If I wanted to enter the gym during specific hours ( I never went to the gym again kek) , I told her that if she gave me the log I could do it myself in order to not bother her, she laughted aswell.

Now I know that my "out of place" thinking , is considered as humor, so I put a more humoristic tone to it when I have a weird idea because I know it will be considered as humor , but this is just me thinking actually xD.

Its fun but at the same time well, it dragges yourself down a little because you think that no one will ever take you seriously.

I Think I know how to be considered a bit more serisouly, but , I need to put some effort in it sometimes, while being funny for others is just how I think when I interract with people by default, is that clear ? xDD

The worst is thay you can say things people will take as humor but when it comes to you and someone says something supposed to be funny well many time I just find it cringy because I dont know how much the person is serious or sometimes if it was realy a joke at all.

Well sometimes it's just that you're labelled out as the funny person so often that everything you say gets taken with that intention. I had two friends who were fighting intensely over something. All of the sudden they turned to me to ask what my thoughts were and I did give them a literal answer "I'm thinking of what to eat" They both broke out laughing thinking that that was a joke. I didn't intend it to be, I was just very very hungry. This is why I tend to not partake in serious discussions with that many people.

I'm also terrible at doing jokes. I'm not able to tone a punchline so the whole joke goes flat. I did consider doing stand up for a while but that dream died when I heard my recording and heard how bad I am at toning jokes.

 

[SparklAng]

When I am unhappy with something, I generally isolate myself or leave the situation. If I just feel rather awkward in a social situation, humor is my go to. And sometimes I laugh things off, because there is not much benefit in doing anything else about it. Deep down, prehaps I dont find it humerous.

Superficial humour, I would say.

 

[SparklAng]

Oh, and dark humour- I guess that would be a shield some occasions. Or prehaps a sword on other occasions!

 

[Propianotuner]

Throughout different times I've hidden behind substances, toys, games, shows, humor, porn, being concealed in plain sight, whatever method I could get my hands on. Everyone needs to hide sometimes, although a lot of what are considered to be archetypal cases of "hiding behind humor" don't seem that way to me at all.

Ditto about having abyssal humor. I like to turn everything on it's head and go down the darkest rabbit holes I can find. But is that hiding, per se? I simply get pleasure out of depraved humor.

 

[AllieP]

I’m a person who likes being goofy a lot of the times. I love pulling pranks on people, which almost always backfire when I’m doing it alone. Most of the situations I go through I make them look humoristic. I will often make a serious topic about me look a lot less serious by putting it in a humorous way so that I can hide behind it in case the other person doesn’t agree or criticizes me. Last session in therapy my therapist highlighted that I am the patient who laughs and makes him laugh the most, and it’s always related to anecdotes that are serious.

Do you use humor as your shield?

Definitely!
I am new here, and currently self-diagnosed but seeking formal diagnosis.
Having grown up believing that who I am was negligible at best and unacceptable at worst, humour has been a way of deflecting people's attention from the Me Inside. It has also been a way of defusing certain situations which I have found profoundly unsettling, and of avoiding questions that I have been afraid to answer about myself.