“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”—Erma Bombeck
We joke about what most angers us. We joke about our secret desires. And we joke about what we fear most. Our jokes release us from the tensions and stresses and anxieties that lace our lives. Small wonder then, that both pre- and post-recovery we relished the ghoulish end of the spectrum when it came to humor. For we were the ones possessed by death, despair and self-loathing. As we recovered and the pain began to recede, then so did the gallows humor—at least to some extent.
However, there remains a risk attached to dark humor for those in recovery. The risk is around sabotage—self-sabotage and sabotage of others. We tread lightly on the shards of our past, so that they cut not our soles as we begin our new path… Humor can help lighten our steps, but the lightening may sometimes dishonor the gravity of our experience. We need the balance and the wisdom to discriminate between humor that dis-empowers and humor that celebrates our essential dignity.
Our dignity took a hammering—mostly self-administered—when we were using. Now that we are picking up the pieces, it’s important to be delicate and sensitive to the chinks in our self-esteem. We once liked to chop ourselves up, as a way to distance ourselves from our suffering. While being overly serious could be considered a dis-ease in itself, too much “cutting up” can discredit our real achievements in getting straight and staying straight, sobering up and staying sober.
We can seek to lighten another’s distress by making them laugh—releasing them from what may be a self-involved drama-fit. But let’s always be sensitive to the true dynamics. Is the humor hurtful or helpful? Damaging or restorative? Wounding or healing? Each of us needs to approach our humor in these situations like the helmsman of a sailboat. Is the wind blowing strong, is it gusting, or is it just a faint breeze? How tight we pull the sail in—or how much we let it out—has to be felt for and adjusted to in that very moment. Such are the skills we build as we navigate our recovery.
Today, let’s do an exercise that dramatizes this dynamic. We will call it the Squeeze and Release:
Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and maintain an upright, yet natural-feeling posture. Inhale through your nose. Now, squeeze both your fists as tight as you can. You call that tight? Come on! Tighter, tighter… ok, that’s more like it! Feel the induced tension irradiate up from the fists, until both arms are as tense as you can make them. Hold the tension for a few seconds. Exhale forcefully through the mouth and relax the hands and arms completely. Collect yourself and repeat for a total of ten times.
I squeeze and I release, I squeeze and I release—and I can feel the stress disappear from my body and mind.