Photo by Halfpoint - Getty Images
People laughing in group therapy
Emotions are commonly viewed as a barometer indicating mental well-being or distress.
Take anger, for example. Go ballistic at the ball game (short of assaulting another fan or the officials) and you're considered within normal limits. Merely letting off steam, as we say. But pop the same top at a parent-teacher conference or the company sales meeting and those nearby will soon be whispering about men in white coats.
Crying is another case in kind. Weeping at funerals, weddings or tear-jerk movies won't attract wary glances, but blowing the flood gates at the bowling league or the corner bus stop is guaranteed to make inquiring minds more inquisitive.
Psychotherapists pay lots of attention to how their clients juggle feelings and take careful notice when what they deem “inappropriate” emotional expression appears. Men who won't cry over a tragic loss are often labeled “repressed.” Children who trash a room without provocation have an “oppositional disorder.” Those too elated and energetic are deemed “manic.” My profession loves to pathologize behavior.
Sensitive Indicator
But there's a basic form of emotional expression which gets short shrift from mental health types, and that's unfortunate because it’s among the most sensitive mental state indicators of all.
Laughter.
Within reason, a client can be moderately “inappropriate” with their anger, grief, guilt and elation without setting off my psychological smoke alarms, but if they lack a heartfelt sense of humor, I become concerned. Often, humorless people are not well.
When you think about it, laughing is pretty strange in and of itself. It can be a kind of borderline emotional expression that sometimes straddles the fence between sad and glad.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
When we really laugh (there's lots of fake laughing around), there is often a happy-sad ambivalence in the background. Generally, we're chortling over an event or circumstance that one could also bawl about if the situation or one's state of mind were slightly different.
Emotional Perspective
Laughter's unique contribution to mental health is that it puts one's life in emotional perspective, even if just for a few moments. To truly laugh, one must step outside of one's own gnarly, confusing circumstances or state of mind and see the comedy in life’s melodramas.
A genuine sense of humor suggests an underlying gladness about being alive, an ability to feel "yes" even when life is looking like "no." Inversely, its absence is an ominous portent, often a sign of emptiness, despair or bitterness.
There are people who never genuinely laugh. They've learned a kind of tinsel-tone giggling that operates much like a TV laugh track. They turn it on and off when cued by the social circumstances, but the sound of their laughter is hollow and forced, like someone trying to play a guitar with tweezers.
The absence of true laughter is not the only warning sign of a troubled soul. Folks who don't cry, shout, scream, or swoon may be missing out on life's emotional richness, as well. But those who don't cut loose with bonafide guffaws now and then seem checked out on living.
There's a profound healing accompanying cathartic laughing. It's the only feeling in which we validate life's elation and absurdity at the same moment. It’s sort of a comic version of sweet sorrow.
It allows us to cope with the world's crazy-making madness in a way that weeping, screaming bloody murder, or self-analyzing just can't. It's a distinctly non-intellectual and deeply visceral form of self-care. What’s more, when we laugh with others, it helps us feel connected. As pianist and comedian Victor Borge said, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”
When people can truly laugh despite all their woes and worries, I'm hopeful for them. Because with an unalloyed sense of humor, you don't really laugh your head off.
You laugh it on.
