Healthy Humor

Question:

How can I create healthy humor and healing laughter after my values have been violated to help me heal and begin operating in healthy ways in accordance with my values?

Definition:

In contrast to sarcasm, humor (for healing) is laughing or giggling about and finding absurdity in your frustrations, anger and other values violation reactions after leaving the situation where your values were violated. You may be by yourself or with a partner or partners. You laugh about your frustration in a different context . . . one that is safe for you and doesn't harm anyone directly, nor their reputation. The purpose is to bring about your healing related to what happened in the situation and how you reacted to it. Humor is a natural method of healing for those whose tendency under stress is sarcasm. The key difference between sarcasm and healing humor is that in sarcasm, other people are the target of the joke and with healing humor, you include and emphasize yourself.

What to do:

A good way to start is to consider the absurdity in what happened and laugh about your frustrations with the situation. Then laugh some more while pondering your values, what you want and the alternative reactions and responses you could use to bring about a response that respects each person involved.

Conditions for appropriate use with others:

If you have a humor partner, that person needs to agree to listen and be supportive to help you deal positively with the situation. Furthermore, your this partner, needs to be someone not immediately affected by the person or the situation.

Benefits:

Humor allows you laugh about and see the absurdity in a situation that has violated your values in some way. With or without an appropriate "humor partner" you can heal your hurt and stress without sarcasm. Once you have sufficiently healed, you can begin planning and designing ways to deal with the situation productively, whereby you, the others involved and the organization all benefit from what you do. The alternative is to react immediately, before healing, and the likely result is to do harm.

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