Humor as Healing—The Nervous System, Embodied Delight, and the Need for Safe Connection
Episode Notes
“A joyful heart is good medicine.”
But not the kind of joy you fake.
In this episode, Dr. Alison explores the difference between healthy humor and harmful humor — and why that distinction matters for your nervous system, your relationships, and your spiritual formation.
Humor can soothe.
It can bond.
It can bring relief.
But it can also deflect.
Minimize.
Or quietly wound.
You’ll learn:
- Why humor can feel safe for one person and threatening for another
- How teasing can create intimacy… or erode it
- What it looks like to practice discernment without shaming yourself
- Why “getting your joy back” is often a sign of real healing
This conversation is part of Pillar Three in Dr. Cook’s Four Pillars series: Joy & Delight — not as a personality trait or a passing mood, but as a practice of inner formation.
Because joy is not just an emotional expression.
It’s a signal.
When your nervous system begins to feel safe enough to soften, laughter shifts. Delight becomes accessible. Connection deepens.
And sometimes the kind of humor you practice reveals more about your healing than you realize.
More Resources:
Follow Dr. Alison on Instagram @dralisoncook
Join the 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices here.
If you liked this episode, then you’ll love:
Episode 191: The 5 Most Important Things I've Learned About Faith, Attachment, & The Inner Life
Episode 194: When Relationships Start to Drain You—Using Discernment to Stay Connected Without Losing Yourself
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
A joyful heart is good. And I want to be clear here. It's not because a joyful
heart is something we put on or fake. It's because joy that bubbles up from the
inside can literally support the body. For me, humor has often felt safe.
It has felt like a connection. It felt like warmth. But that isn't always the case.
Sometimes that very same behavior, whether it comes out as teasing or joking or
practical pranks, can land as comfort for one nervous system like it does. but it
can land as chaos for another, and it all depends on the way it's being used.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You. I'm Dr.
Allison, and today in this deep dive episode, we're continuing a series I'm calling
The Four Pillars. These are four... areas of inner formation that I come back to
time and again because they show up in every season of life, in healing seasons,
in seasons of doubt and faith, and in our relational. well -being, right?
We've talked about pillar one, that's faith, attachment in the inner life, what forms
us from the inside out so that we can become whole people. And then we talked
about pillar two a couple of weeks ago on connection and discernment and how to
stay open in relationships without losing yourself. And today we're moving into pillar
three. I love this pillar. It's joy and delight. This isn't a fluffy add -on.
This isn't a sort of positive vibes detour. It's a serious part of becoming a whole
person. And I want to take maybe a surprisingly specific angle on this pillar
because I think it reveals so much about emotional maturity and spiritual health.
And that's humor. What I like to think of as... And it's the ability to laugh both
at ourselves and with one another in safe, loving relationships.
Because one of the clearest signs that someone is healing isn't just that we can
suddenly set healthier boundaries. It's that we begin to laugh again. I want to
anchor today's episode in scripture right from the start. The
Medicine. And I want to be clear here. It's not because a joyful heart is something
we put on or fake. It's because joy that bubbles up from the inside can literally
support the body and the nervous system. It can soften the places where we're
clenched or tense. It can say to the system, it's okay to breathe. It's okay to
come out of survival. It's okay to see the humor in this. Not everything is urgent.
Not everything has to be addressed or fixed. everything is a crisis. Sometimes it's
okay to laugh at the absurdity of what it means to be human. Humor is the capacity
to hold reality with enough safety that you can find release. It's not denying
reality, it's holding reality. Again, with enough steadiness internally that you can
find that moment of lift, that moment of relief. And it's such an important quality
that we bring not only to ourselves, the ability to kind of laugh at ourselves a
little bit, hold ourselves lightly, but also a quality that we bring into our
relationships with other people. If you've been married for a while, or if you have
children, or if you've had a good friend in your life for a long time, you know
that that ability to laugh together, not laughing at other people, not making fun of
each other, but laughing together at the absurdity of our humanness and even our
human frailties and foibles is a necessary ingredient to hold us together, to bond
us. It's sort of the counter to crying together, right? If you can cry together, if
you can grieve together, if you can mourn together with someone else, there's a real
depth and substance to that relationship. The same can be said for laughed. if we
can laugh together, if we can honor things with a little bit of lightness, it
really is the glue that holds our relationships together. So if you're listening,
many of us have different experiences with humor, especially in the context of family
relationships. And I want to tell you two stories. My own story is where humor
became a really beautiful part of my family. But I've also talked to a lot of
people where humor was misused in families. And so humor is sort of a Tricky thing
to navigate as an adult. In my family growing up, humor was a kind of love
language. We laughed a lot. My dad in particular has a gift, I would say, a
spiritual gift of humor. I talked about this with Annie F. Downs on the podcast
last year, the spiritual gift of humor. And my dad has that gift. And so
inevitably, he didn't use it to avoid what was hard. We dealt with hard stuff in
my family. But my dad had this knack for lightening a moment when it needed to be
lightened, right? And it eased the tensions. in a way that really kind of lifted
all of our spirits. And we would just start laughing at something absurd or
something in ourselves, often laughing at ourselves. I think that was the key
ingredient I saw in my dad is he was the first to laugh at himself, right? And I
saw that model, the beauty of that confident enough to be able to laugh at my own
foibles. And so for me, humor has often felt safe. It's felt connecting. It's felt
like warmth, but that isn't always the case. Sometimes that very same behavior,
whether it comes out as teasing or joking or practical pranks, can land as comfort
for one nervous system like it did mine, but it can land as chaos for another. And
it all depends on the way it's being used. I remember back in episode 111,
I had a great conversation with Beth McCord, who's an Enneagram expert and just a
brilliant woman and just so real in how she describes her own journey. And she
talked about how watching her husband tease and joke with their kids and how that
was at times activating for her. She could recognize that they were having a great
time. She could see that this was good and nurturing for them, but her body was
screaming, this has to stop. This is too much. Someone's about to get hurt. bad is
about to happen. As she unpacked that over time, she realized it connected to her
own story. She'd been teased a lot as a little girl in really painful ways. It
wasn't nurturing. It was painful and mean. And so teasing didn't register as playful
connection. It registered as we're on the edge of humiliation or harm. This is bad,
right? And so what I so appreciated about this conversation was how she described
learning to work. With her activation over time to honor it, she didn't shame
herself for it. Her experience was valid and it was real. But she also didn't want
to blame her family for the ways they were genuinely having fun. And so she learned
to practice discernment in real time. She'd have to ask herself, is something
unhealthy happening out there? Or is something tender happening in me?
And sometimes she could stay present and remind herself this is okay. And sometimes
she needed to step away. And sometimes she needed to ask her husband and kids,
especially as they became older, to pause, especially if she was in a vulnerable
place so her own system could settle. And that story is such a compassionate picture
of what this pillar is really about, how we reconnect with joy, with humor and
delight, not just in ourselves, but in our relationships. And how these aren't just
personality traits, right? Some people are funny and some people aren't. But how we
orient to joy is something we have to work out over time. These are nervous system
experiences. And for many of us, recovering joy means... over time to recognize what
feels safe, what feels activating, and how to care for ourselves without shutting
down our aliveness. So today we're going to talk about why playfulness isn't
immaturity, but often a sign of growth, why trauma can erase that sense of
playfulness and joy, not because we're broken, but because something in our bodies
learn to brace often when we're very young, and how joy often returns through safe
relationships and small intentional practices that welcome that inner child, the one
within, the one who maybe was hurt back then, but longs to come alive again,
to laugh, create. and wonder and delight without fear. So if you've been listening
along to the daily podcast with me, I've loved making these episodes for you and
with you. You'll notice I try each week to weave in at least one episode that
touches on joy or hope or delight through some small practice.
Savoring what's good, noticing beauty with intention, recovering a sense of meaning
and hope and purpose, practicing gratitude without denying. The reality of what's hard
are opening tiny, beautiful doorways to playfulness and aliveness. And the reason it's
so important for me to include joy and hope and playfulness and laughter, not only
in this deep dive episode, but also each week, is that research shows that emotions
like joy and curiosity don't just feel good in the moment when they strike. They
actually broaden our perspective and help us build longer -term inner resources like
resilience, creativity, and... relational openness. In other words, joy isn't just a
reward for people who have it all together. Joy is a part of how a nervous system
learns. I'm allowed to come out of survival. So when I return to this pillar again
and again, I'm doing it because I want to help you practice your way back into
aliveness, one small opening at a time.
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There are two different things we often call joy. One is a performance joy, the
kind that denies reality, that insists that I'm fine, I'm grateful,
I'm blessed, look at how wonderful my life is. It can be sincere,
but it can also function as armor. The kind of joy I want us to talk about today
is embodied delight, the kind that shows up when your system softens enough to
receive. goodness. And embodied delight usually returns through ordinary human things.
That spontaneous laughter that comes when you see your kid doing something silly. It
comes through play when you just let go and stop planning and have a good time. It
comes through shared inside jokes. I'm going to talk about some of these in the
episode today where you just share humor with somebody. It comes through lightness
that doesn't deny heaviness, but that brings release in the midst of it. And it
comes with the ability to be fully yourself around someone else, right? Because the
best sort of humor honors our human foibles and our human frailties and even the
things we get wrong, right? The best kind of humor says, oh, I see that. And
there's a humorous edge in it because you see it and I see it. We're sharing it
together. And man, the best thing we can do in this moment is just laugh, right?
Oh my gosh, there it is again. And we laugh at ourselves with someone else and
it's healing. It's a beautiful moment of healing. This is why I love this pillar so
much. It's not theoretical. You can feel the difference in your body. So I want to
specifically now talk a little bit about humor as a form of joy for a moment
because humor is one of those human capacities that can either heal a relationship
or quietly harm it when it's misused. Some humor opens a window. It brings relief.
It softens the body. It helps us remember we're on the same team. We're all
muddling our way through. My husband and I years ago coined this. term that we use,
if we get into an argument or we start bickering, and it's really just because
we're both tired or hungry and we're not really arguing about anything that's
meaningful or that we really even need to get to the root of, we call it a
Seinfeld moment, right? So if you remember that show Seinfeld, they'd have a whole
episode and it was sort of about nothing and nonsense. And so we'll come back to
each other so quickly just by going, oh, we're having a Seinfeld moment. And then
we can laugh at ourselves because we're both just being ridiculous, right? We're both
tired. We're both cranky. There's nothing deep going on. We're not really needing to
hurt. other, overanalyze, right? What's going on? This is just a Seinfeld moment.
We're in a moment. Let's just laugh at ourselves and move on. When we have that
category to name some things in our relationships, it really helps sometimes grease
the skids, right? A friction that just happens in our day -to -day life. But in
other instances, humor can be used as armor. It can deflect intimacy. It can avoid
the... harder emotions like grief or even anger. It can mask contempt.
It can keep us from telling the truth, right? And you see this when humor is used
maybe to mock someone, even someone you love. They'll say something kind of mean and
they're trying to hurt you. They're trying to create a dig. It's sort of passive
aggressive or sarcastic. And then when you get your feelings hurt, they say, well, I
was just teasing. You should just be able to take a joke. Well, that's not humor
being used in a healing way. That's humor being used to hurt. And that doesn't
help. create intimacy. That doesn't help create safety. That harms it. We also can
use humor to deflect and not tell the truth, right? We can be overly self -effacing
in a humorous way that's not rooted in the confidence to be able to say, man, I
know who I am and I can laugh at myself because I just did something really dumb,
right? That's humor being used positively. It's like, oh, I did that thing again. I
can't believe I did it, but I'm confident enough to be able to kind of laugh at
myself about it, right? But then sometimes when we're not feeling secure. We don't
feel the confidence to speak up honestly. We can use humor to hide behind it, sort
of, right? We can make ourselves the butt of the jokes without really speaking up
and saying, hey, I actually need to say something here. I need to take something
seriously about myself here, right? So humor can be used both ways. Unhealthy humor
can become a form of spiritual bypassing. It's the laugh that changes the subject
when we're actually sad. It's the joke that keeps you from saying, hurt or I'm not
okay, right? You say I'm fine and you laugh at yourself when your body is clearly
not fine. Maybe it's humor used to avoid vulnerability so you never have to risk
needing anyone or being seen. In this case, humor isn't the problem.
Avoidance is the problem. Healthy humor brings release and then returns to presence.
Healthy humor honors reality. It's rooted in confidence. Bypassing humor keeps you
from presence. altogether. Many of us were never taught to distinguish that
difference. Here's a framework that can help psychology researchers who study humor
often describe different humor styles, some healthier, some unhealthier, and they land
very differently in the nervous system and in our relationships. The first is
affiliative humor. This is humor that builds connection and reduces tension. And then
there's a second kind that's called self -enhancing humor. It's humor that helps you
cope, find perspective, and stay resilient. These two are really healthy, right? But
then there's a third kind. call aggressive humor. This is sarcasm or humor that puts
someone else down. And then there's self -defeating humor. This is humor that
diminishes yourself to stay accepted. And those last two veer into that unhealthy
category. These distinctions are so important because again, not all humor is healthy
humor. And here's the deeper point that underlies all of this. To be able to find
the humor together in a healthy way, you need several important qualities. You need
a stable enough sense. of self to tolerate being imperfect. You need enough self
-compassion to stay kind even when you're not impressive and you're seeing the humor
in that. You need enough nervous system safety to interpret laughter as release.
rather than threat. And when you begin to grow those qualities in yourself and find
them in other people, it's really a joy to be in relationships. We can breathe with
someone. We can exhale. We can be human. We can laugh together, both with each
other and with our own selves. We're not making fun of each other. We're not hiding
from the rough edges of our personalities, but we're laughing together at the
absurdity of our humanity. It is, again, just as powerful as crying together in
those moments. It's physical embodied relief. And that's why often a really good
laugh with someone leads to tears. It's an emotional release for what is so often
just too much to hold alone. I remember one moment in particular in my late 20s
that taught me the value of this quality in a friendship. Taught me to see it in
myself and in someone else. I was single and I'd gone to visit a mutual friend, a
dear friend who was newly married. She lived far away and I was staying with her
in her apartment. And she was living this romantic dream that had felt so elusive
to me. It was Valentine's Day weekend, so it's good timing for this episode. There
were roses all over from her new husband, photos from their romantic honeymoon. They
were so in love. And I was in this incredibly tender, lonely season of my life.
And I wanted to be a good friend of my friend. but inside I was just dying. And
when I went home, I started telling my roommate, who was also a dear friend, about
what happened. I was kind of feeling sorry for myself, right? So I was kind of
complaining to her and just kind of starting to explain how this weekend had gone.
And she just... busted out in peals of laughter. She just started laughing so hard.
She wasn't laughing at me. I knew her well enough to know that. She was so safe.
She was laughing with me. Like the whole thing became absolutely hysterical. Like I
just kept thinking of all the different moments, you know, when my own loneliness
was just magnified by all this romantic joy happening in front of me. And the truth
is no one had done anything wrong. I loved my friend. I was truly happy for her.
I was also genuinely going through a hard season. I was lonely. I just a lot was
going on in my life. And just the juxtaposition of our lives were just real. There
was no denying it. And I had this other friend who could come in and just see the
humor in it, right? The absurdity of it in a way that honored. all of us. It was
just something we had to laugh at. And the laughter, let the whole complicated
reality be shared without shame. It let me release what I had felt without needing
to take it out on my friend when it wasn't her fault. And I realized in that
moment how crucial it is to have relationships where you can hold that both end.
You can hold the joy together. You can hold the sorrow together. Because you have a
friend that knows you and feels for you, you can also laugh together, even in the
face of some of your hard times. And I'll say something I've seen. over and over.
One of the quiet glues that keeps intimacy alive, whether in marriage and friendship
or in family, is a shared climate of playfulness. Not constant joking, not sarcasm,
not avoiding hard things, but enough lightness that love stays breathable. Playfulness
introduces flexibility. It helps us repair the tiny ruptures before they become
resentments. If you're listening and thinking, I used to laugh more. I used to be
lighter. I feel like I lost that. I want you to know that is not uncommon. These
realities don't mean we're too sensitive or something is wrong with us. It just
means a part of us has learned to protect against an old kind of pain, right?
And so we want to pay attention to that and notice that because our nervous systems
had to become vigilant to survive. Remember, play requires safety, and safety is
something that we build. It doesn't just happen. We have to tend and nurture a
sense of lightness, a sense of relief. And sometimes it often starts with repairing
where we've been hurt. Here's the thing. Often the work of repair starts inside of
us. We have to go back to that young part of us, the part of us that knows how
to play, that part of us that knows how to be silly and light and spontaneous and
curious, often that we've lost in our adult relationships. We have to go back to
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This is where the work of repair, of healing, can get really tender and very
internal. Because the part of us that knows how to play, the part of us that knows
how to be silly and light and spontaneous, often isn't our adult, responsible, high
-capacity self. It's often young. A young part of us who learned early on that humor
is risky, sometimes even cruel, that it's childish, maybe we were shamed for being
silly, that it makes you vulnerable, that it might get you in trouble, that it
often gets taken away. And that part of us goes into hiding. And then as adults,
we get very skilled at being competent and productive and responsible and discerning
and mature. But we're not always as skilled at delight. And here's what I want you
to hear. It doesn't mean we're doing something wrong. It means our nervous systems
have learned to prioritize survival over aliveness. And I think of the words of
Jesus who asks us to become again like a little child. Because play and laughter
and aliveness requires a specific kind of safety. The kind of safety where your body
isn't scanning for what might go wrong. Your mind isn't bracing for criticism.
And your heart isn't preparing for humiliation or disappointment. And when I think of
Jesus saying those words, I think to myself, because Jesus ultimately is safe. And
as we learn to know his voice, that childlike sense of play and wonder can return.
So if you relate to that, there's a question I want you to consider. What did that
young child inside of you have to give up in order to stay safe? Maybe it was
laughter. Maybe it was creativity. Maybe it was spontaneity or curiosity. Maybe it
was the freedom to be a little ridiculous or a little silly or a little goofy. And
part of healing isn't only learning to regulate anxiety and work on our communication
and our boundaries. It's learning to welcome those playful, childlike, innocent parts
of you back home. Not forced, not performative, not I'm going to be fun now,
right, with clenched. fists and gritted teeth but gently through actual experiences of
recognizing that safety of a god who says become like a child because you are safe
with me and i want to name something true here for some of you the return of
laughter and play won't necessarily happen first in a relationship it might start
there but it might start in private just noticing something small in the presence of
the god who is always safe and who always honors and longs to see that childlike
sense of wonder in you. Maybe you practice watching something that makes you laugh
and just notice your body soften. Maybe you let yourself enjoy a moment without
immediately feeling guilty like you should be more productive. Maybe you do something
silly that you just want to do for the fun of it. These are not trivial practices.
These are formational. When you nurture that inner young one. of you.
You're not regressing. You're restoring something holy. As we close, I want to offer
three simple practices you can try this week. The first is just to ask yourself,
what kind of humor is this? Whenever humor shows up, maybe it's your own or someone
else's, ask, did this bring relief and connection and lightness or did it create
distance? Did it invite presence or did it cause us to avoid something vulnerable?
Do I feel more like myself or less like myself? Just kind of notice the different
kinds of humor that you see around you. What's mean -spirited and what is bringing
relief or joy or an honest release? And then number two, I like to call this the
one minute savor and smile. Once a day, choose a tiny...
and stay with it for just a few seconds maybe a minute this might be a warm drink
a funny text a meme a song a pet a memory let your body register this feels good
and if a smile comes let it come without explaining it away if a laugh comes start
laughing just the other night i was watching some silly show. I'll tell you what it
is because I find them hysterical. It's Carpool Karaoke with James Corden, these back
episodes. You can find them on YouTube and they just crack me up and I was just
over by myself cracking up and I think my husband thought I had lost it but I
just needed to laugh and they made me laugh and I let myself do it without feeling
like a fool, right? So just notice what makes you smile and let your body feel it.
Let yourself lean into the release. And then number three I like to call the repair
rehearsal. Because if you're someone for whom humor has been harmful, right, it's
really important to name that so you can distinguish humor that hurts from humor
that is life giving. So just choose one phrase that you practice saying out loud or
naming or writing in your journal. Maybe you say it with the other person if it's
safe. But most of all, this is for you to notice when humor is being misused to
say that landed wrong. That wasn't kind. or that isn't humor that helps or there
was cruel intent behind that sarcasm i don't laugh at that the more you can name
when humor is hurting the more you'll be able to distinguish wait a minute that was
funny i can laugh at myself here or that person loves me and they're teasing me
and i want to be able to take that joke i want to be able to laugh at that or
that comedian is actually being funny in a kind They're not being mean.
They're not trying to mock someone. They're actually just illuminating the humor in
this situation, right? This is such an important skill to be able to distinguish
between humor that harms and humor that heals, whether it's in the culture around us
or whether it's in our own relationships. And so the more you can delineate a name,
you... create repair in your own system. Your nervous system becomes more willing to
trust you when it is time to play, when it is time to laugh. You'll let loose.
You'll trust yourself to lean into the release of good humor, of healthy humor,
of kind humor, of humor that heals. And lastly, just a few questions to consider as
we move out into the day. Where has your life become all responsibility and no
delight? What does your system interpret as unsafe? about humor or play?
Who are the people with whom you can breathe where lightness feels possible and
real? What might it look like to practice joy as a form of formation?
May you find the courage to let delight return in small, honest ways. May you learn
to laugh again, not as escape, but as release. And may God meet you not only in
your striving, but in your play. in the holy healing gift of being fully alive.
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean
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the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to
your God -given self.