COMEDY AND TRAGEDY Two Sides of Humor Coaching

“Is humor coaching all lightheartedness and fun?” That’s what someone wrote and asked after last week’s Morpheus #48 on Humor Coaching. And, of course, the answer is no. Actually a surprising fact about humor is that it is not only a laughing matter, it is sometimes a crying matter. If that sounds a bit confusing, let me explain.

Essentially humor is triggered by, and primarily about, incongruency. Where there is something incongruent, something does not fit, something is odd, strange, out of place, inappropriate, inconsistent, unexpected, or surprising— you have the very foundation of humor. Humor starts with a violation of what’s normal and what we normally expect. Now concerning the psychology of incongruency— we humans are so built that we do not like it! It violates the very way our brains are set up to function. And so when we find it, there are some basic human ways of responding:

1) We respond with stress— which shows up as anger, fear, anxiety, etc. With incongruency, you feel upset with the world. You are negatively aroused. Now things are not funny, but serious.