Find Your Funny Bone

Recently, I heard the comedian Aparna Nancherla interviewed on NPR. As a therapist who’s worked with people processing deep pain and loss, going to the depths comes easily to me. But one thing Nancherla said stayed with me as an important reminder about the healing power of humor:

from the book, “you can only yell at me for one thing at a time: rules for couples,” by patricia Marx & roz chast. i highly recommend it for belly laughs!

“Sadness and laughter, to me, feel linked in a weird way in that it almost feels like once you get to the logical end of one, you sort of start entering the other one. And I feel like comedy is sort of questioning things with adding a little dose of hope…you're sort of like, this is ridiculous. Let's laugh about it. So it adds that levity to take some of the burden off.”

Think about it: When was the last time you laughed—I’m talking belly laughs—with your partner? Every relationship has serious issues to work on. However, many couples find themselves working so hard on their relationship that they can forget to prioritize having fun together. A couple’s ability to bring humor and joy into their relationship is essential to their happiness.

“People say they want a sense of humor in a mate, but that’s a broad concept,” says Jeffrey Hall, University of Kansas associate professor of communication studies. He published an article in the Journal of Personal Relationships, surveying the findings of 39 studies, involving more than 15,000 participants, on the importance of humor in relationships. “That people think you are funny or you can make a joke is not strongly related to relationship satisfaction. What is strongly related to relationship satisfaction is the humor that couples create together. If you share a sense of what’s funny, it affirms you and affirms your relationship through laughter.”

Here are some ideas to bring more humor into your relationship.

• Make a game out of learning new jokes, memorizing them, and sharing them with each other. You can even involve the kids and make it a dinnertime ritual. (In our family, Laugh Out Loud Jokes for Kids has become a shared favorite.)

• Watch funny movies or TV shows together. You may need to experiment with a few comedic styles to find something that you both find hysterical. (My husband and I swear by “The Office” when we need to laugh.)

• Enjoy a round of jump-start deep belly laughing. This is a practice that comes from the ancient Chinese healing art known as Chi Kung. Facing your partner, place your hands on your diaphragm (belly), open your mouth, and say, “hah, hah, hah,” until you erupt in peals of laughter. Yes, you’ll feel ridiculous, but there’s medical science behind this. Laughing stimulates the movement of the abdominal muscles, which calms the nervous system, lowers stress levels, and gives you energy. The body does not know the difference between fake and real laughter, so you still receive all the same benefits.

• Invest in clown noses or Groucho Marx glasses. Take a tip from my mentors in couples’ counseling, Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D. In their book, “Making Marriage Simple: 10 Truths for Changing the Relationship You Have Into the One You Want,” they discuss how they realized they were “fun-impaired and humor-deficient.” So one night, they made dinner wearing Groucho Marx glasses and kept them on through the entire meal! This is another exercise where I could see little kids playing along. (But if you have tweens or teens, you may want to save this one for when they’re gone on a sleepover.)

Keep in mind—stretching into some of these playful practices can feel uncomfortable. That’s normal! This kind of discomfort is actually good. Think of it like working out at the gym, in the sense that you’ll feel some discomfort while building new muscles and capacities. Being fearless about leaving your comfort zone will ultimately lead to growth.

Safe Conversations: Healing Relationships, Healing Communities

If you’ve read the bio on my website, you’ll know it’s a firmly held belief of mine that when we learn how to transform our intimate relationships with empathy and positive connection in couples’ counseling, that shift ripples out to our children and our community, and can therefore bring about healing in the broader culture. Yet unfortunately, only about 14 percent of the population goes to counseling, so the impact of therapy on our broader culture can only go so far. And lord knows, our culture could use some extra help right now.

As we embark on another Presidential election year in the U.S., it’s deeply disturbing to me to witness the lack of civility in political discourse, and the prevalence of online bullying and reactionary language when people disagree with one another. (At one point recently, I had to Google “snake emoji” to understand it was the latest form of cutting down a woman on social media.)

One of the reasons I’m proud to be a certified Imago Relationship Therapist is that it’s the only method of mainstream couples’ counseling that has embarked on what I see as a social justice mission: to bring the key communication skills outside the therapy clinic, into the broader communities, where it’s most needed.

In July 2010, Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and his wife Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D., co-founders of Imago Relationship Therapy, invited six therapists and their spouses for a weekend discussion about collaborating on a project to translate their therapy systems and processes into educational material that could be distributed to the public, through local community outreach. What began as a think-tank of distinguished relationship experts has grown into a dynamic group that has come together to catalyze a national healthy relationship movement—and to provide public access to the best science-based resources on building and sustaining healthy relationships.

The program, which takes the key concepts of Imago Therapy and translates it into an educational program called Safe Conversations, piloted in Dallas, TX in 2012, with a series of free community workshops, where childcare was provided. While couples were initially targeted with these workshops in the beginning, in subsequent years, the program has been adapted for workplace and school classroom outreach as well. In 2016, the Safe Conversations initiative received special recognition from Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, for its service to the city of Dallas.

Workshop participants have reported decreased anxiety and increased relational satisfaction. And a whopping 98% said the workshop was “inspiring and life-changing.”

Interested in learning more? Check out this video about the project:

Safe Conversations brings Imago Relationship Therapy from the clinic to the community.

Are You A Maximizer (Tiger) or a Minimizer (Turtle)?

In my years of practice as a couples’ counselor, I’ve seen one consistent way in which the cliché “opposites attract” is true. In every single couple I’ve worked with, each partner has a different way of responding during stress or conflict. Either they “maximize” and enlarge their energy, or they “minimize” and implode their energy inward, withdrawing. We call these personality types the “maximizers” or “tigers” and the “minimizers” or “turtles,” respectively. (In case you’re wondering, I’m a tiger and my husband is a turtle.)

In the relationship, the maximizer is the pursuer, the partner who initiates emotional connection, the one who always wants to talk about things; while the minimizer is the withdrawer, the partner who needs space and tends to keep their feelings contained. And when they come to my office, often the maximizer is the one who initiates therapy, the “dragger,” while the minimizer is the one who may show up somewhat reluctantly, as the “draggee.”

These personality types are really two expressions of how we learned to adapt to stress. In the primitive part of our brain, we confuse psychological distress with physical survival. This then triggers our fight or flight mechanism. As a rule, partners tend to complement each other and one tends to fight (maximizer), while the other tends to flee (minimizer).

Why is learning this important? First of all, it helps to understand that these are unconscious defense mechanisms, meaning they are deeply ingrained behaviors. In other words, your partner isn’t hiding in the bedroom after an argument just to piss you off, but because their reptilian brain literally feels under threat, and it is taking their nervous system time to settle down. When I learned about these behavior patterns, it greatly increased my understanding of (and empathy for) my partner. Truth be told, learning all of this helped me to legitimize the “turtle” role as just different—not less engaged in the relationship, as I had wanted to see it. Now, when my husband is feeling stressed by work and needs to withdraw for a spell at home, he will tell me he needs some “Turtle Time,” and it’s become a code word of understanding and compassion.

If we want a contented, more conscious relationship, we all have to learn to accommodate these differences, and learn to compromise by meeting in the middle.

Here is a list with the qualities of each type. Which seems to describe your experience of yourself in relationships?

Maximizers:

• Lets feelings out

• Exaggerates feelings

• Mostly exaggerates their needs

• Thrives on sharing as much as possible

• Tends towards excessive generosity

• Outer-directed, asks direction from others

• Thinks mainly of others

• Alternates between aggressiveness and passivity

Minimizers:

• Keeps feelings in

• Diminishes feelings

• Mostly denies their needs

• Shares little of inner world

• Tends to withhold feelings, thoughts, behaviors

• Inner-directed; takes direction mostly from themselves

• Thinks mainly about themselves

• Alternates between passive-aggressive and dominant/controlling

Make Your Relationship a Zero-Negativity Zone

I remember it all these decades later: The worn-out, tobacco-smelling olive green jacket that my Dad wore around town like a second bathrobe, that my Mom made no secret of loathing. Dad would wear it everywhere: the putting green, the office, even out to dinner. Ironically, I also now have my own version of the olive green jacket, and my husband, displaying much more subtlety (and compassion) than my mother, will periodically ask, “Maybe it’s time to go to the North Face Outlet and see if you can update that old purple jacket.”

It’s commonly believed that criticism is a constructive process—one member of a relationship feels that by making seemingly innocuous “suggestions” for how their partner might improve, they’re merely helping them be their best self. In fact, the culture of self-improvement is so normalized that these hints are rarely seen for what they are—negativity, pure and simple.

“Hurtful words in a relationship can be like a drop of red dye in a glass of water that turns the whole glass pink,” writes Harville Hendrix, the co-creator of Imago Relationship Therapy. “What starts out as a slip of the tongue, a small slight from one person to another, sets a process in motion that slowly (or quickly) permeates a relationship and begins to define its tone.”

Criticism doesn’t have to be verbal. It can be a suggestion of self-improvement, as in the examples above. It can also be a touch; a glare; an eye roll; or a deep breath, meant to convey annoyance. However it comes out, make no mistake: It’s harmful for the relationship. And keep in mind, it doesn’t matter if you had “good intentions.” If your partner experiences your words, behavior or body language as negative, don’t argue with their perception. Work to repair the connection quickly, and let go of the instinct to defend yourself.

We’re trained from an evolutionary perspective to perceive threat, and put-downs are registered in the brain as “threat,” which activates our limbic system—the reptilian part of the brain which responds to danger with the “fight, flight or freeze” response. So it makes sense that the criticized person’s response to their partner will take one of three forms: they may fight back with a barb of their own; avoid their partner; or “play dead” by becoming submissive and trying to please.

Research by Dr. John Gottman, Ph.D. shows that healthy relationships are characterized by a five to one ratio of positive to negative interactions. Imago Relationship Therapy takes it a step further, and advocates making the relationship a space of “zero negativity.” In my office, I teach a fun yet formalized process for making this practice a daily way of life, and I’ve seen great success with couples who stick with it. Here are some guidelines to get you started:

• If you experience negativity, say, “ouch.” (Or whatever word you agree on that signals you hear or feel negativity.) Now, it’s time to repair and reconnect using ONE of the following ways:

• Be curious rather than negative. Ask for a dialogue to learn what produced the “ouch.” Was it a word, tone of voice, look in the eye, gesture?

• Ask your partner to say what they said in a way that doesn’t feel so negative to you. You can model it for them.

• Take a time out. Ask for a “do-over.” You can simply start over and redo the interaction.

• Have a dialogue with your partner about what repairs an “ouch” for each of you. It can include apologies, laughing, a back rub, dancing with each other…be creative!

Give Up the Battle Over Who's "Right"

You’ve probably heard the relationship advice, “You can be right; or you can be together.” Often when we get into conflict with our partners, we hold on with every ounce of our being to the conviction that we are right…and surrendering that assumption may feel like capitulation in the heat of an argument.

One of the things I most love about Imago Relationship counseling is that it offers couples practical tools in the art of non-defensive communication. To stay in connection with our partner during conflict or disagreement, we have to relinquish the self-centered idea that “I am right” and “you are wrong.” We call this process validation—acknowledging that there is more than one way to view the world. Validation is the skill of communicating to another that you can understand a situation from their point of view. You can see the sense that their perspective makes, understand their logic, and accept its validity. But here’s the twist—validation does not mean that you agree and share the same perspective. When I validate my partner, I am not necessarily agreeing with him, but accepting that his perspective is as valid as my own.

This process may sound simple, but it involves a humbling process of checking my self-centered “ego” at the door. I am giving up the conviction that there is a right way (my way, of course!) and a wrong way (your way!) to see things. I’m letting go of being “right” and making you “wrong” if your perspective differs from my own. In essence, this process involves transcending the self and visiting the world of someone else. It may help to think of this as a gift you are giving to your partner, for the good of your relationship.

The next time you find yourself in the heat of an argument, take a deep breath, step back, and make an effort to understand what your partner is saying. One way to do this is to “mirror” or repeat back what they’ve said to make sure you’ve heard it accurately. Then go a step further. Validate their perspective by saying, “You make sense, and what makes sense is….” You may be surprised to see how quickly this can turn the situation around from conflict into connection.