Of course, I like studying and the freedoms that it brings, but there is this current of… something.
Something I could not quite name until the present moment.
Well, I guess I’ve been always quite shy, but I’ve some friends here now I guess. We have the chatty and funny Jamie, the intelligent Sasha and the perceptive Chris.
It started subtly. A comment here, a joke there.
In the beginning, I considered it as the regular teasing between friends. However, as the days went by, I was able to develop a pattern, especially with Jamie.
“Hey, Sachs! Nice shirt. I didn’t know they made them in the just rolled out of bed style.” Jamie would always laugh. If I remained passive, they would follow it up with, “Come on, I am just joking, you know I care for you.”
But did they? The comments did not stop coming and each new comment was a little more cruel than the one before. And each time, it was followed by that same refrain: ‘’Of course I didn’t mean that, I was only joking!’’
I began isolating myself, and I spent more time in my dorm than with my friends. It was at this time that I came across an article that explained a type of psychology called “hostile humor.”
In a study by Dr. Thomas Ford and his co-authors, published in the “Humor” journal in 2017, hostile humor is characterized as a form of aggression that is couched in humor. The study indicates that individuals, who employ this type of humor, are likely to use them to convey hostility while denying it.
It wasn’t something that I was making up in my head. Knowing this, I wanted to address Jamie.
One day I approach him after the class and said, “Hey, may I talk to you for a moment?”
Jamie was quite shocked but agreed. “Sure, what’s up?”
I drew in a deep breath. “I have observed that a number of the jokes that you have been telling recently are rather… cruel, and I am not certain whether you intend this or not.”
Jamie’s face fell. “What? No, I’m only pulling your leg! You know that I have no such intentions at all.”
This was the age old defense. This time, however, I was ready.
“I know you say that but that does not exempt me from feeling this way; there is actually a term for this — hostile humor; it is a form of humor that is used to express aggression.”
Jamie looked stunned. “I. .. I had no idea. I thought we were just having fun.”
This dialogue enlightened me regarding various aspects that I had not considered before; I endeavored to know more with terms such as microaggression and gaslighting.
Microaggressions are defined as the daily, pervasive, and often unconscious acts of prejudice by the scholar Chester M. Pierce who first used the term in the 1970s. Although the concept was first developed to describe the relations between the races, it has been applied to other oppressed categories. For me, the microaggressions were related to my disposition and what people perceived as my lack of social skills.
Gaslighting, one more idea that can be related to the given topic, is a type of psychological abuse where a person or a group makes another person doubt his or her own sanity, memories, or the world around. The term is derived from the play “Gas Light” written in 1938 and its film counterparts. In my case the minimization and denial of negative motives such as ‘I’m just kidding!’ was a kind of gaslighting.
…
I decided to do something about it.
I also looked up for ways on how to cope with these problems and how to solve them. The one that I could easily associate myself with is assertive communication which was defined by the psychologist Andrew Salter in the 1940s.
Assertive communication is the process of communicating one’s needs, wants, and limits without violating the rights of others. Thus, it is the balanced ground between passive and aggressive communication behaviors.
I also engaged in assertive communication skills, for example, instead of saying you make me angry, I said I feel angry when. For instance, instead of saying ‘You are always teasing me,’ I would have to say, ‘I get offended when people ridicule me for my looks or how I behave’.
Jamie for his part at least attempted to modify his behavior for the better. Thus, the friendship that we shared developed even more as we learned how to express our thoughts and feelings in a better way.
Nevertheless, not all of my relationships became better. This is because, out of the group, I assumed that Chris would be the most sensitive to the situation.
’Do you not think that you are overdoing it?’ he said when I attempted to convey how I felt. ‘That’s just how friends are supposed to be I suppose. If you can’t take a joke, then maybe you should learn to.’
He replied in a manner that is known as invalidation by psychologists, which means disregarding, ignoring or criticizing others’ thoughts, feelings or experiences. Self-esteem and mental health can be severely affected by it.
Because of this invalidation, I turned to another psychological concept: It is therefore clear that the process under consideration here is that of boundary setting.
The term boundaries has been described as the rules that are put in place in relations to avoid getting hurt in some or any way. These (boundaries) are not about dominating others but about defining the extent to which one is willing to be messed with in the process of social engagement.
I thought that the best thing to do was to, therefore, draw a clear line with Chris. “Well that is your point of view,” I said to him, “but I want you to know that I do not like it, and if you continue to do so I may have to limit my contact with you. “
It wasn’t easy and for a while it was rather tense.
Slowly, however, my friends got it. Specifically, Sasha became a good friend and supported her.
I have been reading about emotional intelligence,’ she said to me one day.
Emotional intelligence, a concept popularized by psychologist Daniel Goleman in the 1990s, involves five key elements:
- understanding of oneself
- management of one’s emotions and behavior
- having goals
- being able to understand other people’s feelings
- managing relationships
This is something that as the individuals in the group, all of us began to understand and as such our group dynamics started to change.
…
While we were all at the library one day, Jamie closed their textbook and told me, “Sachs, I have been thinking about what you said about hostile humor and I checked it up, I realize that I got most of it from my family. We used humor to show affection but I did not understand the impact it has on the people we joke with. I apologize and I am in the process of changing.”
Words said to me was more precious than I could explain to anyone. It was a stark realization that change is indeed conceivable; yet, it is frequently initiated by the process of enlightening the society.
…
I hope you enjoyed reading. This blog post comes from what I’ve learned, what I think, and what I believe. The named used in this blog post are not real.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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