Humour and grief

Finding the funny side of a terrible situation doesn’t always feel right for everyone. Some people can find it very upsetting. But for many people humour is an important part of grief.

Sharing jokes about loss can help us feel less alone. It helps us find connection and community with people experiencing the same thing. This could be with strangers or close family and friends.

Recalling funny stories from that person’s past can be a way of sharing memories with family and friends. When we talk about important people in our lives, we feel connected to them, and this can be an important way of managing grief.

If someone was well known for their jokes or sense of humour, laughing can be a way of celebrating them or paying tribute to who they were.

Laughing feels physically good, relieves stress, and helps us feel more relaxed.

Grief can be exhausting. Any break from the pain and discomfort (or many other difficult feelings and emotions) it brings is important.

Sometimes it just feels right to laugh, and we don’t need to know why, and that’s ok too. Our brain often decides for us as to what we need to do to reduce tension or stress. Like screaming or jump away when we see a spider or snuggling up under a blanket when we feel exhausted and need comfort.

Taking a break is also important for our health. Our body couldn’t withstand continuous stress or sadness. We literally need a break from it all during this process, for our health.

Sometimes, we might feel that our mind should always be focused on our grief. That if we stop thinking about it for a while, it is proof we have forgotten the person that has died, or are starting to care less. But this is not true. You don’t owe it to anyone to feel distress and pain.

Watching, listening or reading something funny can take your mind off those difficult emotions just for a while.

Research shows that doing things that trigger positive (soothing) feelings can weaken the negative emotions we experience when we’re grieving, making them easier to cope with. See Laughter and the Three Emotions System below.

If you’re struggling with the idea of “switching off” your brain for a while, it might be helpful to know that our minds are often working in the background without us noticing.

A bit of distraction can help give us time to get used to the idea of that important person being gone, without actively having to think about it. Some grief experts call this the Dual Processing Model, and it is something we describe in our article Are there stages of grief?

The death of someone important to us can dramatically change our lives. We may have to move house, face challenges in our family relationships or deal with money worries.

Even if nothing changes in the outside world, inside we feel like a different person, or like we have lost a part of ourselves. Very few people can get used to all this straight away. We need time to understand and accept our new reality.

When we feel strong emotions, such as distress, the part of our brain responsible for thinking doesn’t work well.

Joking or laughing about a difficult situation makes us feel better and can help us to think properly. This might be about memories of the person who has died, or other important things in our lives, like work or applying for a mortgage.

Having fixed ideas and beliefs about bereavement and grief can cause people to get ‘stuck’ in their grief. They can feel their pain never gets better, or sometimes it even gets worse.

While there is no set timeline for grief, and many people say their grief never really leaves them, most people do feel more able to cope as time passes. Being able to see your loss and your grief from different perspectives can be really helpful in finding ways to come to terms with your loss, understand your grief and discover new ways to cope.

Jokes often help us think of something differently. When we laugh, we are not denying or ignoring the tragic or painful parts of a bereavement, we are perhaps focusing in on one part, looking at it from a distance or thinking about it as if we are someone else.

Life without someone important can feel terrifying. It can also be a big reminder that we too will die someday, which can also be really scary.

Different people find all sorts of ways to cope with these fears.

Pretending for a moment that death, dying or grief are small, insignificant or silly can make them more manageable. 

Compassion based therapy (CFT) is a type of therapy professionals sometimes use to support people who are grieving. An important idea at the centre of this type of therapy, and one that is supported by science, is that we have three types of emotions. These are grouped into ‘systems’ which respond to different situations.

• Threat (self-protection) system: This system is trying to protect us, but can makes us feel scared, anxious, or angry.
• Drive (resource-seeking) System: This is what makes us feel excited, motivated, or happy about achieving something.
• Soothing (contentment) System: This is what makes us feel calm, safe, and content.

Our threat system is there to protect us, so is often the one to activate first, since physical safety is often the most important thing. But when we are grieving it can get over-active and dominate how we feel. By doing things that instead activate our sooth systems, we can ‘turn down’ that threat system, and make some positive emotions stronger.

Ways that laughter is linked with our sooth system:

• It helps us feel connected – sharing memories and feelings with others about a loved one.
• Help us feel accepted – seeing or hearing our experiences of grief in those of others lets us know its ok and normal.

Read more about the three emotions system on Grief Guide

We all understand that death is not funny. And yet it is common for people to use humour to cope with grief. Writers and comedians have been using them as a subject for centuries, so why is this?

What makes something funny is really hard to define. It’s different for all of us.

Some psychologists and comedians think that for something to make us laugh it has to be something that feels a bit ‘wrong’ and yet still seems ‘right’ somehow. It’s a careful balance.

For example:

• Tickling: Tickling is a bit like a physical attack (wrong) but feels ok when done by someone you trust (right). It wouldn’t be funny if someone you didn’t know or like tickled you, it would just be wrong.
• Puns: Puns usually mean using words in an unusual or unexpected way (wrong) but in a way that still makes sense (right).

So, it in fact because death and humour are not supposed to go together, that they make us laugh. It feels wrong – which is the starting point for many of the best jokes.

But we can find all sorts of reasons to make it right at the same time. Such as the feeling of closeness it gives you with family and friends, the fact that the person who has died would have enjoyed the joke and much more.

What is funny is not the same for everyone. In fact, our sense of humour is probably unique. It comes from our childhood experiences, the influence of family, our religion, our interests and much more.

This means what seems like a silly and kind statement to one person, can sometimes feel cruel and critical to the person it is being said to.

We should always be careful when trying to find the fun in a difficult situation like a bereavement. It is best to only joke with someone you are sure will understand that you have kind intentions.

If you are grieving, take care to avoid comedy around death and grief if you feel it won’t be helpful to you.

If someone has said something that has upset you while trying to be funny, think first about why this might be. It might be that they didn’t mean to.

They are grieving too. They are using humour to help themselves feel better or trying to connect with you

It is normal to find relationships hard after a bereavement as grief affects everyone differently, even within the same family. If someone close to you is using humour in a way that is making you feel uncomfortable, it may be helpful to have a conversation with them about it.

You may not want to ask them to stop something that is making them feel better, but understanding their point of view may help you see it differently. Or they may agree to not make jokes when you’re around. See grief and your family relationships.

They were trying to make you feel better

Perhaps they have a different sense of humour to you. Maybe at another time in your life you would have found what they said funny but you’re feeling sensitive right now (and that’s ok!) Let them know their comment wasn’t what you needed from them. Since their intention was good, they should know how to do things differently next time.

They were intentionally trying to hurt your feelings

This is less likely, but not impossible. Some people do use a bereavement as a chance to bully someone. If you’ve spoken to them, and it’s clear they are making you feel bad on purpose, there are some things you can do.

• In some situations, such as school or work, you may be able to make an official complaint.
• Look at information from the National Bullying Helpline or call their helpline
• Be kind to yourself. It’s ok to protect your feelings by avoiding them if you can. Talk to someone you trust about how you are feeling. Hurting someone on purpose is never ok and you shouldn’t have to put up with it.

Sometimes something can make us laugh accidentally or by surprise. Involuntary laughter about something painful can make us feel guilty.

But using humour to cope with difficult situations is really normal and nothing to be ashamed of. For the reasons we have explained above, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Emotions are complicated. We can experience what seem like contradictory feelings, like deep sadness and amusement, at the same time.

Laughing or sharing a joke, in your darkest moments, does not make you bad, it makes you human.