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Using humour as a pick-me-up

Warren_B
Blue Voices Member
Blue Voices Member

One of the ways I pick myself up is by using humour.  (I've also used it to try to pick up other people, but that's another story...)

So I was interested to know whether other people also use humour, either humour created by other people or self-created humour.  (Sometimes its easier to turn ourselves on...).

 Humour can be a hard balance, because you don't want to offend people but I quite enjoy the word play you see used by advertisers where there are multiple meanings. Then you can act all innocent if someone gets offended.  

Just as an example, in a Share Point post about mental health that I added in the very large organisation I work in, I recently quoted the following lines from the old Smokie song:

Something's been making me blue;

And somehow I can't talk it over with you.

There were three different meanings of the word 'blue' I was using in those quoted lines:

1. I knew I had some kind of mental health problem including the 'blues' (depression) but wasn't sure what it was at the time.  Just this week, I received a bipolar diagnosis and am possibly on the Autism Spectrum Disorder as well.

2.  My mental health problems and some other factors were causing me to 'blue' (argue) a lot with other colleagues.

3. 'Blue' also refers to adult movies etc ('blue movies') so I put some innuendo in the background in the post,which people always enjoy and advertisers often use a lot.

I also write fairly lame jokes, like the following knock knock joke:

Knock knock

Who's there?

Empathy

Empathy who?

Who cares?

I care

And then, once I'm sick of my own lame humour, I turn to the professionals, like the great Robin Williams.   I'm just about to watch a DVD of one of his stand-up jokes tonight.  The back of the DVD talks about Robin Williams (who we knew had some mental health issues) having, in this performance, "pranced, flounced, minced, pounced, zigzagged, hip-hopped, whirled and twirled, talking nonstop about everything fro surgically enhanced breasts to the great anthrax scare".  Sounds exactly like a few of the manic episodes I had a few weeks ago before the  meds started calming me down a bit.

Anyhow, I'm interested to know whether humour helps other people with their blues as well.  We won't all have the same taste in jokes (particularly the 'adult blue' ones...) but I think humour is something that can be helpful for everyone.  It lifts our moods, and that can only be a good thing, right?

1 Reply 1

white knight
Community Champion
Community Champion

Hi Warren B, welcome to Beyond Blue forums

Top post.

I've also found that when depressed (either me or my wife) we tend to naturally leans towards sad movies when we want a day out at the cinemas. Then we actively seek a funny or action movie instead and this really brightens up our mood. It works.

We should not be afraid to laugh and we should be aware of our sub concious working against us as we think negatively when we are in the 'zone'.

Thanks again   Tony WK