The following is an excerpt of my book in process for therapists: Straightening Souls.
At one time someone kept placing stickers on the doors of Budapest subway trains with the text: "Jesus gave His blood for your sins." Every time I saw it, the presuppositions bugged me. What sins and what's this whole bloody tangle of ideas? A cherished stranger fortunately performed therapy scribbling on the stickers: "Become a blood donor and save lives."
One of the sins to be repented in my Catholic upbringing was 'making fun of holy things'. We think we have progressed but a similar process is rampant in society today. Various groups suddenly come up with the idea that certain phrases or behaviors are demeaning for them and from that point on those become taboo. I'm not entirely sure about how getting offended at more and more things will promote mental health but I certainly have much to learn.
Psychology is a very serious science taking human problems seriously. It classifies all possible mental issues, allocating each a precise denominaton. If the intention behind this is to preserve or even fortify the present state, it is succeeding very well. Let us tiptoe around symptoms lest they wake up and leave! Let us guard human problems with a worried face, after all, if they go away, so will our livelihood!
The problems connected with seriousness are amply demonstrated by expressions in the language. Parties or holidays are rarely called serious. Problems, mistakes, sicknesses, hardships, on the other hand, can be very serious. Bandler is especially worried about the expression 'dead serious'. Could it be time to let go of these serial killers and have some lightness instead?
One of the messages of humor is that things are not that bad. Being serious, just like most human rigidities, generally only allows for a single interpretation of the world. Humor does the opposite: it dismantles cumbersome structures, turns moth-eaten views upside down, lets us see the prison cells we locked ourselves into. It jolts us out of being lost in problems, self-pity, hopelesness, bringing resources to the foreground. A hearthy laugh is physically freeing, literally healing.
Obviously, we will not laugh at our patients but with them, at all the human failings, weirdness, all the inanities we do to ourselves. Many people don't realize how similar convolutions human minds make, no matter the personality or the cullture.
Categorizing different forms of humor is a questionable endeavor as they assist precisely in escaping from the Matrix. Yet if you pay attention to the language patterns of people endowed with humor you can add to your toolbox of therapeutic interventions. Humor usually involves an unexpected change to a different frame of reference. This can be a somersault in logic, a linguistic ambiquity, some kind of category violation, a dissonant element.
Taking things to the extreme may also be present. One version that also helps in information gathering is taking the client literally and giving off-the-wall ‘solutions’. They complain about not being able to listen to their boss talk. You nod with understanding and offer a roll of masking tape. That's not a good solution? So what exactly does he want?
Another possibility is deliberately misunderstanding the client. "I would like to make my husband, Greg..." "You would like to break your husband's leg?" We generally want to give positive and ecological suggestions but sometimes you have to break some dudes, sorry, rules.
The necessary conditions for all this is the type of deep rapport that we have already talked about together with noticing the reaction you get. That way you can take a quick leap into another direction before the patient would have time to get offended.
Or the verbal part is congruent but doesn’t match some other element such as context, your goals or metacommunication. You may only skirt humor this way but that's enough to lighten the mood while reframing things. "Could you speak a bit more softly?", you say to your muttering client who complains about others not being attentive. Scarcasm can also be directed toward yourself. Your patient complains about insomnia. "I never had that problem", you say rubbing your eyes and yawning. A good dose of proud self-abashment can give the client a model of self-acceptance and admitting mistakes at the same time.
A rather extreme form of healing with humor is provocative therapy invented by Frank Farelly who disrespects every rule in the book in order to help the patient. Only read his book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/392656.Provocative_Therapy) if you are okay with tears of mirth rolling down your cheeks.
You can also learn a lot from stand-up comedians who ferociously attack individual and social taboos having an important therapeutic effect on society. There are a large number of philosophers and healers on the internet who disguise themselves in clown's clothes. You can even quote them. “According to so-and-so the world is..."
One of the most redeeming features of the Kádár-era in communist Hungary was the jokes that appeared immediately after every event. If anything merits being revived from that time it's those jokes. Until then here's an old one:
"Does anyone in the family suffer from mental problems?"
"No, we are all enjoying them."