Look, we’ve all got that mate who cracks jokes at funerals. The one who responds to bad news with something wildly inappropriate. And while part of you wants to tell them to read the room, another part of you is trying not to laugh.
Turns out, they might be onto something.
Recent research is backing up what a lot of us have suspected for ages: making light of terrible situations isn’t just a deflection tactic. It’s actually doing something useful in your brain.
The Science Bit (Without the Lab Coat)
A 2025 study looked at young adults who use dark humor and found they were better at bouncing back from emotional hits. These weren’t people who magically felt less stressed—they just handled it better. Think of it like having a decent toolkit when your bathroom floods. The water’s still there, but at least you’re not standing in it, crying and googling plumbers at 2am[1].
What’s interesting is that humor seems to work best when you’re already using dodgy coping strategies. You know the ones. Pretending the problem doesn’t exist. Binge-watching entire series to avoid thinking about your life. Scrolling until your eyes hurt.
Normally, avoidance makes things worse. But throw some humor into the mix, and suddenly it’s less destructive. It doesn’t make avoidance *good*, but it takes the edge off the damage[2].
When Your Brain Plays Tricks (The Good Kind)
Here’s what happens when you laugh at something objectively awful: your brain gets a hit of the good chemicals. Endorphins spike. Cortisol (that’s your stress hormone) drops. For a bit, your body thinks things might not be completely terrible[9][11].
More importantly, humor lets you reframe the narrative. That humiliating thing that happened at work? The relationship that imploded? The global event that’s making you question everything? Humor gives you a way to look at it sideways, find an angle that doesn’t just feel like pure pain[5].
This isn’t about toxic positivity or pretending everything’s fine. It’s about finding a pressure release valve before something bursts.
The Dark Stuff
People are even using humor to process trauma. Proper, heavy trauma. Wars. Disasters. The kind of experiences that break people.
TikTok’s become this weird therapeutic space where people share their worst moments wrapped in jokes. It sounds wrong until you see it working. Someone posts about their darkest experience with a punchline attached, and suddenly thousands of people are going “Christ, me too.” That shared vulnerability, that collective “we’re all losing it together,” creates something resembling healing[8][10][12].
The researchers call it post-traumatic growth. Regular people call it getting through another day without completely falling apart.
When It Doesn’t Work
Obviously, this isn’t a magic fix. You can’t joke your way out of everything, and some people have tried and ended up in a worse place.
If you’re using humor to completely avoid dealing with your feelings, you’re just building a bigger problem. It’s the difference between laughing *at* your situation to cope and laughing *instead of* coping[7].
Context matters too. What works in one culture or social group completely bombs in another. Humor’s messy and personal and dependent on a million factors that researchers are still trying to map out[3][13].
So What?
Nobody’s saying you should turn into a stand-up comedian or force yourself to find the funny side of genuinely shit situations.
But if your instinct when things go wrong is to find something—anything—to laugh about? You’re probably not broken. You might actually be onto a decent coping strategy.
The research is pretty clear: humor builds resilience. It helps you connect with other people who are also struggling. It gives your brain a break from the constant stress response. It won’t fix everything, but it might help you stay upright while you work out what to do next.
And sometimes, staying upright is enough.
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References
[1] 2025 study on dark humor and emotional resilience in emerging adults
[2] Cross-sectional research on humor moderating maladaptive coping strategies
[3] Research on social and cultural factors in humor effectiveness
[4] Professional commentary from rehabilitation and mental health specialists
[5] Contemporary reviews on humor reshaping negative experiences
[7] Qualitative research on limitations of humor as coping mechanism
[8] Perspectives on humor’s role in trauma and post-traumatic growth
[9] Studies on biological effects of humor on cortisol and stress markers
[10] Social media interviews on TikTok as therapeutic space
[11] Research on humor’s physiological effects and endorphin release
[12] Studies on humor in war and large-scale crisis contexts
[13] Research on cultural dependency of humor effectiveness
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