In our recent practice group, an intriguing little discussion/debate arose about joking or teasing comments when one person makes a disparaging comment about another in what was intended to be playful humor. How are such teasing comments meeting a need or violating a need? Would the NVC perspective take a stance against these?
Though we soon moved on to other topics, I thought that a continued discussion might take into account the context, the setting, the interpersonal power dynamic, the culture, and the quality of the relationship between the two people, among other details. It certainly raised several questions in my mind.
That evening after our practice group, in total coincidence, I just happened to pick up a book I had been working through to read the section “Play with a Purpose”.
Brown, S., & Vaughn, C. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. Penguin Group.
Stuart and Vaughn offer an explanation from animal play expert Bob Fagen for why animals and humans play-fight, and in the case of human communication, engage in verbal jousting or teasing back-and-forth. In “a rehearsal in which life and death are not at stake… Play lets animals learn about their environment and the rules of engagement with friends and foes. Playful interaction allows a penalty-free rehearsal of the normal give-and-take necessary in social groups.”
In making the leap to human play, they go on to explain, “verbal jousting may take the place of physical rough-and-tumble play. Kids at play can learn the difference between friendly teasing and mean-spirited taunting as they explore the boundaries between these two, and learn how to make up when the boundary is crossed. Adults at cocktail parties learn similar social guidelines about how to get along with others, or how to seem to.”
This discussion also reminded me of the cultural concept of jantelagen which a beloved Swedish colleague once explained to me with great enthusiasm. If my understanding is correct, the Swedish idea around jantelagen is “you should not think that you are something special compared to everyone else.” He explained to me that when someone in the group appears to be poking his head up above the rest in announcing an achievement, or in some personally proud expression, they can pile on him with teasing or comments that would humble and bring him back to the level of everyone else. Here is a culture that may deliberately use teasing and a ‘jab of the joust’ to help people improve the accuracy of their self-evaluation. But it could also be a culturally embedded form of violent communication.
I agreed with one of our group members – I have also tried to eradicate teasing from my toolbox, partly because I don’t appreciate receiving feedback that way myself, and mostly because of the professional helping role I have in people’s lives, where the emphasis is often on building up a person’s compassion and confidence around a realistic self-image. I don’t think teasing helps with that very often, and I want to cultivate a consistent way of being with all people in this respect. While every relationship still needs it, an NVC approach offers a more palatable form of delivering feedback in virtually any social setting.
Yet, I also wondered if, because of some interpersonal injuries I experienced in my childhood and youth, I became more sensitive to teasing than some of my close friends were. I could not enter into it as carefree as they did. I understood their teasing as playful and even as a form of affection and acceptance, yet I could not give nor receive it in quite the playful or unaffecting way they seemed to be able to. It was an indirect, ambiguous way of offering feedback, one that left me uncertain as to their deeper feelings or the consequence of taking it seriously or not. Even now, as a middle-aged adult, I feel an aversion to offering a tease or receiving one. Maybe pain from the past puts a barb in my teasing or in my perception of it, that other people without injury don’t inject.
This brings me back to the purpose of play (in the form of verbal jousting). Maybe we continue to tease our dear friends because we live in an ambiguous communication culture, for which our social safety requires we maintain some skills for sensing that delicate boundary between friend and foe, between frivolous and serious feedback. This kind of play might be regarded as a necessity because we still live in a potentially hostile social environment. But that raises the question: Is that the kind of environment we want to perpetuate?
I am eager to hear more perspectives on this. Do you have one?
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