Welcome to the Overwhelmed Brain Podcast, helping you navigate the difficulties in your life and relationships.
These are my personal opinions.
Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and wellbeing.
All right, coming out of that very anxiety-inducing intro, I'm here today to talk about maybe one subject, maybe two, sarcasm.
Somebody asked me about sarcasm a few years ago, and I just never got a chance to get to it.
And it wasn't something that I thought would make a good subject for a show, but maybe it would.
And then I saw the message that came to me again today and realized, no, this would be a great subject for a show.
Because sarcasm can be used passive aggressively to convey a message that somebody doesn't want to say directly.
So they say it in a passive aggressive way.
And then they might say it's sarcastic.
You know, I'm being sarcastic.
And they try to get away with it.
Kind of reminds me of a guy I used to work with.
He would say something like, I'm trying to think of what he'd say.
I forget.
It's been a long time.
He would say something that you would just go, huh?
That doesn't make any sense.
And then he'd go, no, I'm just kidding.
I'm just joking with you, man.
And sometimes he would say, unless you want to, or unless you like that or something like that.
So what he was doing was trying to find out my answer to something or whether I liked something or disliked it.
It's sort of like saying, um,
I'm going to go rob the tip jar next door.
And then go, I'm just kidding.
I wouldn't do that.
And then he might say, would you?
And then he would wait for an answer.
And I would say, of course not.
And then he'd say, oh, yeah, me neither.
Me neither.
I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you can understand how that sounds.
Like he's testing the waters, trying to figure out if I'm game to something that he would do.
Almost like giving himself permission or justification for having the thought or having the idea come to his mind and even possibly...
Acting on that idea, acting on that thought that he's going to behave in some way that I might or others might find unethical, repulsive.
So he tested the waters a lot.
And he would claim sarcasm.
And so I noted that, you know, I put that note in my mind that he did that.
So when he said things, I would tell myself he's trying to justify something.
He's trying to find out if I have a problem with it.
And he did that a lot.
And it was hard to tell
When he was actually joking and when he wasn't, unless he followed up with something like, well, you wouldn't do that, would you?
Something like that.
It became obvious to me.
So I had to learn how to understand his sarcasm.
And again, I really couldn't tell when he was joking or not.
But I have a feeling, you know, looking back on it now, that he did that often for the exact reasons I'm spelling out here.
You wouldn't rob a bank, would you?
Something like that.
Just like at the beginning of this episode, I said, as we come out of this anxiety inducing music, which to me is sarcastic.
It's not anxiety.
Well, it's not to me.
It's not anxiety inducing music.
It's calm, relaxing and peaceful.
It reminds me of something that my wife used to do.
She might do it or she did it with her kid, you know, a lot.
My stepson now.
She did it a lot with him.
She did it with her ex-husband.
And then she started doing it with me and I found it offensive.
She would say things like, nice going, Slick.
And back then, it kind of hurt my feelings.
Like, what are you talking about?
That's not very nice, calling me slick.
It's like you're calling me a dumbass, you know, dumb jerk.
It's like you're calling me something and you don't really want to say the words.
But to her, that was her level of sarcasm.
And she got it, I can tell now, from her family.
She grew up in that family of, especially her dad, her sarcastic father.
Because he would say things like that all the time.
And so she grew up with this...
Kind of odd sense of humor.
And what's interesting is that one of the first things that she told me was that she doesn't understand sarcasm.
She doesn't get it.
She doesn't hear it.
Like a deadpan humor.
She doesn't understand the dry humor.
She's gotten a lot better because she lives with me, but I'm not sarcastic.
I try not to be.
Sometimes I am, you know, sometimes it'll be about the irony.
Hey, look at that, uh,
I see that you didn't empty the trash.
That's okay because, you know, we need more flies.
Yes, there's some maybe passive aggressive in there, but it's one of those things where I really don't care because I can empty the trash too.
And I understand that.
I know that.
But it is something that comes out of my mouth every now and then.
And it is not meant to be mean-spirited.
But I used to be that way.
I used to be kind of mean-spirited and passive-aggressive about stuff.
And so I have to be careful that I don't access that.
If there's something on my mind, I should be more direct.
Hey, we should really empty the trash.
We're going to get flies.
That's more direct.
But if I don't have an attachment to it and I really don't care and I know that I can do it myself, I might joke about it.
So there's that kind of joking that can take place.
Long as the person that you're telling it to isn't offended and it took her a long time to get used to my sense of humor and my sarcasm which I think often should be treated differently
I think sarcasm should be treated differently than a sense of humor and when you're sarcastic
It's important to make sure that there's no aggression or harmful or negative thoughts underneath because it comes through.
The negativity comes through when you're sarcastic and upset.
So if you are using sarcasm to convey an upset,
That's not going to go well when you actually use it to be funny because people won't get where you are.
They won't know what you really mean, especially those closest to you.
Those closest to you know you the best and hear all your words.
They hear everything.
And so I see sarcasm as one of those things that it can work in many situations.
It can be fun.
It can be funny.
It's used in comedy all the time.
Improv.
And it can also be used to harm.
It can also be used to make someone feel bad and manipulate them into doing something that you want them to do.
Because sarcasm can be a manipulation.
It's interesting because the email that I received...
Was somebody telling me that they are now single, they got out of this terrible relationship,
And they're looking on these dating sites and seeing all these people all these men that say uh one of their top five things is that they can be sarcastic
So they have like sarcasm listed in the five or the top five descriptors of themselves
And she goes on to say it was, what did she say?
But usually included was a comment around seeking someone who gets, understands, can handle sarcasm.
And she said, you know, when I saw that, I wrinkled my nose and cringed every time I saw it.
It was a giant red flag for me.
I get that.
Why would you say that you're sarcastic?
That almost, I mean, as far as a dating profile, I don't think that's a good idea, even if you are, because it makes it sound like, hey, when I put you down,
I want you to know that I could be joking.
And so this gives me permission to put you down.
This is the one thing, at least in my thought, in my opinion, that we have to be really careful about with sarcasm is that when we put someone down with sarcasm and then we say, I'm just kidding, you're gorgeous or whatever.
The put down...
It kind of sinks in.
The put-down kind of sinks into the system, the psyche.
If I say, hey, you listener, whatever your name is, you're listening now, you're so stupid for listening to a show like this.
I'm just kidding.
You're smart.
Doesn't that feel weird?
That feels weird to me.
I didn't even like saying it.
You're stupid for listening to shows like this.
You're stupid for trying to improve yourself because really, how much are you going to improve?
How much are you really going to improve?
I'm just kidding.
You're listening to the best show on earth and you're going to...
I mean, I can't even...
Turn that around to remove the negativity.
I can't turn it around to decrease the negative feeling that you got at the beginning.
And I think that's one of the major problems with sarcastic comments.
Is that we can't pull it back enough sometimes to replace how someone feels and what someone thinks to the point where it turns out well overall
It's like i said it gets buried in the psyche
I mean it can
So if I say, you're a jerk, just kidding, you're one of the nicest people I've ever met, it might replace that because now I've got an over-the-top positive comment after it.
But does that you're a jerk part land?
I think if it lands, we're in dangerous territory.
So I look at sarcasm as a very precarious thing.
We have to be careful using it.
How often do we use it in normal conversation?
Are we using it as a free pass to be able to put someone down?
To make them feel bad and then take or at least try to take that bad feeling away and say everything's okay or that's
That's not true
I'm just kidding
However you do it and do they
Um do they feel okay about it or do they dish it and take it as well
Like, do they dish what they take and do they take what they dish?
So this can happen too.
This is what Asha, my wife, was telling me.
She grew up like this.
She grew up in a family where she had to take a lot of sarcasm.
And then she found somebody in her life that could dish and take it back and forth with her.
And she loved that banter, she told me.
She says...
I was very comfortable with that banter.
And then I met you talking about me.
And I can't do that with you.
And so I kind of missed that.
And I'm thinking of the times that she tried to do it with me.
Nice going, Slick.
And it didn't feel very good.
And I just thought, well, I'll try.
I'll try to do this with you.
And we tried and we went back and forth a few times over the years.
And she says, it just doesn't work with you.
So it's not like I don't get humor or sarcasm.
I just think her approach sounds and feels passive aggressive.
And I could be 100% wrong.
I probably am because that's not who she is.
She's more direct about anything all the time.
And because she is that way, I can't really see her as being mean-spirited or passive-aggressive.
So her sarcasm comes off differently.
She has gotten, or she has altered that a little bit.
She has figured out how to play with me in that way, just like I have figured out how to play with her in a way.
Because when I would try to banter back and be sarcastic, she said, that's not sarcasm, that's mean.
Yeah.
So we couldn't get each other.
But my point is, sometimes we have a different perspective, a different reality of what sarcasm looks like.
And so we have to be careful about that too.
People can misunderstand.
My focal point in this entire subject is that when we put something out there, the first thing that lands is usually the first thing that, or the thing that makes the most impact.
So if the first thing that lands is, what's a good example?
Hey, I don't like the way you look in that dress.
And you could probably benefit from losing a lot of weight.
That would be hurtful to some people.
It may not hurt everyone, but it may be hurtful to someone.
And let's just say that you've already lost 50 pounds and it was very obvious and you looked great.
You felt great.
You looked great.
You got compliments.
But this one person said, you could lose some more weight.
And that's a trigger inside of you.
And they said it, maybe knowing that you looked great.
And then they followed it up with, I'm just kidding.
You look amazing.
Again, this is another example of how do I take this?
Was it passive aggressive?
If you have a trigger around that, if you have been dealing with
Fears and worries and concerns about your weight and how you look, then it's going to have a different impact.
This is why sarcasm can be very difficult.
It can be very difficult to know how someone's going to take it.
I remember there's another story.
We have friends who have friends and our friends of our friends had a son that I think he might have been a little autistic.
I forget.
But I made a joke.
I made a joke with him.
I guess it could have been seen as sarcasm.
And I said something like, fashionably late as always, but the joke was we were all 15 minutes early.
His parents and him looked at me with this blank stare.
And I felt super uncomfortable.
They're foreign, so maybe there was a difference in how senses of humor... Is that how you say it?
Senses of humor are developed in other countries.
I don't know.
But they gave me this stare.
They didn't smile.
They didn't laugh.
And I felt weird.
I just felt like, oh, crap, I just ruined that.
Whatever I just said, you know, fashionably late as always, it didn't land.
I don't even know how it landed.
I just said, hey, well, how you doing?
And that was it.
So it's possible there was...
Misunderstanding
Like they didn't understand my sense of humor my sarcasm but this is a good example of something might not land and fortunately we got along
But I did notice that they weren't the kind of people that were laughing a lot so perhaps they just didn't have the same kind of sense of humor
I mean, let's look at today's political climate.
We have to be very careful.
If you have a foreign friend, a Mexican friend, and you say, hey, buddy, ice is outside.
That might not land too well.
He might or she might not like that at all.
It might even make them very scared.
And so that might not be something you can do with a friend.
And I'm saying the obvious.
I know it.
I'm saying that when we touch on a sensitive subject with somebody, that it could, again, land wrong.
So to the person who wrote to me a few years back and asked me this question,
That's pretty much what I think about it.
I think if I saw dating profiles with women who said, I like to be sarcastic,
That is kind of an orange flag for me because it almost tells me I want to be able to make fun of you and you not feel bad about it or you not be overly sensitive about it.
It's strange to me.
I'm not saying it's wrong.
Like if somebody is sarcastic, if you're sarcastic, that's your thing and it works for you and you have lots of friends and you have a great relationship, then maybe you're using it right.
But if I saw it in a dating profile, I would probably shy away from it myself.
I'm looking for something more serious.
I'm looking for someone.
I'm not looking now.
I'm married.
I'm looking for somebody who wants healthy, honest conversation.
And if there's humor in the conversation and some sarcasm every now and then, I think that's perfectly fine.
Assuming it's healthy, but to have it as a descriptor in your bio tells me that it's probably a part of you or at least a big part of how you communicate.
And because of that,
I would, again, shy away from it.
And it may be perfect for other people.
You may think, I want somebody sarcastic because we can go back and forth and just knock each other down.
And it really keeps things going.
If that's you, great.
So it's not me.
And I understand this person who wrote.
I understand her perspective as well.
So if you see that and it's a red flag for you, it probably is a red flag.
Even if there's no ill will behind it.
If you don't want to be with somebody who's sarcastic a lot, that's just a personal choice.
You make that personal choice.
And this is how it is.
This is why we get into relationships and we find out there are incompatibilities.
It's not just the toilet seats up or down or the toothpaste cap is off or anything like that.
I'm referencing things from, what, the 40s.
I don't know.
It's old things.
And we used to talk about that stuff all the time, at least when I was growing up.
But all these little nuances about each other.
That we don't understand until typically we live together.
Like we can date each other and then we can move in together.
And every time we reach another level of a relationship, we learn something new about the other person.
You leave your socks on the floor all the time?
Yeah, what's the big deal?
That might be the case, and it might bother somebody, which is why I'm a big fan of falling in love slowly, taking it slow and easy, and going several, probably months, and then if you ever do move in together, try it out first.
Before you move in with my wife, I moved down from New Hampshire for a month and stayed with her, stayed with her the whole month.
And we got to know how we were living together.
She got to know how I was and I got to know how she was.
And she said that there were no glitches.
That was a great word.
She said, there were no glitches when you were here.
So that made me feel comfortable and so comfortable that eventually when I moved down, I could move in with her and she'd be okay with it.
And she's been okay ever since.
My words.
That's not sarcasm, I don't think.
But I do believe that she is fine with the way I am.
And of course, I am fine with the way she is.
So there's the answer to that question.
I want to thank that person for writing.
She did say, I looked up the definition of sarcasm.
I'll just read this real quick.
She said, the use of irony to mock or convey contempt.
And she said, there it is, that big C word, contempt.
It's described as passive, aggressive, contemptible barb, B-A-R-B.
It's hurtful and the opposite of creating genuine connection.
And then she asked, why do some people glamorize the ability to use sarcasm?
Why do men, and she was looking at men's profiles, proclaim with pride that they are sarcastic?
If I were to look at these profiles and make a guess, I'm going to, with bias, unfairly judge.
I'm admitting ahead of time.
I'm going to unfairly judge some men.
That they want to get away with hurtful comments because they want to be able to say things without actually saying them directly some men will do this some people anyone can do this
Having it in a dating profile tells me perhaps that they've been on dates and then when the sarcasm came out, nice dress, did you get it at the thrift store?
Did you find it in the dumpster behind the thrift store?
Ha ha ha, just kidding.
It looks amazing.
That might not go over well, especially on a first date.
Or if you just are that way.
It may not go over well because some people actually appreciate honesty, transparency, directness instead of sarcasm.
And it could be the way somebody is wired.
It could be their sense of humor.
And they could possibly mean nothing by it.
And it's no big deal to them.
But it's a big deal to the person who might be sensitive to it or doesn't understand it.
And like my wife, who's told me she can't even recognize sarcasm.
She can't tell when someone's being sarcastic.
And it's probably because she grew up in such sarcasm that, who knows, I'm going to make a total guess, which is unfair to her, that her psyche has buried all these negative thoughts from certain members of her family over the years.
And now that's how she thinks what sarcasm is.
And so when she hears sarcasm, she doesn't get it in the sense that it sounds mean and hurtful to her because that's the way she was brought up.
Is that indirect way of putting someone down.
Total guess.
I could be 100% wrong.
She's called me out before.
So I appreciate you listening.
Thanks for tuning into another episode of The Overwhelmed Brain.
If you need a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love and Abuse over at loveandabuse.com.
And if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship, I am helping a lot of people heal over at healedbeing.com where you can unlearn toxic behaviors and maybe even save a relationship if that's what your goal is.
Again, that's over at healedbeing.com.
And with that, always keep your mind open because...
Well, maybe you'll hear something sarcastic one day and you might have to figure out if they're being mean or just being funny.
And is it coming from a bad place or do they really appreciate you and they feel like you can banter back and forth?
But keeping your mind open is how you make the best decisions and always be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want.
Always take steps to grow and evolve.
You are powerful beyond measure.
And above all, and this is not sarcastic, this is 100% true.
It's something I absolutely know to be true about you.
You are amazing.
