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How can i develop a Sense of Humor

NAS80457

I am 21 and have recently been diagnosed with autism. I remember a few times when I was a lot younger, female members of my family telling me "you have no sense of humor" as a sort of joke. Now I am 21, and I am realizing my friends are having to explain jokes because I am taking them literally, and I just cant keep up. How do I develop a sense of humor so that I act more normal? I am really struggling to meet new people and I don't know what to do. I feel like a nuisance to the friends that I do have, because I cant get on with them and make them laugh. What is a good path to fix this? thanks to anybody that can help.

  • You could start from reading autism and humour topic

  • Do you struggle with analogies? If not, that may be a place to start. When you think about situations that aren't immediately linked, but have things in common, a lot of humour draws from that. It's good practice in communication anyway, because if you can explain something new in terms of a familiar situation, it often takes fewer words to get your point across. 

    In my experience, most jokes in conversation are either funny because they are true, but expressed in an unusual way, or decidedly not true.  It's funny because the analogy is right or ridiculous. 

    That said, comedy is decidedly based in cultural context. That's why it's so hard to translate non-physical humour.  A joke in Aberdeen won't necessarily be funny in Kathmandu. It all depends on language, context and the background of the people present. 

    Don't feel badly if you don't understand jokes, or need them explained. No one gets all the jokes, you would have to know everything in the world to get all the references.  

  • I'd concur. Your real friends will just accept you as you are.

    I don't get certain types of humour either. It took me a while in this life to realise that when NTs laugh at jokes sometimes it has more to do with ingratiating themselves with the other person than actually getting the joke. There's nothing stopping you doing that too, but it's masking and you'll find it a strain constantly trying to work out when to do that. Personally, I wouldn't bother.

    Anyway, I've just been reading a couple of articles on autism and humour. Apparently, we do laugh less frequently than NTs, but, so said this article, both NDs and NT prefer to listen to autistic laughter than NT laughter when we do laugh, because, the suggestion was, our laughter is genuine and for it's own sake not a social objective.

    Oddly, my lack of humour, sometimes is the joke. Someone cracks a joke, I naturally fail to get it and request an explanation. My mates find it funny that I don't get it and try to explain and I end up laughing with them about the fact it left me clueless, which often proves funnier than the original joke - which has sometimes still left me bewildered, despite the explanation, lol.

    That's been happening all my life. I've always just shrugged; 'ah well, Dawn clearly has no inner child!'. Errrr, now we find out it's a case of; 'ah well, Dawn's autistic'. It's just another one of my little quirks that I laugh at myself about and my mates love me anyway.

  • in reply to NAS73180

    you shouldn't feel like you have to buy their love, it's not friendship if you do

  • Maybe you don’t have to earn their love. 

  • I don't get many jokes at all, and people don't get mine. It used to bother me when I was 20, but not anymore. I like sarcasm, and many of my jokes are sarcastic. Or I invent a story that's plausible and they do not know how to react.