This past summer, Mia Smith-Bynum took a cruise to the Caribbean with her extended family, some of whom she was meeting for the first time. But for the first day and a half, she couldn’t find her mother, who hadn’t yet purchased Wi-Fi, on the massive ship.
“So I’m texting on this giant family feed, like, ‘Has anybody seen my mom?’” Dr. Smith-Bynum told me. She’d get a tip — “I saw her by the pool!” — and head over, only to miss her mom once again.
This soon became a running joke with relatives who, weeks later, were still asking her, deadpan, if she ever found her mother.
Dr. Smith-Bynum, chair of family science at the University of Maryland, College Park, said she felt in on the joke. “This huge, friendly, Southern Black family said, ‘You’re in the family because we’re teasing you,’” she said.
Affectionate ribbing, like this, can strengthen connections, she said, because it’s “coming from a place of warmth and celebration of the person’s quirkiness.”
Then there’s the harmful kind of teasing can make you feel shame and anger, and can erode your sense of safety and trust. So I asked experts how to know when someone has gone too far — and how to shut them down.
You don’t have to ‘take a joke.’
Often people who are being teased wonder whether they are overreacting, said Bill Eddy, a psychotherapist, lawyer, and author of “Our New World of Adult Bullies.” But if your gut is telling you, “This is hurtful,” that’s worth paying attention to, he said.
Often, teasers let themselves off the hook by claiming they’re just kidding, said Cameron Gordon, a professor of psychology at Vancouver Island University who has studied the topic. But that doesn’t lessen the sting for the person being teased, Dr. Gordon said. His research backs that up.
He also found that — surprise! — people being teased don’t find it as funny as the people teasing them do.
If it’s persistent, ask what’s behind the teasing.
Lisa Brateman, a licensed social worker, says that she often sees teasing in her couples therapy sessions.
It can be a way for partners to tiptoe around an issue without addressing it directly, said Brateman, the author of a new book, “What Are We Really Fighting About?” During one session, a husband kept taunting his wife because she was always late. He was frustrated that she was never on time, she bristled at being teased, and they both grew angrier.
It’s better to have a conversation about the underlying issues that fuel these “kidding” remarks, Brateman said. She suggested asking: “Were you intending to hurt my feelings? Because it doesn’t feel lighthearted, and it doesn’t feel like we’re in it together. I just feel attacked.”
Calmly shut the teaser down.
If you want to stop someone from teasing you in the moment, Eddy said, keep it short and simple.
“You can say, ‘I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say things like that,’ or ‘Hey, that’s enough,’” he said. A simple “ouch” can also be effective, he added, because it calls out the person without being confrontational.
If you are being ribbed in front of others, Dr. Gordon said, pull your teaser aside for a quiet chat that doesn’t put the person on the spot.
He suggested saying: “What’s going on here? Because it’s starting to feel like maybe you’re poking at me a little. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, because you probably don’t know that it stings.”
Then, Dr. Gordon said, tell the person that you don’t want to hear it anymore.
Keep teasing playful.
If you’re the teaser, Dr. Gordon said, pay attention to reactions. Is the person stone-faced and silent? If so, be quick to apologize, he said. “You can say: ‘I thought we were in a place where a little lighthearted banter could be welcome, but I’m getting the sense it really wasn’t. I regret saying it.’”
How do you know when teasing is healthy? Simply put: It’s kind. “What they’re also showing you is that they really see you,” Brateman added. “They know you.” This creates and sustains intimacy, she said.
Brateman told me that some of her friends tease her that when she’s at a party or an event, she’ll get up and dance only if she has had at least one drink. “I’ll be at a wedding or something and my friends will say, ‘Oh, Lisa, is it too early in the night for you to dance?’ And I’ll say, ‘Yeah, the line at the bar is too long.’”
This sort of gentle teasing, Dr. Smith-Bynum said, can supply in-jokes that give you a warm glow when you bring them up later, like when her relatives accused her of losing her mom on the ship.
Her family is already planning another cruise, she said.
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