The Alchemy of Satire
This article explores how Turbo Thinkers (people with ADHD and fast-moving creative minds) can use satire, humor, and creativity as tools for transforming anxiety into agency during challenging times. Drawing on neuroscience research about curiosity versus control, cultural examples like the blues and surrealism, and personal experience with New Orleans Mardi Gras traditions, it demonstrates how creative expression builds community and empowers individuals to reclaim their sense of possibility.
This weekend I had the honor of marching in one of my very favorite Mardi Gras parades, Krewe du Vieux. For months, we’d been designing and building our float, creating costumes, and crafting throws. Our club (or krewe, as we call it down here) is one of acceptance, authenticity, and utter chaos in the very best way.
The moment I first stepped into “the den,” our warehouse, I felt completely at home. It’s a beehive of Turbo Thinkers buzzing with ideas and creative expression. Nothing is too crazy or too colorful. It’s a clubhouse for witty banter, sassy comebacks, and smarty pants. No one cares about your profession, your neighborhood, or the label on your shirt.
According to the krewe’s mission: “The Krewe du Vieux is a non-profit organization dedicated to the historical and traditional concept of a Mardi Gras parade as a venue for individual creative expression and satirical comment... We believe in exposing the world to the true nature of Mardi Gras, and in exposing ourselves to the world.”
This was one of our best years yet. When the world offers tragedy, we find our fodder for comedy. In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is our time to take it to the streets with parades instead of protests. Our best parades are protests. They bring us together in both humor and solidarity.
From Anxiety to Alchemy
In troubled times, anxiety can feel like the only reasonable response. But the antidote to anxiety isn’t calm. It’s creativity.
In her book Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, life coach and researcher Martha Beck explains that anxiety lives primarily in the left hemisphere of our brains, the side that tries to control everything by spinning scary stories about what might happen. But the right hemisphere responds differently. When faced with uncertainty, the right brain’s amygdala doesn’t spiral into fear. It gets curious. “Whoa, what’s that?” it asks.
This matters enormously for Turbo Thinkers. We often struggle with self-regulation, but we are naturally curious. Beck argues that “a near-continuous effort to move more activity into the right sides of our brains is the only way to really conquer anxiety.” And the right brain is where we create, build, invent, and share. As Beck puts it, it’s “about our ability to use everything that’s pouring into the left hemisphere as part of an ongoing effort to experience and communicate more love.”
So the first step away from anxiety is curiosity. The next step is creativity, using that curiosity to make something, to transform what we’re experiencing into expression. For Turbo Thinkers, this plays to our natural strengths. We don’t have to calm down to feel better. We have to create.
The Power of Laughter
Now we add another strength: humor. Humor draws on the Turbo Thinker’s rebel spirit. It does not play by the rules of society. It laughs at them.
In one of my darkest times, I saw my therapist weekly. The visits always left me feeling lighter yet stronger. Despite the tales of my deep suffering, she found a reason to laugh and empower me. She encouraged me to follow the spirit of the Buddha with deep belly laughs, along with her.
The Laughing Buddha represents the ability to find happiness amidst suffering and to overcome our ego’s attachments. His laughter symbolizes profound, lighthearted acceptance of life and the wisdom of letting go of worldly desires. His large, round belly represents his capacity to accept and tolerate everything with a generous and joyful spirit. The image reminds us to maintain a positive attitude and to find happiness in the present moment, regardless of external circumstances. What can a laugh do? It can be magic: a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.
Alchemy Through Art
Alchemy is the seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination. It’s turning lead into gold, pain into beauty, suffering into power. And art is one of humanity’s oldest forms of alchemy. This wisdom about finding joy amidst suffering shows up across cultures and art forms.
A few years ago, I visited Clarksdale, deep in the Mississippi Delta, the home of the blues. Driving through cotton fields that extended as far as the eye could see, all the way to the horizon line, I could feel the weight of history in that landscape. I spent the night in a one-room shack and went to juke joints where the music stirred something in my soul, something that needed to be released. The blues took the pain of profound hardship and transformed it into a vehicle of empowerment and belonging. Pure alchemy.
This week, an invitation to a costume ball, “Adrift in the Streams of Surrealist Dreams,” reminded me of a visit long ago to the Dalí Museum in Figueres, Spain. Walking through those halls had my brain bending in the most unexpected directions. When I returned to “normality,” I came to question the reality of my world and find the absurd in it, wanting to morph it into something more beautiful. The surrealists practiced the same alchemy, turning the trauma and disillusionment of World War I into dreamscapes and irrational imagery that exposed emotional truths rationalism couldn’t touch.
Satire works the same magic through creative expression and gathering kindred spirits. My Mardi Gras krewe is a club of Turbo Thinkers coming together, tapping into our rebel spirit. We say to the world: We will not follow all of your ducks in a row! We will not be sheep! We will not think inside the box! We will not color within your lines! We choose to draw on our strengths of creativity and imagination. We choose to play with the absurd.
How Satire Creates the Bridge
Satire and creative expression serve as alchemy for Turbo Thinkers, transforming anxiety and anger into empowerment and community through the natural strengths of curiosity, creativity, and humor.
Satire operates as a psychological and social mechanism that transforms difficult emotions into productive energy. It gives us permission to laugh at things that would otherwise feel overwhelming or paralyzing. By reframing a threat through humor and exaggeration, it creates psychological distance. We can acknowledge the absurdity or injustice without being consumed by it. That moment of laughter is actually a release valve for anxiety or rage, preventing those emotions from either festering into despair or exploding into unproductive fury. When satire exaggerates the ridiculous aspects of a problem, it often reveals truths more clearly than straightforward critique. Late-night comedy shows have exposed hypocrisy and absurdity across the political spectrum for decades, simply by taking leaders’ own words and playing them back in context or pushing their logic to its natural conclusion. By exaggerating something to its logical extreme, satire strips away the rationalizations and euphemisms that usually obscure what’s really happening. This clarity itself is energizing. Once we can see the problem clearly, we’re more likely to believe we can address it.
Satire also creates “knowing communities.” People who get the joke are implicitly agreeing on what’s wrong. This shared recognition is profoundly validating and combats the isolation that often accompanies anxiety about social problems. When we realize we’re not alone in seeing the absurdity, we feel less crazy and more capable. The satirist essentially gives everyone permission to name what they’ve been quietly noticing.
Perhaps most importantly, satire refuses to grant power or authority their usual reverence. By mocking the powerful, it demonstrates they’re not untouchable. This act of irreverence, whether you’re the satirist or the audience, is itself a form of resistance that breaks the spell of powerlessness. We move from “this terrible thing is happening and I’m helpless” to “this terrible thing is happening and it’s ridiculous, and I can call it ridiculous.”
Satire raises awareness of social injustice and reclaims power for the people. It allows us to laugh at the bully, to point our finger and watch the whole crowd laugh along. We build solidarity and through laughter we create a sense of belonging. We escape isolation and depression, the feeling of being alone and powerless, shouting in the mirror.
The Alchemy is Always Available
For Turbo Thinkers, this alchemy isn’t just available. It’s our natural gift. Our fast- moving, creative minds that society often asks us to tame are actually our magic wands. Satire opens the door to possibility. It’s a step, not the final resolution. It gets us out of the downward spiral, the struggle of life based in fear, all that fuels disconnection. It creates an opening, a pathway and invitation to play so that we can be free to take charge and take action. It exposes ugly truths and draws strength in numbers. The journey from anxiety to action often requires that intermediate step of recognition and release. Satire provides both.
As Turbo Thinkers, we have this cocktail of strengths at our fingertips: curiosity, creativity, and humor. These aren’t just personality traits. They’re tools for transformation, vehicles for alchemy. We can use them to combat negative spirals, to empower ourselves and each other, to build connection and create belonging.
The spirit of Mardi Gras doesn’t have to live only in parade season. We can maintain it year-round. Keep the costume closet door open for easy access. Keep that sense of humor at the ready. The magic is already in our hands.
Questions for Reflection:
How can we use your curiosity, creativity, and humor to combat negative spirals?
How can we use them to empower ourselves?
How can we laugh when we feel the need to fight?
How can we use satire to build solidarity and uplift each other?
How can we practice alchemy to magically transform tragedy into comedy?