While a blog about laughter would be appropriate to start with a joke, I can honestly say right now I am not in the mood for jokes. How about you? There is so much going on in the world, so much heavy-hearted and heavy-handed 'stuff', that telling a joke just doesn't seem to fit into the equation for me. However, research tells us that coping with stress, whether it is acute or prolonged, can benefit from some laughter. So, let's take a look at laughter as medicine for difficult times....
Research on well-being suggests that there are certain kinds of humor that are better than others for helping us with stress and anxiety. The research refers to them as 'adaptive' and 'maladaptive' types of humor. The maladaptive types are self-defeating or self-deprecating, aggressive, or rude. These types of humor, not surprisingly, do not contribute to our sense of well-being, but rather, detract from it. So, let's just leave those alone, right? I have seen enough rude and aggressive social media forums to last a lifetime already, so I think I will make a point to avoid them, after this little memory refresher.
Adaptive types of humor, the types that actually contribute positively to our well-being, are self-enhancing, affiliative, or coping types of humor. These sometimes focus on ourselves, like humorous self-enhancing types of comments, but can also focus on circumstances or events, that help us cope. This is probably the kind we are in most need of right now. When our circumstances are feeling a bit abysmal, that is probably the time to find some humor in them, through coping humor or possibly affiliative humor.
Affiliative humor is designed to bring people together by finding humor in everyday things. Jerry Seinfeld is great at this, and his entire show, Seinfeld, was based on the premise that everyday life can be pretty funny if you just look for the humor in it. Curb Your Enthusiasm took a similar approach to humor in everyday life.
Self-enhancing humor is a bit like self-deprecating humor, in that the person soliciting the laughs is typically the source of the joke themselves. However, with self-deprecating humor, you are typically 'putting yourself down', while self-enhancing humor is typically about making fun of a particular situation in which you may have found yourself.
Coping humor, as the name suggests, is making fun of a situation as a way of coping with the stress of it. See the picture below!
Humor as a form of laughter is not the only way to deal with stress, however. Laughter yoga has been found in nonclinical populations, to be helpful, too! The scientific research on laughter yoga is sparse, as the practice is fairly new, but it does exist. It seems that laughter yoga may have many of the same benefits that I spoke of in a previous blog about smiling, specifically the Duchenne smile. Here is a non-scientific article about laughter yoga, if you are curious:
The key to laughter as medicine for stress, is to keep it in context, or more accurately, the proper dose. If laughter and humor are your go to nearly all the time, well then, that really isn't coping, that is denying. Laughter can be one of the tools we use to deal with stress, among many, like a Superhero tool belt: we are better suited for the job when we have a variety of tools at our disposal. So, laughing our way through coping can help, and the proper dose is one that works in combination with healthy coping strategies (tomorrow's topic), meditation, the right attitude (sense of purpose, optimistic explanatory style, a balance of internal and external loci of control, past-present-future thinking), connection with others, sleep, exercise, and nature!
Your tool belt is getting more diverse, and you are gaining more agility in your ability to manage the stressors of our current situation, so I am feeling more hopeful about our present and future. Hang in there, laugh a little, and take care.
Be well, stay safe.
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