Humor and Laughter in Stressful Situations
“Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Carol Burnett
Have you ever been in a stressful situation or had an experience where you said, “Someday I’ll laugh about this.” Maybe the time to laugh about “this” is when you are experiencing the stressful situation. Experts tell us that laughter reduces stress so, if you can find the humor in it at the time it will help you cope and recover from the thing that is causing you stress. I realize this is hard to do, after all if it weren’t a stressful situation it would be easy to find the humor in it. But when you say, “someday I’ll laugh about this.” you have already acknowledged the fact that there is humor to be found in the situation. You just aren’t ready to take the next step and laugh while it is occurring.
Maybe we need to practice finding the humor in less stressful situations so that we get into the habit of finding humor when we need it most. Maybe we need to step back and look at it from someone else’s point of view. Humorist Will Rogers once said, “Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.”
Humor and Laughter is two fold. Humor gives us a different perspective about the stressful situation while laughter physically breaks the stress. Humor is mental while laughter is physical. Both have benefits alone but together they combine to help us survive tough times.