When was the last time you laughed at yourself? How do you use humor in your life? Some people use humor in everything they do, while others avoid it. Laughing has been shown to have therapeutic effects on your physical and mental state (Amici, 2019).
Humor helps people cope with challenging situations. It can lighten the mood among strangers. Humor connects people as they laugh together. How does laughter help those living in totalitarian regimes cope with life? Slucki et al. (2020) state that laughter is a form of resistance and coping. When oppressed people use humor, it helps them maintain a sense of their humanity and humanness when so much is taken from them. Giappone et al (2018) show that laughter can be a way to lighten shame or insecurities about ourselves.
Humor relieves tension and stress. It can alleviate pain, increase adrenaline and noradrenaline, reduce blood pressure, slow breathing, and relax muscles. Laughter produces catecholamines that heighten endorphins and change the mind's focus (Amici, 2019).
The next time you find yourself in a high-anxiety situation, can you find the humor in it? Can you laugh at the situation or yourself to relax and connect with others? How can you use humor to heal? Maybe if we found more to laugh at, we would spend less time in the clinic.
Here are some fun quotes on laughter from Laughter Online University (n.d):
1. [Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. — Mark Twain
2. A good laugh heals a lot of hurts. — Madeleine L'Engle
3. A good laugh is a mighty good thing, a rather too scarce a good thing. — Herman Melville
4. A good laugh is sunshine in the house. — William Thackeray
5. A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. — Phyllis Diller
6. A smile starts on the lips, a grin spreads to the eyes, a chuckle comes from the belly; but a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, overflows, and bubbles all around. — Carolyn Birmingham
7. A well-balanced person is one who finds both sides of an issue laughable. — Herbert Procknow
8. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand. — Mark Twain
9. Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine. — Lord Byron
10. Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. — W. H. Auden
11. An optimist laughs to forget; a pessimist forgets to laugh. — Tom Nansbury
References:
Amici, P., (2019). The Humor in Therapy: the Healing Power of Laughter. Psychiatria Danubina, 31(Suppl 3), 503–508.
Giappone, R., Bonello, K., Francis, F., & Mackenzie, I. (2018). Comedy and Critical Thought : Laughter as Resistance, edited by Iain MacKenzie, et al., Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.cham .
Laughter Online University (n.d). Laugh quotes and laughing quotes. Laughter Online University. Retrieved on November 02, 2022, from https://www.laughteronlineuniversity.com/quotes-about-laughter/
Slucki, D., Patt, A., Finder, G. N., Shternshis, A., Shneer, D., Schwarz, J., & Caplan, M. (2020). Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust. In Laughter After. Wayne State University Press.
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Laugh it Out
by Stephanie Daich
