Laughing can ease your pain

Laughing can ease your pain

Gionna Bean

“Sitting with my dad, laughing came easier. We talked and talked, and started to forget the grief. His silly dad jokes seemed to release all the tension I felt from my dog passing. They also seemed to help me to forget about it, if only for a little while. There’s no better cure.”

   When Soph. Jenna Heck’s dog died, humor helped her cope with the grief. “Humor has helped me through a rough time and it helps me make light of the [bad] times. One time was when my dog passed and some humor helped me laugh and feel better about things.” 

   Her dog Bo was very important to the Hecks; he was a friend that they could come home to every day. “When he passed it felt like I lost something really important to me that I would never get back. It made me feel lost and very sad.”

   She’d be in her room, thinking about her dog. Just as the perpetuating emotions were starting to pull her into despair, her dad would come in. “How are you doing?” Jenna would talk about her day. They’d start laughing about something or other. 

   She’d talk about how someone gave her a hard time at school and her dad would say something to cheer her up like, “Never criticize someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’ll be a mile away, and you’ll have their shoes.” After talking and laughing for a while, she wouldn’t even be thinking about her dog.

   According to the Mayo Clinic, using humor to deal with grief is completely normal. A good laugh can “Stimulate your heart, lungs, and muscles with oxygen-filled air; release feel-good endorphins in your brain; reduce physical and mental stress and soothe muscle tension; improve your immune system; release natural painkillers in the body; improve your overall mood and satisfaction; combat anxiety.” 

   Basically, laughing acts as medicine would, but without the negative side effects. 

   Soph. Haven March has found that humor can change peoples’ perspectives of the world and the perspectives of others towards them. Her first musical Seussical the Musical taught her that being silly sometimes is okay; in fact, a person is more likable when they show their true, authentic self. 

   “When I took up acting and being in musicals, I learned that I was able to show my funny humorous side, because everyone there was super supportive no matter what.” Learning to show her humorous side changed how she saw life. It’s okay to be serious sometimes, but laughter makes life truly special with good friends and even better memories. 

   “So in Seussical the Musical I remember that I acted as a person, but I can’t remember who, and I went around acting like them the whole time we were practicing. I would put a sweater on my head and talk in a funny voice and everyone would die laughing.” Humor connects people in a way most could never imagine. 

   Though she may have felt weird and silly at first, as soon as everyone else started laughing with her, March felt right at home. She started to think of the theater group as a sort of second family. Humor played a huge part in making this happen.

   “Humor impacts my life because it makes me a very happy and positive person to be around and it describes who I am,” March said.

   Frosh. Jayla Frederiksen has found that humor helped her through issues with friends. “Humor has helped me through rough parts. One [time] that comes to mind is when I was having friend issues, me and my mom would just laugh about something else, and it made me feel better.” Her mom came into her room to comfort her and “my mom said something that my dad had done and we both started laughing,” In her opinion, laughing with her mom made Fredriksen’s friendship troubles seem trivial. If there was so much in life to laugh about, why should she feel so down?

   Frederiksen is not alone. Many have found that humor reduces their need to stress about their problems. There is then a chain of events that happens to relieve stress. 

   According to mental health experts at Mental Help, “First, humor functions as a distraction, interrupting the chain of thought that results in stress. Effective humor also results in laughter, which is a physical release of tension. Humor shifts the focus of attention away from oneself … [and] enlarges people’s anxiety-narrowed perspective to include the misfortune of others, thereby reducing the perceived need to stress about their own problems”

   By sitting with her mom and sharing a good laugh, Frederiksen distracted herself from her stress and focused more on those around her. She says that this method has helped her quite a bit through many difficulties, including that rough bit in her friendship. “I think humor is a vital part of life because when things get tough it can help to laugh a little bit.”

   Humor can help most people through many problems. Laughing with others helps to cope with grief and can change people for the better by distracting them from tough times. Humor is the secret cure everyone requires, no matter how unnoticed the element becomes. 

   So, when a student comes home from a hard day at school and automatically grabs the remote to turn on their favorite comedy show, they are not wasting their time. Humor can help people to cope with deep emotions, and change them for the better.