In controlled studies, humor has been shown to increase pain tolerance, reduce muscle tension and stress hormones, and even boost immune system function. People who use humor frequently as a way of coping with stress consistently have higher levels of antibodies to protect them from diseases and do not have a drop in immune functioning after exposure to stress. During a good hearty laugh your brain releases endorphins, the brain’s natural opiates, which reduce pain.

Laughter reduces muscle and psychological tension, which are the main goals of many stress management techniques. Positive emotions from recreation, laughter, and humor help your body’s natural healing systems fully engage in the battle for your health. These positive emotions reduce the level of stress hormones, blood pressure, and pain. Positive emotions nurture hope and determination to overcome stressors. Minimizing negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, or depression, allows your positive emotions to energize you and work for your health, rather than against it. Anything you can do to sustain a more positive, upbeat frame of mind in dealing with the daily hassles and problems in your life contributes to your physical health and your ability to deal with stress.

Humor And Sense Of Control
Daily recreation and laughter can provide a sense of control over stress by giving you more control over your daily moods.

5. Humoring yourself
If you can pull this one off, humor, of course, is a marvelous antidote to your worry. The problem is, when you are worrying, you are usually in no mood to joke. The following sections provide two of my favorite ways of using humor to diffuse a potential worry.

Exaggerate!
Exaggeration can be a useful tool in helping you reduce your worrying. Suppose, for example, that you are worrying about an upcoming Inservice Training for new CNA regarding your program for your Low Functioning and Alzheimer's Residents. (You have bought our other Training Series, haven't you? J)
To use exaggeration to create humor in your mind try imagining that, five minutes after you start your Inservice, the new CNA’s begin to throw tomatoes and other assorted items like their shoes and writing pens at you and booing! The Director of Nursing comes to the front of the room and announces that this is the worst Inservice she has ever heard in her professional career. The "boos" and foot-stamping are deafening. You fall to the ground and beg their forgiveness for being such a wretch. One of your ambulatory resident "buddies" scoops you up into a wheelchair saying "It's okay kid, you done good!" With tomato juice dripping down your face, the resident manages to wheel you out as the "boos" turn into the yells of "Burn her at the stake!"
Now if you aren't smiling right now, you clearly are more serious minded than I, and I have been accused on more than one occasion of being pretty serious minded. I think you get the idea of how you can use exaggeration of a situation you foresee as being stressful.

Briefly describe a situation that you feel will be stressful for you.

Write and then run a movie in your mind exaggerating the worst case scenario that could happen during you upcoming stressor. Then just before you walk into the DON’s, Administrator’s, etc. office think of your self with an exaggeration similar to my "Burn her at the stake!" Culture Change Inservice scenario above.

Play Sitcom:
If exaggeration is not your cup of tea or tomato juice… Get it? Tomato juice? Sorry… I guess I am still basking in the glory of the great exaggeration I created in the preceding section. Nothing like patting myself on the back. Right? Well, back to the new topic of “Play Sitcom.”

Like I said, if exaggeration is not your cup of tea and you are a TV fan you might try writing a brief sitcom sketch. Here’s how it works. You imagine that your worry is the theme for a favorite sitcom episode. It could be Seinfeld, Frasier, Friends, The Simpson's, or any show you enjoy. Or if you don't like sitcoms, how about a TV night time soap like Heroes, Desperate Housewives, 24, ER, etc. However, imagine that one of the characters on the TV show is engulfed in your worry. But the other cast members manage to look at this worry in a less serious, more playful way. Looking at your worries through the characters’ eyes will, hopefully, dilute the worry and give you some much needed emotional distance.

How about if one of the females on Wisteria Lane in “Desperate Housewives” had to talk to their boss about the same issue you do and their boss happened to be played by your Administrator? What if one of the characters in “Heroes” had a combative resident to deal with, what super power would he or she use? By the time you purchase this course these TV shows will have probably already have been cancelled and you are asking, "What is she talking about? What is “Desperate Housewives” or “Heroes”? So, don't get bogged down in the details. I think you get the idea of what I am talking about. Pick you favorite TV show and imagine the characters living through a stressor you face at the facility, like getting the Speech Therapist to reschedule Harry to accommodate him attending the Sport’s Discussion Group. The purpose of “Play Sitcom” is to jar you mentally and provide you with a fresh and hopefully lighter perspective on a facility or Culture Change stressor them may seem overwhelming.

Below write a few lines of a plot in an episode from your favorite TV show. Either use exaggeration to see the humorous side of the situation or perhaps make one of the characters a wise sage who will give you some good sound advice.

Hints on Getting Started
1. Start with predictable, everyday stressors to ease into the habit of seeing the light side regardless of what’s happening.
2. As mentioned above try using humorous exaggeration to help put things into perspective. Expand situations into mock life-and-death proportions.
3. Find some funny sayings, poems, or witty remarks to repeat to yourself whenever the going gets rough or you start feeling stressed. These sayings will give you a wry smile and serve as pick-me-ups. They can become old friends reminding you to see the humorous side, even when things don’t feel very funny. The following guidelines, inspired by the wisdom of Dr. McGhee, will help you build these skills:
• Make a list of normal, repetitive stressful situations and practice image rehearsal to lighten up the situations.
• Think about what it means in stressful situations to see the glass half full instead of half empty.
• Look for humor in past stressful events. It may be easier the see the bright side after the stress has passed.
• Look for cartoons that are meaningfully connected to stress in areas of your life.
• Get a joke- or cartoon-a-day calendar to help you stay on the other side of stress.

Failure to find effective ways to express negative emotions may cause you to stew in your own juices day after day, and this chronic immersion in negativity appears to be harmful to health. Future research may show that the power of recreation, laughter, and humor lies in their capacity to pull us out of the anxiety, anger, and depression caused by the constant stress in our lives, and to replace those negative moods with positive, optimistic moods that lower stress hormones and enhance the immune system.

A perceived lack of control, or sense of helplessness, is probably the most important single cause of stress. Finding something to laugh at in the midst of problems helps you feel more in control, because you really are taking a kind of control over the situation—you are taking control over your emotional state. When you find something to laugh at despite stressful and difficult circumstances, you show yourself and others that you are superior to the stress and can choose your reaction. You choose whether it is beneficial to express humor overtly or to yourself. In your self talk.

When you learn to use your sense of humor in dealing with the hassles and stresses in your everyday life, you are training for the “big event.” Your sense of humor grows stronger when it is used in managing the routine stress in your life, and then you have access to it when you’re faced with greater challenges and stress. Remember an old adage states, “It’s easy to be an angel if no one ruffles yours feathers.”

In short, you would not wait until the day you are actually running a marathon to get into shape! If you still struggle using your humor during stress, then your goal could be to keep trying with small unimportant stressors. See humor in you daily mole hills and you are better to see humor and gain perspective when facing your mountains.

- Adapted from Elkin PhD, Allen; “Stress Management for Dummies”; Wiley Publishing, Inc: Indiana; 1999

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