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Humor Your Tumor

This column is dedicated to all individuals (and their loved ones) who are now battling cancer, and to Survivors whose cancer is in remission. I’ll occasionally leave you with a joke. This will usually be related to cancer, or some other source of stress in our lives. If you’ve heard a joke along these lines that you love, and would like to see it made available to everyone in this column, please send it to me at HaHaRemedy@viconet.com.

Humor Your Tumor
February, 2001
Paul E. McGhee, PhD

Research Documenting the
Power of Humor in Coping with Stress

"If it weren't for the brief respite we give the world with our foolishness, the world would see mass suicide in numbers that compare favorably with the death rate of lemmings." (Groucho Marx)

Before moving directly to Step 7 of the Humor Skills Training Program, which focuses on using humor to cope with stress, it is worth asking whether there is any research showing that your sense of humor really does have the power to help you cope with stress. So we will spend the next two issues of Humor Your Tumor providing a general overview of some of the research findings related to humor and stress. We will then return to this kind of research from time to time in the months ahead to discuss it in detail.

Freud, of course, pointed out a century ago that humor offers us a healthy means of coping with life stress. George Vaillant, in his book, Adaptation to Life, reported that in-depth interviews revealed that humor was a very effective coping mechanism used by many professional men under stress. Gail Sheehy reported the same thing for both men and women in her book, Pathfinders.

A key idea emerging in both of these books is that you need to actively use your sense of humor in dealing with the hassles and stresses in your life to get the coping benefits. You can have a good sense of humor in all the ways we've focused on in the past several months, but still have your sense of humor abandon you when things begin to go wrong. On your good mood days, you can have quick and easy access to a playful attitude, be the one who comes up with clever quips or finds a funny side to things that happen, and be able to poke fun at yourself. But this won't help you in managing the stress in your life unless you can do the same thing on the tough days.

This view was supported by a Canadian study that found that even if you're someone who finds a lot of humor in everyday life, it doesn't help you cope with stress unless you also make an effort to actively use humor to deal with that stress.1 So even though you have a great sense of humor when all is well, you'll be just as stressed out as the next person on your bad days.

People who have access to their sense of humor in the midst of stress are much more resilient than the rest of us. They are emotionally more flexible, and can bend without breaking in the midst of the most difficult circumstances. If you're lucky, and have parents who showed a good sense of humor in the midst of stress, chances are you've already got some of those qualities within yourself. You just need to refine them and strengthen them. One study showed that even a 5-session humor workshop was enough to improve adults' use of humor to cope with life stress.2

It's important to know that it's never too late to improve your humor skills--even if you're past retirement age. One recent study showed that going through my 8-Step Humor Skills Program had a significant positive impact on seniors' ability to cope with the stress in their lives.3

The study used seniors living in different retirement centers. One group spent 8 weeks focusing on the Homeplay (activities designed to build the humor skills associated with each step) provided for my 8-Step Program, while a second group simply got together weekly to watch comedy films (from the 40s and 50s). So the first group made an active effort to improve their humor skills, while the second group was passively engaged in humor without trying to improve their sense of humor.

While the two groups showed similar coping abilities at the beginning of the study, the group going through the Humor Skills Program scored significantly higher on two different measures of coping at the end of eight weeks. The findings showed that they were not only coping better with the stress in their lives; they were also actively using humor as a coping tool more than they had before the program started.

So you're never too old to learn to use humor to cope with stress. Whether you're 25, 50, or 75 years old, you can learn to lighten up. Remember, a good sense of humor prevents hardening of the attitudes.

[Adapted from P.E. McGhee Health, Healing and the Amuse System: Humor as Survival Training, Kendall-Hunt, 1999. To order call 800-228-0810.]

References

1. Martin, R.A. & Lefcourt, H.M. Sense of humor as a moderator of the relation between stressors and moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1983, 45, 1313-1324.

2. Lowis, M.J. & Nieuwoudt, J.M. Humor as a coping aid for stress. Social Work, 1994, 30, 124-131.

3. Gunderson, A.L. A comparison of the effect of two humor programs on self-reported coping capabilities and pain among the elderly. Unpublished Master's Thesis, Montclair State University, 1998.