(ambient music)
(upbeat music)
Well, hello, everyone.
Welcome to the Invisible Disabilities Association's
first ever "Healthy Humor IDEAS" show.
IDEAS stands for Invisible Disabilities
Education Awareness Support.
My name is Wayne Connell,
and I founded the Invisible Disabilities Association
a long time ago,
and I will be your host today
as we explore healthy humor ideas with top humor experts
from the Association of Applied
and Therapeutic Humor, or AATH.
So I wanna welcome today Karyn Buxman,
and Sue Stevenson.
Whoo!
Joyce Saltman,
and Roberta Gold.
So let's go ahead and get started.
I'm gonna start with you, Karyn.
Share with us a little bit about your background,
and why humor has played such a defining role in your life.
You bet, Wayne.
And it's so good to see you.
Thank you for having us.
This is something that I stumbled upon
back while I was actively nursing and teaching nursing,
was asked to do a research project for my master's thesis,
and stumbled upon this small article
about a nurse researcher, Vera Robinson,
who had studied humor for her dissertation.
And I was blown away that you could actually study humor.
And my advisors were not really happy about it at the time,
but they did acquiesce,
and finally decided that maybe this was worthy.
And after that, they were just blown away
because the benefits that I stumbled upon,
and people were so interested in what I was learning,
that they wanted to be able to hear my findings.
And so I started speaking,
and since then I've written nine books,
the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor
is a big part of my journey,
as was the "Journal of Nursing Jocularity".
And we just have people
on every continent except Antarctica
that we have shared the power of humor with.
Apparently Antarctica doesn't have a great sense of humor,
but Sue would know more about that than I do
'cause she's actually been to Antarctica.
Well, I can tell you, Karyn,
I so appreciate you, and I know we've been
long-time friends of Invisible Disabilities,
and we have lots of great humor resources
you provide for us,
especially on our "Healthy Humor IDEAS" page,
which we're really excited.
It's at healthyhumor.lol, that's how you find it.
So thank you so much, Karyn, that's amazing.
So Sue, speaking of Sue Stevenson.
Sue, tell us a little bit about your background,
what you've been doing all these years,
and why humor's played a defining role in your life.
Well, thank you, Wayne.
I'm so excited to have joined tonight
on "Healthy Humor IDEAS".
And yes, I am calling in from above Antarctica.
I decided that the signal was too poor down on land,
so I've come way above Earth
to beam my thoughts into you directly.
Actually, I am in the mountains.
I'm in Montreux, Switzerland,
so it does feel like we are at the top of the world.
Humor did not play a role as a child growing up.
I came from a very conservative, stoic,
formal Scottish farmer family,
and we really didn't have much humor at all.
And I didn't even know the value of humor.
We didn't watch much TV humor.
I really didn't, yeah, didn't focus on humor.
And it was a very long time before I stumbled on humor.
And I've got a lot of things that happened to me
during my life that humor has made such a big difference.
But Karyn Buxman is a key to my entry
into the humor world.
And when I found AATH,
the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor,
it really just took off.
I studied Humor Academy, which is a three-year program,
which was just amazing.
And through Humor Academy,
I really began to learn the theory,
and then I began to practice,
and then I began writing,
and then I learned about how you push through with humor.
And that became a thing about how people who are struggling,
or who have something they're facing,
whether it's chemo, or infusions,
or really high-stress job,
or family issues, or poverty,
what are the things that you could do
to try to push through humor?
And I'll just pause for there.
Oh, that's awesome, Sue.
I so appreciate it.
And yeah, we're excited for you to be part of this too,
and I know that Invisible Disabilities is one
of your passions too, being on our board right now,
we're really excited about that.
So I wanna go to, so Joyce,
tell us a little bit about your background, a little bit,
and why humor played such a defining role in your life.
Well, I grew up not in a family like Sue,
and I'm really thrilled to be part of our panel today.
I grew up in a Jewish family
where people were always laughing,
but my sister and brother were 15 and a half
and 11 and a half when I was born.
So when they would come home from dates,
and I was just a little kid supposed to be in bed,
I would hear them laughing in the other room.
And when I would ask my sister
when she came into the bedroom,
what were you laughing about?
She'd say, when you're older, I'll tell you.
And I made a decision then that I never wanted
to be out of a group that was laughing.
I wanted to be in every group that was laughing.
And as I got older, I recognized that I wasn't beautiful,
and I wasn't brilliant, but I was funny.
So I could always have people around me who'd be laughing,
which has helped tremendously.
And in my professional life,
I have been a teacher of special education
my whole adult life since 1965,
and there was no question,
but that all the other teachers had problems with the kids
that I had in my classes,
and I never had problems with these kids
because I brought a lot of humor into the class,
I brought a lot of techniques into what I taught
in the university.
I taught not only special ed teachers,
but I taught regular teachers
the enhancement of learning through humor,
believing definitely that if we can reach the kids
to a level that they can laugh and feel comfortable,
and not feel challenged by other people's views of them,
that no matter what their problems were,
that they would somehow get past it.
And so far it's been working.
I turned 80 in July, and it still works.
No, that's awesome, Joyce.
I think about it with Invisible Disabilities.
In fact, I even remember this,
we used to have, we first started our galas back in 2008,
and we'd have these galas,
and we'd have a keynote speaker come in and do our gala.
and I had the photographer after one of 'em say,
Wayne, it's so sad and depressing, it's about disabilities.
And I thought, well, something's wrong here.
we need to understand that that's part of the issue
is disabilities can be serious in some sense,
how it impacts your life,
but understanding how humor can play into it,
and how life is not,
talk about rejoicing in the midst of suffering even,
it's like, why would you do that?
Well, because that's what gives you the ability to endure it
and to be part of it, to make it through it.
So that's awesome, Joyce.
I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people
that are so been blessed by you bringing that
to the classroom.
I mean, I can imagine a classroom
where they're laughing in one,
and the other one they're not,
and you're like, well, that's the one I wanna be in.
Right.
(Joyce laughing)
Awesome.
Well, so Roberta, tell us about your journey,
and a little bit of your background,
and why humor is part of what you're about.
Wow, where do I start?
(Roberta laughing)
When hasn't there been humor?
I was raised in a family that utilized a lot of humor,
but we had illness too.
So my dad was the starter
of a genetically dominantly hereditary rare disease,
and he was sick for a great many years.
He lived a lot longer than he was supposed to,
but we used a lot of humor with him.
In fact, when he was in the hospital,
I would bring a clown on a spring,
and hang it to his IV pole, and make it laugh,
and the nurses would come in and say,
oh my gosh, the patient next door is making me crazy,
make that laugh so I can feel better.
And I became a recreation therapist,
and as I was working with occupational therapists,
and we had a craft clinic,
and the patients would come through the craft clinic,
and probably one of the most popular crafts they would do
would be a stuffed animal.
And they'd work on the head, and they'd put it down,
and they'd work on the body.
And me being who I am,
because I don't change whether I'm at work or at home,
I'm just silly, or some people call me wacky,
I would pick up the head and I would go,
hi, how are you?
And I'd make the head talk,
and they'd look at me like, really?
I'm in here and you're not?
And we'd laugh together,
and then later that day or that week,
they'd stop me in the hallway and they'd say,
Roberta, can I talk to you?
I don't feel comfortable talking to my doctor.
And I realized the power of humor and laughter
made us equal, I wasn't the therapist,
and they weren't the patient.
At that moment, we were exactly the same.
And I started researching it.
I had a supervisor that encouraged me, and I said,
I wanna start a class on humor.
He goes, fine, go research it.
I saw Norman Cousins right before he passed away, probably.
I met a number of really great people
in the field back then.
I went to a conference with Jim Pelley
and some other people.
And I started a group called Brighten Up for the patients.
And it worked, and we talked about utilizing humor
when they go home,
utilizing it in the hospital,
and I started to be asked
to talk about it and write about it,
and I started "Laughter For The Health Of It" in 1983.
And I found it was the American Association
of Therapeutic Humor at that time,
and I was supposed to meet Karyn Buxman in Paris,
but I was eight and a half months pregnant,
and I couldn't go.
But I have been with AATH ever since,
and I am proud to be the current president
of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor.
And I am with wonderful, incredible people
that just are amazing.
(Roberta laughing)
Well, I had an opportunity to go to AATH
to their annual summit,
and I know there's one coming up soon
out here in Denver, Colorado, in April.
And real excited about that.
Yeah, in 2010, I got an opportunity to go
to the one out in California.
Man, one, I never laughed so hard in my life in four days,
but I made so many amazing connections with people,
and it's one of the things that really learned
about the whole issue of connection, right?
How humor really brings that connection
that you meet all these different people that come together,
that humor flattens out that,
it doesn't matter where somebody comes from, we all laugh,
and we get that together,
and sometimes we get the joke together,
sometimes we don't get the joke together,
depending on what it's about.
But that aspect, and I really appreciate that,
and happy to get involved.
In fact, I'm kind of blessed to do one of the keynotes
at this event coming up here in a few months.
And what's exciting is
I'm gonna be talking about finding joy
in the middle of suffering, right?
With a wife who's been chronically ill for over 30 years,
and really how humor has played a big role in our lives.
And we're very excited about that,
to really share that with people.
So I'm gonna put this question out,
so anybody can grab this one.
So what's healthy humor?
What is it?
I mean, what's unhealthy humor?
I guess maybe you could start from there even, right?
You know what, I'm gonna share an unhealthy humor,
and then tell you.
So humor is the greatest connector in the world.
It is also a weapon.
And I actually lost a friend when I was in college
because of a joke she told.
And I'm not gonna repeat the joke,
but it was so horrific that I thought
if they can tell that joke and laugh about it,
I can't be friends with them
because it was putting down a whole entire people,
and it just, it didn't go.
But when you do share humor,
and it doesn't even have to be a joke,
it can be a cartoon that you share with somebody.
My mom started on Mother's Day,
everybody got an envelope,
and it was Mother's Day, actually,
and we were celebrating her,
but she gave every one of us,
the kids, the spouses, everybody an envelope,
and in it was a cartoon.
And she had actually cut these cartoons
out of the newspaper.
And every cartoon was perfect for each person.
It was so apropos, and we shared them, and we all laughed,
and yeah, that's you, you got us.
But the power of humor is when you utilize it
to connect people, to bring people in,
unlike unfortunately, Joyce,
what you had when you were growing up
is to include everybody in on it.
Well, that's awesome.
So Karyn, I hear that you're
the world's first neurohumorist, whatever that means.
Only! So you might know
how healthy humor, neuro healthy somehow comes together.
Your favorite neurohumorist.
(Sue laughing)
That's because I am your only neurohumorist.
But anyway, and there is healthy humor,
and then a slight tangent from that,
and I don't wanna go down a rabbit hole,
but there's also therapeutic humor.
Healthy humor is, I think, any kind of humor
that results in something
that makes somebody feel better
physically, psychologically, socially, spiritually.
The humor that makes people have some kind
of a positive benefit in all of those worlds.
It doesn't have to even be intentionally done.
If it was humor that was experienced,
even if it was by accident,
then that is a healthy humor.
In AATH, we talk about therapeutic humor,
and we've really been delving into this over the decades.
And our friend and colleague Steve Sultanoff,
who is a psychologist,
has really helped kind of pin this down.
And with therapeutic humor, there is an intentionality,
and there is also that the person
who is the recipient of the humor
recognizes that there was a benefit.
And so it's a slight nuance,
but for those of us who really geek out on this,
and wanna go deeper,
that's kind of the difference.
But one of the things that I would love
for the viewers today to come away with is that
humor, when it happens by chance, is wonderful.
But humor by choice can take their benefits
up a quantum leap
because now with that intentionality and with consistency,
they're going to start seeing the benefits
on a regular basis and see more of those benefits.
And do any of my colleagues wanna jump in on that?
Yes, I do.
So thinking about the brain and our neural pathways,
exactly as you're saying, we begin to have filters,
and we just identify humor.
I now notice I see humor.
I see humor everywhere.
I have a lens of humor that I never had before.
And so I now look at the world,
and I see healthy humor as the way.
When positive psychology came into the world,
instead of thinking why was somebody sick,
and what was wrong with something,
we now say what was right with it?
What worked?
And I attend the conferences for positive psychology,
and I just loved when I went last time,
and we talked about the future about healthy humor,
and how we think about joy, and savoring,
and the beauty of the world.
I'm a photographer, so I'm always looking for
what is that joy?
How can I connect people to nature?
So there's a lot of positive connecting,
beautiful benefits when we look at humor
from a positive lens, and a healthy lens.
Well, Sue, since you're kind of talking about this,
how about share a time when you personally
used humor to navigate an illness or trauma,
something that impacted you, your family,
that you used humor to help you kind of get through it
from that healthy standpoint?
Well, my mom had Alzheimer's,
so thinking about our mom's today,
and when she was kinda at later stages
and she'd lost the power of language,
I would take her on walks,
and we would laugh about the different colors of flowers,
and the different bugs that would go in the flowers.
And then I learned to hum
because, by then, words didn't really resonate with her,
but deep in the brain,
music is the last remaining place
where we can bring people to life.
So we would hum.
We go, how much is that dog in the window?
And then I go,
(Sue humming)
And we would hum and hum,
and then she would come alive and hum with me.
So we were known as the humming duo.
That's awesome, that's awesome.
So anybody else have a moment
where they used humor to really get
through a traumatic experience?
Just jump right in, please.
I don't wanna dominate, but...
Yeah, you go ahead, Roberta.
Well, like I explained with my dad.
So my dad was a starter of a rare disease,
and my brother, myself, and I passed it on to my son.
We all have it, and basically we live with it all the time,
but we have to use humor.
So we use humor...
(Roberta laughing)
So we use humor to cope with the way our bodies are,
because I've had two major surgeries,
and I had my colon and my rectum removed,
and for about almost three months, I had an ileostomy,
but I'm allergic to tape,
so it wouldn't stick on me.
So I probably had the worst time of my entire life
was trying to deal with an ileostomy that wouldn't stay on.
So there was a lot of poop jokes,
(Roberta laughing)
and we deal with it in that way.
We utilize it because if you can't change something,
if you can find the humor in it,
you can deal with it so much easier.
It's not gonna change what you're dealing with,
but it's gonna make it so much easier,
and it's gonna make it easier on the people around you.
So we use a lot of humor
around body functions, and sounds,
and the way things work now,
I don't have an ileostomy any more,
I have what's called a J-pouch,
it's an internal bag,
but I still know where every bathroom is everywhere.
Well, you think about that,
and really that aspect of,
I mean, I could think about a callous humor,
or something along those lines where whatever,
with Invisible Disabilities,
there's so many people who are living with chronic illness
where they get it, and they have,
I mean, some things, you gotta laugh.
Oh my goodness.
I mean, what my wife and I go through sometimes,
it's the invariable when the doctor says,
well, that can't happen,
and you're thinking, it did.
How could you say it can't happen?
It did, and you're like,
you just gotta laugh through you saying,
that is the most absurd thing I've ever heard.
What do you mean it can't happen?
It's like, but that happens a lot.
I've thought about writing a book someday with Karyn.
We've talked about this,
where one page would be from the patient's perspective
about the doctors,
and one page would be the doctor's perspective
about the patients
because why do you think they call 'em patients?
Because the doctor's practicing on them, right?
It's like, but that whole aspect of
whatever kind of work you do,
there's always a humor that's tied to,
it's the inside joke kind of thing, right?
So Joyce- John Callahan in his books,
there's nobody who covered what you are talking about
more fabulously than Johnny Callahan.
Now I just wanted to say
having not had what I would consider a trauma
that I dealt with with humor,
and I guess I've just led too happy of a life,
but I think that every day, as we get older,
we recognize the power of humor as an equalizer.
And I know whenever,
I just gave a talk yesterday
on the joys of being chronologically endowed.
And when I talk to people about keeping my underwear,
bras and underpants, rolled up in the vanity
so that I don't have to walk past a mirror undressed
when I come out of the shower,
people my age understand this.
They get it, they get it, and we all feel,
we all have something that's imperfect about our bodies,
we all have something that's imperfect
about the stuff we've done,
or how much are we cleaning the house.
There are so many little flaws that are not traumatic,
but they do impact your daily life,
and also what other people think about you.
And I think that humor is the greatest way
to bridge that gap between people up here
and people down here in whatever the area is.
Whether it's an illness,
whether it's an intellectual problem,
whether it's a financial problem,
in the end, we are all people,
and we're meant to laugh together.
Yeah, exactly right.
I mean, that's one of the things that
at Invisible Disabilities we talk about
is everybody has value.
Somebody may have an illness,
somebody may have a disability,
it doesn't matter what it is,
we all are valued the same,
and we need to stop thinking
that people are lesser because of these things, right?
But you're right, if you look about it,
there are people who,
their lives are so full of trauma and tragedy,
not that they ask for it,
and sometimes they're the funniest people you know.
I mean, they are just so full of humor
because it is that coping mechanism.
It's that, Karyn, you talk about oxytocin,
there's all these wonderful things that happen as well.
And it's like, how could you not cope with this?
That's the only way you can,
is to kind of work into that.
So as I kind of think about healthy humor,
think about it in the workplace or the personal life,
and what's some advice
you might give that says,
here's a way you can use humor,
you talked about seeing humor,
we talked about don't use humor to knock somebody down,
I mean, you talked about that, Roberta,
how we use it as a weapon.
But so what's a practical example
of how you can use healthy humor to benefit somebody,
to make maybe their life's a little bit better,
maybe their business life's a little bit better.
What would that be?
Anybody?
Go ahead, Karyn. I'm happy to-
Oh, I'll jump in, and I know that my colleagues here
have lots of ideas and thoughts as well.
I think the first thing that I would recommend to anybody,
whether it's for your personal life
or your professional life,
is to start rewiring your brain to start intentionally
and consistently looking for the humor around you.
Sue said it so beautifully earlier
that she now sees humor all the time.
And I see humor every day.
Some people will say to me,
but you don't understand,
there's nothing funny happening in my life.
And there are people who have a lot of tragedy,
but the fact is that the humor is still around.
It's just that you're not, like Roberta said,
you're not wearing the lens.
And if you start intentionally asking yourself,
what am I missing?
And don't give up if you don't see something right away
because if that's your belief, that's your reality.
But once you start believing
there's gotta be something funny here,
then you'll see something, and neurons are gonna fire,
and the next time it'll happen a little sooner,
and the neurons are gonna fire again.
And you're gonna start rewiring your brain.
Hebb's law, neurons that fire together, wire together,
and your brain will start showing you humor
on a regular basis.
Things people say,
signs that you see.
I was in a dressing room not too long ago
trying on a pair of jeans.
And the woman in the dressing room beside me,
apparently was trying on a dress.
I never saw her, but I heard her say,
oh hun, if this dress fit me any tighter,
it would fit me like a mammogram.
(Sue laughing)
I had to stop putting on my jeans.
I had to reach into my bag,
and I wrote that down on a piece of paper.
(Sue laughing)
I forgot about it.
It wasn't until a week later
that I found the piece of paper.
So that's another thing,
there's a lot of humor that's happening that escapes you,
and you think about it for a fleeting moment,
but because you haven't brought it
to an intentionally conscious level,
you're not gonna be able to leverage it as much.
It's interesting that you talk about looking for it.
As I'm preparing for my keynote
in front of all these amazing speakers and everything,
talk about humor.
As I'm going through my life and looking at those moments
where humor plays such an important,
and I am writing it down too, right?
'Cause I'm like, I don't wanna miss it,
and then I'll just be driving or whatever else,
suddenly one of 'em will pop, I'm like,
oh my goodness, I've gotta use that.
And then somehow I find the audio clip,
or the video, or whatever.
It is, but you're right, it's intentional.
I've gotta find these things.
And then when you find 'em,
then you have a great laugh, and everybody's like,
oh yeah, that was really funny.
Dovetailing on what Karyn said,
I tell people to do a humor journal,
keep it going all the time.
And I did that.
So my mom went into a skilled nursing facility,
and it was pretty horrific for all of us,
and she started to kind of say things
that were pretty bizarre after a while.
I started a humor log on my mom, my mom's humor log.
Well, like I said, my mom just passed away,
and at her eulogy, I let my brother go first
because I knew he was gonna speak about all her assets,
and the great things,
and I knew that I had to come in,
and share that humor log that I had.
And I did, I shared the humor that I found with her,
and then I laughed with her in the last parts of her life.
And people came up to me afterwards and thanked me for that.
They said, we needed to know that part of your mom,
and we loved your mom's laugh, and her wit,
and that part just shined.
So you can use humor in places to really help you
start your grief as well.
Yeah, Sue, as I think about
you do a lot of coaching in those things.
As you're coaching somebody,
and talking 'em through how to really move to the next level
in their personal and business life using humor to do it.
Yeah, I'm an executive coach and I love coaching.
So I facilitated a program on brain-based coaching.
And when I first did it, it was a bit harsh,
and a bit serious.
And over the years I began to, as you said, find things
that were relevant between humor and coaching,
and trying to find those stories that I could share.
And I was so happy that people would put
in their testimonials,
Sue helped me remember,
she taught me how to embed all of the concepts
and theories in my brain by using humor, and emotion,
and storytelling to bring it to life.
And so for me, that was so, so important
that then I decided with my colleague Karyn Buxman,
we co-authored a paper, "Humor And Coaching".
It just came out last year, was it?
I think so, and in the paper we surveyed coaches,
and we surveyed over 150 different coaches,
and we asked them a lot of questions
about what was appropriate,
what were their challenges in using humor in coaching,
and what worked, again, what worked.
And of the 150,
83% said that they use skills,
but it's about appropriateness of skills.
It's about using humor appropriately.
And that it was important or very important for coaches.
But yet when you begin to work with coaches,
they get a bit nervous that they'll lose
their professionalism or their credibility.
So we bring up ideas on how,
for example, I always start coaching
with a little bit of self-deprecation,
so that, again, that equalizer.
Because a coach often comes in with higher status,
and so it's very important to try to equalize your level
with whoever you're coaching.
And using humor, you can do that really well.
Yeah, kind of impacts that seriousness of life, right?
Everybody's so tense,
and then just one good word that's humorous, that works,
and all of a sudden the whole room is just like
(Wayne blowing)
all the anxiety just went away that fast,
it's just pretty amazing.
I think Joyce was gonna chime in too.
Yeah, please, Joyce.
Thank you, Wayne.
In the world, then left,
and it hardly matters some of the time what it's about.
I will tell you one of my finest pieces of advices,
and I don't care how old the person is,
is we've gotta train people
to get rid of the energy suckers in their lives.
And when I tell people that the most important thing
you can do with your life
is to surround yourself with positive people,
and for the coaches to recommend to their people,
you need to make the people that are around you recognize
how important that positivity is.
It's always there, as we say,
there is always a humorous underside
to whatever is going on.
And there's gotta be a way to help people lighten up
because the energy suckers will kill you.
It's not a joke.
Yeah, I think about that,
how humor is not designed
to make what you're going through non-existent,
or like it didn't matter, right?
What humor does is brings
that a little bit of levity into there
just to take a little bit of that intensity out of it.
To allow the emotions to break through
because we're trying to hold everything in
because it's so traumatic,
or what people are going through is a difficult time.
And that humor just brings that light bounce into it.
It lets the light in, absolutely.
It's letting the light in,
bringing joy. Oh, I love it.
Whatever the situation is, it's gonna let the light in.
No, that's awesome.
And building on that, one of the competencies
for the International Coach Federation
is about lightness and energy.
They define humor in lightness and energy
because coaches go, well, how do I use it?
And just say, bring some lightness.
Whenever the situation or the conversation is heavy,
or the client that you're working with
has some real difficult challenges,
find a way to just bring that levity,
and just bring it back up
because you cannot be anxious and laugh at the same time.
That anxiety, if we can try and tip the balance,
and the threats that come in,
and just try and tip it
so that we have all those endorphins, and serotonin,
and oxytocin flowing, and all these wonderful neurochemicals
that keep us all positive and healthy.
And by the way, just as an aside,
you can't be depressed and eat an ice cream cone
at the same time either.
(everyone laughing)
Good one, Joyce. That's pretty funny.
That's funny 'cause last night
I was sitting there on the couch, and I was like,
man, I don't know what, I want a snack.
And then I remembered,
because I just got over COVID a few weeks ago,
I'm like, I think we have popsicles still.
(everyone laughing)
So I'm like, do we still have popsicles?
And my wife's like, yes we do.
And I'm like, yeah, that's great.
I mean, I haven't eaten popsicles since I was a kid,
but it was like during COVID, I need a popsicle
to deal with all that.
So just one more quick question here,
and then we're gonna wrap this up here.
But around the aspect of
some people feel like, do I need to be the comedian?
Do I need to be the class clown?
I don't have a sense of humor at all.
I don't wanna offend people, all those things,
all that intensity.
So it's like, I don't know how to be humorous,
or how to be funny, or how to do that.
So somebody wanna jump in, and just say,
what you guys have found out that
maybe you don't have to be all those things?
I think one of the biggest epiphanies
that I had over my career was that
there were multiple purposes of using humor.
And we tend to think that the purpose of humor is
to entertain the other person and to make them laugh.
And if that's the case, we measure our success in
how much we can make them laugh.
But the other purposes that I recognized were influence.
If we're coaching, if we're trying to motivate, educate,
persuade somebody else,
we're not measuring the success
in how much we make them laugh.
And particularly with healthy humor,
when somebody is in chronic pain,
or somebody is feeling isolated, or depressed,
and they have the unseen disabilities
that other people look upon and don't understand
because they don't really know
what this person is going through.
When you're using humor for wellbeing,
again, we're not recognizing the success
by how much we make that person laugh.
So you don't have to be funny.
As we say, we wanna see funny, not be funny.
We wanna be the humor appreciator.
You don't have to be the humor initiator.
And to use this humor to build the bonds,
to strengthen the relationships when you feel isolated,
to divert your attention when you're in chronic pain,
to reframe the situation when you're feeling depressed,
to refuel yourself when you have been in overwhelm,
and just going, going, going, going, going
without a respite.
And so to use this humor in these ways,
I think is just incredibly important.
And people just often overlook the power of humor
to help them in these situations.
Awesome, anyone else?
One more?
I agree with what Karyn said.
A lot of times if you're going into a situation
where you know that you're gonna be stressed out,
you know that the person that you're gonna talk to
doesn't quite react the way that you wish you could
get them to react,
and your stress level starts to rise
as you start to think about having
to deal with that and go in.
Sometimes you use the humor before that
so that it lowers your blood pressure,
it calms you down,
and it can be anything.
In my program, "Laughter For The Health Of It",
I teach people how to see the humor
when the comedian goes home.
So you need to utilize humor,
and find it in everything that you do.
And if you can do something that you know,
even just a simple aha,
just telling yourself, ah, and ha,
and do it enough so that you're laughing,
and you can laugh at anything,
you can go into that situation.
You're not gonna change another person.
The best psychiatrist can't do that.
But you can change your reaction to that person,
and when you laugh, you lower your blood pressure,
you calm yourself down,
and you're able to deal with the situation
in the best way you can,
and less damage to your body,
and get out of there so that you can go on,
and do something fun that you enjoy.
Sue, you had something?
I was just gonna say
that you're talking about stress there, Roberta.
I had a time in my life
where I had a nine-year period of chronic stress,
and I got very sick,
and that's why I'm a brain nerd today
because I began studying all about the brain,
and I realized that.
So for example, one of the first things I did
was I went and got a dog.
And people said, why'd you go and get a dog?
And I went, well, I needed something,
both exercise and light.
And then I had a dog naming party.
I thought, I need people, I need humor,
so I had a dog naming party,
and people came up with the craziest names.
So we practiced running down the beach,
calling to my dog, calling it the strangest of things.
But it was my way of dealing with this very,
very horrible diagnosis,
and how was I gonna cope with it?
And that's when I began to really use humor,
and ask people to send me humor,
and just build ideas of how to help myself get
through that period of intense stress.
And I like the Oscar Wilde quote, which you may have heard,
but luckily I didn't learn it too late.
But he said, "Life is too important to be taken seriously."
And I had taken all those nine years way too serious.
And if I'd only learned and joined the AATH earlier,
then perhaps that would never have happened.
(indistinct)
Let me in, Wayne.
Go ahead, please, Joyce.
I just wanted to add,
I know we don't have to be comedians,
and for an instance, I'm not a comedian,
but there is nothing wrong with breaking the tension
in a situation by having a quick joke, or a funny quote,
and I find that I am often in groups of people
who have gotten just so serious about things
that we can't change, things going on in the world,
horrifying things going on in the news,
and we can't change that.
But what we can change is that moment in time
that we have together.
And sometimes just one little quick joke or statement
can alter that so that all of us are laughing,
and then we can go on and deal with what we can.
No, I think that's fantastic.
I know that a compliment I got from Karyn sometimes.
She said I actually have pretty good comedic timing,
which is good.
And I love to do that too, right?
Just to bring some levity to it,
to just try to diffuse the seriousness of it.
Understanding it is serious, right?
And that's the point, right?
What we're going through when we're living with disability,
and illness, and those things.
Those are tough times, right?
But there's so many benefits we can look at in humor,
and I'm so glad that we got together on this,
and really talked about this.
And this is just the start of this journey
on the "Healthy Humor IDEAS" here at Invisible Disabilities.
One of the things is you can learn more about AATH,
you can go to aath.org.
We should have this video up before the conference.
And so we want people to go to the conference there.
You can learn all about it there,
here in Denver. Join us.
What now?
I'm just saying- Join us in Denver!
The Curtis Hotel is so fun.
This is gonna be just a blast.
Please join us. April 4th through 7th.
Oh my, you are all amazing.
So I wanna know, let's just go my "Hollywood Squares"
if anybody gets that reference.
(Joyce laughing)
So Roberta, how can people find out about you?
Well, right here, they can go to laugh for you,
L-A-F, the number, the letter.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
(Roberta laughing)
Sometimes I'm a speaker, sometimes I don't.
laf4u.com.
And you can also sign up for my free newsletter
that I send out every Friday, it's free.
Awesome, Joyce.
Where can we get a hold of you?
They can get all of me on YouTube
if they like stories about sex that are funny, obviously.
(Sue laughing)
Or they can come to my email at kopisalt,
kopisalt@aol.com
That's how old I am, I still have AOL.
And I answer my emails every day.
Awesome, thank you.
Sue?
Yep, I run a business which is called Lifted Fog,
again, that lifting up, trying to clear,
help people get clarity.
So Lifted Fog, remember fog, that foggy stuff, .com.
And I'm building a new area called
liftedfoghumor.com.
Awesome, and Karyn, how can we get a hold of you?
I am wildly identifiable, as most people would say.
And I'm on every social media platform.
I also put out something to rewire your brain every week
called "Humor Habits",
humorhabits.com,
if people are interested
in rewiring their brain for humor.
And you can email me at karyn@karynbuxman.com
and I would be happy to answer any additional questions,
or schedule a cup of virtual coffee with you.
Awesome, well, thank you so much, ladies,
for joining us today on our first ever
"Healthy Humor IDEAS" show,
and many more to come.
Yes.
Thank you, Wayne. Thank you.
(upbeat music)
(soft upbeat music)