Why Humor Really Is the Best Medicine — Especially When It Comes to COVID Anxiety
A recently published article which assessed the stress levels of frontline health workers and the coping strategies they used, found that using humor to cope was related to lower stress levels. In other words, they confirmed what both your grandmother and the home decor section of [relevant megastore] has been telling you for decades — laughter is medicine.
If this is you, you most likely have COVID-anxiety
To start this article with a brief, and, doubtless, entirely nominal mention of wherever we are in this pandemic would be not only unhelpful, but run counter to what I’d like you to walk away with from this read. If you are like me, the never ending news spiral, the repetitiveness of conversations and the inability to even go out for a walk without being privy to the COVID-related debates and conspiracy theories of your neighborhood, spikes your stress levels off the charts where all you are capable of is switching off the topic altogether.
Feeling this way, no matter what your well-intentioned but nonetheless holier-than-thou friends would claim, is no joke. In fact, your reaction is your brain’s attempt at safeguarding your wellbeing. If you’re feeling over the topic, chances are, you’ve entered into (tada!) the avoidant coping style.
Why should you care? Because if you’ve decided to spend the next few months under a rock in the hopes of what’s happening outside your window to simply pass you by, I’ve got news for you — it doesn’t work
The lost cause of avoidance
Avoidance plays a role in dealing with high levels of stress. It’s a form of protection that reduces anxiety and is the mental equivalent of a holiday, something many of us have felt a lack of this past year.
The trouble is, the escapism you learned in college to deal with finals week (namely: vodka, tears and cigarettes) is just not going to work for you long term. Avoidance usually turns out to work in the short-term, but, as is usually the case with holidays both physical and mental, everything you’re trying to escape from is waiting for you just around the proverbial corner.
Enter your new friend: humor
Using humor to cope with difficult situations feels wrong to the anxious brain. We think that humor, and generally “doing well” is an end-result of overcoming difficulty. And that’s where we’re wrong. Humor can be a process. It can in itself help you heal.
There is a complex psychology to this. Humor helps us add an alternative meaning to something we’ve attributed as negative. While this sounds like another attempt to dismiss valid emotions, it’s not about dismissing or denying the negative experience of stressful situations, it’s a way to understand them in a new light. This process, described as cognitive reappraisal, can help you get out of the mental ‘loop of doom’ that is keeping you stuck in a cycle of anxiety followed by self-reprimand and unhelpful, negatively loaded ways of coping. It adds a layer to reality that teaches your brain to see that maybe you can live through this without struggling.
How to cultivate healthy coping
A mental holiday, followed by a good dose of humor feels to us over-thinkers like a frivolous way of behaving while the world around us burns — and therein lies the problem. But it’s something that once picked up, could lead to a way out of being held hostage by anxiety, the long term effects of which are far worse than the cost of cutting yourself some slack.
A mental holiday, followed by a good dose of humor feels to us over-thinkers like a frivolous way of behaving while the world around us burns — and therein lies the problem.
So we come to understand the gifts of laughter. The only way to build good coping habits is to start. Give yourself full permission. Indulge. I’ll see you on a brighter side.
