The Laughter Clinic

A Practical Guide To Bringing More Humour and Laughter Into Your Daily Life.

• Mark McConville • Season 1 • Episode 15

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In this episode I break down why humour and laughter work differently and how self‑enhancing humour helps reduce stress and build resilience. I also offer a simple three‑step plan to help you bring more laughter into your life and the lives of those around you. 

• physical effects of laughter
• limits of one‑size‑fits‑all comedy in research
• four humour styles and why self‑enhancing is the best
• how to find what genuinely makes you laugh
• building a personal laughter library
• micro‑doses versus structured laughter therapy sessions
• sharing comedy in a mindful way
• using affiliative humour to build connection in relationships

View Marks Thesis Here: 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343151055_Benefits_of_a_Humour_and_Laughter_Education_HALE_program_to_improve_Knowledge_and_Skills_to_promote_psychological_wellbeing

https://thelaughterclinic.com.au/services/humour-laughter-education-program/

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Website: www.thelaughterclinic.com.au

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Music by Hayden Smith
https://www.haydensmith.com


SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Laughter Clinic Podcast with comedian and psychopsychologist Mark McCumville. Bringing you practical, evidence-based self-care strategies, the latest research in mental health, along with conversations that inspire, educate, and entertain. This is the Laughter Clinic Podcast with your host, Mark McCumville.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi my friends, Mark McConville here. Thank you very much for joining me on this episode of the Laughter Clinic Podcast. And as always, very appreciative of your time. And this episode is all about you. And if you've ever thought to yourself, how do I bring more laughter into my life? And how do I bring more laughter into the lives of those around me? This episode is for you. And I thought the best way to unpack this kind of stuff and this subject matter is I just want to give you an outline of the humor and laughter education program that I designed, firstly, as part of my master's degree in suicidology, and I ran a pilot study of this program that I designed, and that's what has ultimately become the humor and laughter education program. So I'm going to give you a bit of a rundown as to how that came about and what the protocols. I'm not going to go into the in-depth, you know, science and all that sort of stuff behind it, because I I will actually include a link to my thesis. So if you wanted to actually look at where all the research comes from and all the data and all that sort of stuff, I'll give you access to all of that in the show notes, a link to the thesis, should you decide that you want to read it and go through that. So but basically, as you hear me say a lot, you know, humor and the saying laughter is the best medicine only tells half the story. The saying should actually be humor and laughter are the best medicines. And so what we're going to do today is unpack the differences between the physical benefits of laughing, what happens to you physically, and the psychological benefits of using your sense of humor as a coping mechanism. And that's where we're actually going to spend a lot of today. And then we'll uh wind it up with talking about how you bring all this stuff into practice and centered around three main questions. What is it that makes me laugh? How do I bring more laughter into my life? And how do I bring more laughter into the lives of those around me? So for my thesis, you know, basically designed a five-week humor and laughter education program specifically for people with stress, anxiety, and depression. Now it's it started as five weeks, it's three weeks now, and so basically the five the it was five weeks originally because I had to get data, obviously. So, you know, with our participants, we get the depression, anxiety, and stress scale and the humor styles questionnaire and all that sort of stuff. So we got these measures right at the start of the program and at the end. So what I really wanted to try and do over the course of this five weeks was increase participants' use of two positive styles of humor, that being affiliative, making other people laugh, and self-enhancing humour using humor as a coping mechanism. So that was what we really focused on over the five weeks. So let's dive into it. Let's get straight into it, the difference between the physical benefits and the psychological benefits. So physically, what happens to you physically when you laugh? Now, look, I know you've probably heard a lot of this stuff before in the past and from various places and websites and people. So I just want to remind you about a few things because it's really important stuff. So when you laugh, it stimulates the circulation in your body, increases your respiration. There are these neurotransmitters in your brain. You would have heard of cortisol and epinephrine, these stress hormones. They actually get depleted when you're laughing. And laughing stimulates the feel-good hormones, the feel-good neurotransmitters of dopamine and serotonin. It also increases immune system defenses. There's been research around how it increases your ability to have tolerance of pain and all this sort of stuff. There's been some crazy studies out there over the years that have researched the health benefits of laughter. Enhancing mental functioning. Now, this is something that I think is very cool about my program that I designed. All of the research studies that I found, and trust me, this has been researched for decades around the world, so much stuff. All of the programs that I found had a similar kind of protocol, right, when they were looking for actual physical benefits, right? So they would get a certain amount of participants in a room and they would give them certain uh cognitive tests to measure their cognitive abilities and this sort of stuff, and they would measure their heart heart pressure, uh, sorry, heart rate and blood pressure and all this kind of stuff, and then they would have the participants watch some comedy films or comedy movies or comedy clips, you know, uh, for however long, 10, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever, and then they would do another suite of tests to measure cognitive ability and heart rate and all that sort of stuff. Now, the problem with this that I found was all of the research that I the studies that I came across and I looked extensively involved the same protocol of the researchers choosing the comedy material for the participants to look at. And to my way of thinking, that made the results somewhat diluted because your sense of humor is so unique to every single person in the study that, you know, some people might be laughing their asses off at something that they they've seen in the test group, and the people beside them might only be laughing because the they're laugh, someone else is laughing and laughing is contagious, we know that. And you know, someone might begin there going, Oh, it's kind of funny, I don't know, yeah, it's funny in parts. So to me, it was all diluted. So when I got ran people through my program, everybody has you have to choose the content, the laughter-generating content yourself because your sense of humor is so unique to yourself. And another thing that laughing does is it exercises and relaxes your muscles, you know. I mean, you go to a comedy show, you go to a comedy show, you watch a comedian for an hour or a couple of hours, and you laugh your ass off for a couple of hours. How do you reckon you feel at the end of it? You are physically exhausted. I've got to tell you, it's so good for you. But, you know, as I said, that's been really widely researched. But let's look at your sense of humor as the construct to create the laughter. This is where I was saying humor and laughter are the best medicines. Because having a really active and strong sense of humor helps reduce your symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. It helps elevate your mood, knowing that you, you know, being able to access your sense of humor gives you self-esteem when you're able to make other people laugh because you've got a good sense of humor. It's good for your self-esteem. Enhancing memory, creative thinking, having a great sense of humor is so good when it comes to building relationships. And, you know, it's one of the things that attracts us to someone else is when we've got a similar sense of humor to them. You know, it's so good for building relationships. I know when I was a sales rep, you know, driving around selling timber to builders for 10 years, one of the ways that I would get customers is simply by, you know, having it, using my sense of humor and helping make, you know, facilitate a relationship with these people by making them laugh. You know, I think a sales any salesperson knows that getting a customer to laugh is a fantastic way of building a relationship. It's it really is. Because you, you know, you seem friendly, it's a way of creating a bond and and connectedness, having that feeling of connection, especially if you're in a group of people, you know, you're at a comedy club or something like that, or a party, and you've got a heap of people laughing together, that sense of connectedness is so powerful. It really is. And when it comes to the psychological side of things, you know, sense having a good sense of humor is classified as what they call a level four mature coping mechanism in psychological terms. It uh it helps to be able to cope with stress and anxiety or some going through a something that is a negative life event because it helps you distance yourself from a difficult situation by finding a way of releasing tension and being able to reframe something that is negative and put emotional distance between you and that thing and finding a way to look at it in a more lighthearted and humorous way. Very, very important. It's a great way of processing sensitive topics, having a sense of humor because it acts as this psychological buffer, you know, to help us navigate negative life events. It really is. There's a lot of research to show that having a really good and positive, uh, good active sense of humor is a good way to increase a positive mood. It increases your sense of life satisfaction, having a being able to make other people laugh and laughing yourself is is really good for your quality of life. It really is. So let's actually look at sense of humor and let's divide it down into the four categories that have been researched for decades around the world. And these are centered around the research that came out, Martin at Al, like there's a Rod Martin has a lot of research centered around their work around the early 2000s, which once again it's it's in my thesis, all the information is there. They basically divided it down into four styles of humor. There's two positive styles of humor, which are affiliative and self-enhancing. So affiliative is that ability to make someone else laugh, to have those snappy comments, to be able to, you know, engage with other human beings in a way that is positive and in and initiates laughter with someone else. So affiliative, positive, what comedians do. Self-enhancing is being able to use your sense of humor as a coping mechanism, way of building resilience, helping you cope with negative life events. This is a lot of what first responders, frontline emergency services personnel use self-enhancing humor as a way of helping them cope and deal with processing negative stuff that they're seeing day in, day out. Health professionals, nurses, nurses have a fantastic sense of humor, I've got to tell you, and and self-enhancing humor. So that's positive. Now on the negative side, you've got aggressive humor and self-defeating humor. Right? So aggressive humor pretty much laughing at the expense of someone else, or self-defeating, laughing at the expense of yourself. Pretty, pretty self-explanatory, those two are. And yet the funny thing is, is that in actual fact, aggressive humour, it's you know, we've turned it into a form of entertainment. Like you look at funniest home videos, like technically we're laughing at the expense of other people, but we're sitting in our land dreams or watching something on our mobile phones of negative things happening to someone else and we're finding them funny. Right? Now, obviously, there's a huge difference between aggressive humour and bullying. We all know that. Like when you're really using a way of humor to put someone else down, that is not what we want, right? Okay, and then you've got self-in self-defeating humour where you're giving yourself you're laughing at the expense of yourself. Now, the interesting thing is that Australian sense of humor, we've got a fantastic way of using the two negative ones in a positive way. Like we've got an age-old saying in Australia that if we like you, we put shit on you, mate. Relax. Right? Now, we're using technically aggressive humor, but we're using it a way of going, we don't mean anything by it, we're just having a bit of fun. We're using, you know, this is a way of including you into our tribe. Okay. Or we find ourselves in a group of people that we don't know, we put shit in ourselves as a way of going, I'm no better than everybody else. All you guys, please include me into your tribe. So technically, we're using it in a positive way, building a relationship. Now, all of the research that's been done around the world, and like I said, this has been researched a lot, and I mean a lot, right? There is one of these four styles of humor that has shown to be the most beneficial, and that is self-enhancing. Self-enhancing humor. So much research around the use of that for decreasing symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, decreasing suicide ideation, decrease uh sorry, increasing levels of life satisfaction and quality of life, having a fantastic, active, self-enhancing sense of humor, using it as a way of coping with stress and dealing with negative life events. Very, very powerful. So when it comes down to it, it's all about adding more laughter to your daily life, whether it's at work, whether it's in your personal life, your professional life, and sharing laughs with other people and helping others to laugh too, right? And so how do we actually go about it? Well, this is where we divide it down into the three main protocols of the program. And it's very simple, my friends, but it all starts with asking yourself the question, what is it that makes me laugh? And then once you unpack that, how do you bring how do I bring more laughter into my life? And then how do I bring more laughter into the lives of those around me? But really, you've got to ask yourself, you've got to answer the first one first. What is it that makes me laugh? Now, it's gonna be absolutely different for everybody, you know. I mean, like I said, I do a lot of work with emergency services personnel that are suffering from PDSD and all of that. And I say to people, you know, what makes a police officer laugh could quite easily offend a primary school teacher. Does that make it wrong? Absolutely not, because they're using humour, their sense of humour as a coping mechanism, which is incredibly powerful. So when you're asking yourself, what is it that makes me laugh, you know, let's start with comedians, right? Because it's our job at the end of the day, all the comedians around the planet, it's our job to make you laugh. And we live in a time now where you have got access to every comedian around the planet. Once upon a time, you could only see go and see people live and uh, you know, whoever was in your area, but now you can via streaming services, via YouTube, the internet, however you want to do it, but you can access comedians from all around the planet. So have a think about that, you know, have a think about who are the comedians that make you laugh and what is it about them? What is it about their style of humor that makes you laugh? So, you know, you've got big, big name famous ones, you know, like your Billy Conley's and your Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle, Robin Williams, Resty Soul, you know, Jerry Seinfeld, Michael McIntyre, Bill Byrd, Jimmy Carr, all of these guys, right? Okay. So dive into that. Dive into what is it about these comedians that make you laugh? Is it do you like the types of stand-up comics that tell stories, that are storytellers? Do you like the stand-up comics that are short, sharp, you know, one-liners? Do you like the stand-up comedians that have a lot of banter with the audience? Like Jimmy Carr. He's a fantastic comic at that, you know. So do a bit of a deep dive into the different comedians around the world that and see what it is that you know you're attracted to in that respect. Now, maybe stand-up comedy isn't for you. Maybe there's something that you go, oh, I don't know, I'm not really into comedians, you know. What about sitcoms? You know, there's so many sitcoms over the years, you've got access to those and all the streaming services. Maybe it's a podcast that you like, you know, there's so many comedians out there that are doing podcasts where there's, you know, a couple of comedians getting together and they're, you know, banging on about something every week or whatever it is, you know. So maybe that's your thing. Movies, comedy movies, you know, random video, or maybe you're a random video person, right? Maybe you just like to get onto YouTube and just check out cats falling off the piano or you know, Carnage at the boat ramp is a classic one, you know, people trying to reverse trailers and boats down boat ramps and all that sort of stuff. But one of the other things that I really want to talk about when it comes to what makes answering that first question of what makes me laugh is the people. The people in your life. Who is it in your life that makes you laugh? Is it you someone in your family? Is it someone some friends that you've got? Is it work colleagues? What are those relationships like? You know, so because we all know, we all know who is it in our life that makes us laugh. So answer the first one first. Start with that. What is it that makes me laugh? And then once you start to get an idea of that, you start to have a real good idea of what is it that you find humorous and you've and and makes you laugh, then you can move on to the second phase of this is how do you bring more laughter into your life? And I know it was last on the list that we just spoke about, but other people. First things first is other people spending more time with the people in your life that you find funny, leaning into those relationships because we all know, we all know people in our lives that we have a similar sense of humor to. And it, you know, like I've got a couple of mates of mine that I've known for over 40 years, and these guys have been, you know, friends for so long, and no matter where, you know, they're not comedians, they're just mates of mine, and and no matter where I am in the planet, no matter what shit it is that I'm going through, I only have to make a phone call or a video call or something like that. And these guys have got me laughing in minutes, you know. So lean into those relationships, especially now where we live in a time where you can, you know, video call someone across the other side of the planet and have that connection with someone. So, you know, really lean into those relationships. What is it that makes you laugh? People, connectedness, very, very important. Start there, and then from there, build yourself a laughter library is the next protocol when it comes to how do you bring more laughter into your life. And so, what does a laughter library look like? So, say you get on YouTube, create a playlist, call it your laughter library. You don't know how to create a playlist on YouTube, ask a 10-year-old, they'll do it. And then just go searching, you know, go searching for the comedian clips. You know, a lot of comics have got clips out there ranging from two minutes to 20 minutes, whatever it is, or cats falling off the piano, or whatever it is that floats your boat, and just start, you know, you might do a search, Ricky Gervais, and you might see all these videos come up, and then you just grab heap and put it in your library, you know. Jerry Seinfeld, grab heap, put it in your library, Family Guy clips, put it in your library, South Park, whatever it is, whatever it is that floats your boat, because this is the beautiful thing, is it is yours and yours alone, this material, right? That's what makes this so unique, it is personal, right? So build your laughter library, or if you're on one of the streaming services, right, you see a lot of those allow you to save, save to list or whatever, create your laughter library online, and then say build build a catalogue of stuff that you know is you know up your alley, and this is what you relate to in relation to laughter. And so then once you've built your catalogue of laughter generating material, then you go, okay, so now it's you now you move into the next phase where you give yourself daily laughter therapy sessions, right? And you're kind of doing this by default as you're going through and sourcing your material, right? But my suggestion is giving yourself a 20 to 30 minute laughter therapy session every day. Ideally, you want to replace the news with comedy because really it means how much negative news is out there, and at the end of the day, do you really need a half hour or an hour of negative news in the current affairs every single day? I don't think so. If something happens, you're gonna find out about it, social media, whatever, I get more news in the car on the radio, it's a couple of minutes, no visuals, all good, right? So when it comes to a daily laughter therapy session, 20 to 30 minutes, right? Now you can either do it structured or random, right? So structured would mean so you're going, okay, I'm gonna give myself this half an hour at the end of the day, and I'm gonna watch this and it's gonna be my laughter therapy session, right? Or if you have got all your little clips in your laughter library and all that sort of stuff, and maybe you know you've you're going throughout your day and you've got in-between meetings or jobs or whatever it is that you're doing, and you think to yourself, oh, you know, I've got a I've got a three-minute, I've got a five-minute break, or you know, a bit stressed out or whatever, open up your laughter library. Oh, okay, there's a three-minute Billy Connolly clip, I might quickly watch that. You know, give yourself a bit of a mental break, right? And just switch off, switch off. And so those laughter therapy sessions are very important. I actually had a guy run through the program who halfway through the program, he said, he said he had a night where he got to the end of the day and he said, Oh, I've forgotten to do my laughter therapy session. And so he ended up doing it before he went to bed. And he said he had the best night's sleep. And there's actually a lot of research and around how you know, if you if you have trouble sleeping or you have pain, you know, suffer from chronic pain and this sort of stuff, experiencing laughter before you go to bed can really help you sleep. So whatever works for you, there's no right or wrong, it's personalized, whatever works for you. So finding the material that's yours and yours alone, building yourself a laughter library, starting to have your daily laughter therapy sessions. So you've covered what is it that makes you laugh, you've covered how do you bring more laughter into your life, and now let's look at how do you bring more laughter into the lives of those around you. Well, you share it, you share it, and I gotta tell you, when I'm talking about sharing, there's a big difference between sending someone a link or a meme or emailing someone a link to something or on sharing it on social media, as opposed to actually if you get a chance to wait till you're physically with that person and you know, be unable to open your phone or whatever and go, hey mate, I saw this video the other day, come and check this out, and you have that connection of laughing together. Right? Now, at this point, because there is something that I really need to specify here, and that is the word mindfulness. Now, I don't mean mindfulness as in living in the moment, which I am a fan of, you've got to be doing that, but I am talking about being mindful that not everybody shares your sense of humor. You know, you know who is it in your life that you share a similar sense of humor to, right? You want to lean into those relationships. There's no point in sharing something that you find so you find funny with someone who doesn't find it funny, and in hindsight you think to yourself, yeah, what was I thinking? They're never gonna find that funny, whatever, right? So you know, you know, and it is all about building relationships, not destroying them. Because having a sense of humor is so unique, and it's one of those things that you know some people might it's it's a quite unique art form comedy, in relation to like if you listen to a song on the radio, some people might love the song, some people might go, No, I'm not into this, you know, it's not my thing, don't like it, turn it off, or a painting on the wall, some people might look at a painting and go, Well, that's rubbish. What were they thinking? And other people might look at it and go, I don't care how much that is, I want it in my house. Right? Whereas comedy comedy has the ability to make people laugh, but it also has the ability to offend people, right? Some people will find things offensive, and you need to understand that that's their thing, right? Okay, so we all have our own sense of humour. You know, you know who in your tribe has a similar sense of humor to you, and so just be mindful of who you're sharing what with, all right? That's a really big thing. So it's about building relationships, not damaging them, okay? So lean into making sure and just pausing, just pausing for a moment before you share something with someone and go, Well, I actually think this is funny. Because you know, and if you think to yourself, no, I don't know whether they're gonna like this or not, err on the side of caution, my friends. Trust me, err on the side of caution, right? And this whole thing about bringing more laughter into the lives of those around you, generating humor is so powerful. Like in actual fact, there is research to show that making someone laugh is actually more psychologically beneficial than laughing yourself. And as a comedian, I can totally attest to that. And look, if you have ever told a joke, if you have ever been amongst your mates, or you've been wherever and you have told a joke and you have had some other people laughing, you know what I'm talking about. Or if you have an active affiliative sense of humor where you've got that ability to come out with the snappy comments and the you look at life in a humorous way, and you can crack up the lady at the bank or the people at the supermarkets or wherever it is, someone at work by just coming out with something, a classic comment or whatever, and you've got that affiliative sense of humor. Being able to build that relationship and create that bond is so incredibly powerful, and that's the difference between generating humor and appreciating it on stage as a comedian, generating it, fantastic audience, down in the crowd appreciating it, and all you know, the research shows as much as they're getting a kick out of it, we're actually getting a bigger psychological hit out of it. So the message there, my friends, is go forth and be funny. Go forth and be funny, lean into your affiliative sense of humor, lean into making other people laugh, go and do a stand-up comedy workshop, you know, really explore those things that make you laugh and build your laughter library and then start to share that with other people, being mindful all the while that not everybody shares your sense of humor. So lean into the relationships that you know are gonna be, you know, shared laughter. So that's it, my friends. I hope you've got something out of that today. I really do, because it's one of those things that, you know, sharing laughter with others is so incredibly important for our mental health. It's great for our sense of connection and building relationships and all of that sort of stuff. And I just love it. I love being on stage, making other people laugh, see being at a party and seeing people just telling jokes and creating bonds with other people and connecting and having other people laugh. Having laughter in the workplace is very powerful. And yeah, it's just like I said, humor and laughter are the best medicines. They really are. So that's it for this week, my friends. Got a couple of really cool guests coming up. I hope you've enjoyed today. I hope you got something out of it. And as always, I really do appreciate your time in listening. And uh please look after yourself, be kind, be kind to yourself and be kind to those around you. I'll talk to you next time. Cheers. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for listening. The information contained in this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended, nor should it ever replace advice received from a physician or mental health professional. Want more info? Visit thelufterclinic.com.au. If you enjoyed the episode, please share and subscribe. Thanks again for listening to the Laughter Clinic Podcast with your host, McConville.