Mental Illness and Laughter

                                          From Flickr by Embellishedminds

So this weeks lesson (for myself, now I will share it with you) is realizing how important it is to laugh, especially when you have a mental illness. Last weeks post I realized how important it was to have a wellness kit created in case of a mental meltdown (because of course I was having one) writing and meditation helped ease the hold depression took on me but now I realized I left out one key ingredient; laughter. Now again for the second week depression and anxiety are dancing merrily inside my head. So I asked myself, whats missing? Laughter. 

I wrote all my angry morbid thoughts, I meditate twice a day yet my brain still seems so vulnerable to snap at any moment (at least that's what the anxiety keeps telling me). I've kind of hid from the world for the last week because I don't want anyone to see me like this, I’m a hobble of a women slopped into some clothes with eyeballs on top, at least that's how I feel. Every time I get depressed I don't want to be around other people mainly because I hate to think I’m spreading my icky negative germs around everywhere.

So I think about laughter and decided I need to watch something funny. I watched a stand-up comedian and started laughing and felt much better after wards. Actually the whole day turned out better and my dark morbid thoughts and fearful anxiety has lifted. It is so important for us to laugh, to laugh at the world and laugh at ourselves!

When was the last time....

When was the last time you laughed at yourself? Searching for this link between laughter and mental illness was not very fruitful, there wasn't a lot out there on the internet that has to do with mental illness and laughing. I did find a study on Time Health and Family talking about the ability to laugh at yourself which studies ones ability to 'say' they laugh at themselves and ones who genuinely laugh at themselves.

Many of us take things too seriously. When you take life seriously, when failures arise or issues trip you up it is more likely you will feel pain. We don't want to feel pain right? Naturally we tend to avoid it, so a great trait is to be able to laugh at yourself and your shortcomings.

I bounce back and forth only because my sense of reality is messed up sometimes, but my overall personality characteristic has been very humorous. I make fun of myself at least everyday if not all day. When depression hits, my humorous nature turns into morbid humor. I make exaggerated claims of something absolutely awful happening, something so ridiculous that it's a worse case scenario that can't possibly happen so it makes me and others laugh because of how utterly ridiculous it sounds.

When was the last time you laughed at yourself? Really genuinely laughed at yourself, when your depressed do you ever stop and listen to your thoughts and say,”that's absurd! I'm nuts for thinking that way.” One week I had this happen, I went from thinking about suicide (should I just do it? Could I? I just can't take this pain anymore) then I looked at the clouds in the sky and wondered what would happen if we didn't have an atmosphere, would we all get sucked into space? I said (out loud of course because I tend to talk to myself), “I'm so glad we have an atmosphere.” I stopped for a moment, realized my thought pattern and started laughing my butt off. How do you go from pondering over suicide to thinking about the atmosphere and saying how grateful I was for having one? I can say I’m ridiculous, all humans are ridiculous and we should all laugh at the many ways we are.

"It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and 

laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either."

Wayne Dyer

Take The Time

I am sure we all have heard that laughter is good medicine. It can lower blood pressure, boosts the immune system, and decreases pain. How come we don't use this alongside therapy, medications, and everything else? I don't remember my therapist or psychologist asking when the last time I laughed was. 

If your feeling stressed, depressed, manic, OCD, anxious, confused, whatever your issue, take time to laugh. Sometimes I am stubborn, I am so miserable I feel injustice when others try to make me laugh or suggest I do something to pep me up. My first thought is “they don't care about me and my issues.” It's not injustice though, it a remedy because you can't feel angry and laugh at the same time, or depressed and laugh about something. It's just not possible.

It is okay to feel these feelings, it's allowed to feel miserable, but there comes a time when you need to just move on because those feelings aren't serving you. They have no purpose but to make you feel lousy. Take time out to laugh, I know your upset, maybe even stubborn like me, and it doesn't mean you don't care about your feelings or that others don't find your problems/feelings important but you have to let go sometime and move on, even for a moment. It's good for your health, it's good for your life.

Be Silly by Andre' T.

What makes you laugh?

• Funny movies
• Stand-up comedians
• reading/telling jokes
• funny books

Tell us what makes you laugh. Here's one for the book; one time I was feeling awful. I got a fire under my butt and decided to do something ridiculous. My husband and I had to run an errand after work and I thought it would be hilarious to dress up funny. So I back brushed (ratted) my hair, put a floppy sun hat on, over-sized sun glasses, and rep lipstick which I put on and around my lips, plus I had a bunch of scarves around my neck. So we went driving around (my husband can't stop laughing) and I look at people who we stopped next to at stoplights. They look over, their eyes get big, then they slowly turn to look forward again pretending I am not there. Some people just stare, unsure of what they were looking at. After the whole trip was through my husband and I laughed all night, not only at the stunt I did, but about life in general. Take time to laugh!

Resources:

http://www.helpguide.org/life/humor_laughter_health.htm Benefits of laughter

http://healthland.time.com/2011/08/09/why-laughing-at-yourself-may-be-good-for-you-first-ever-study/ Study of ability to laugh at yourself