Laughter Therapy

It's no revelation or epiphany that laughter makes us feel good, and that the old adage "Laughter is the best medicine" rings true for a great many people. When we laugh our body relaxes, and endorphins (the bodies natural painkillers) are released into the blood stream. Laughter is a great way to deal with anxiety, stress, and depression, although finding the capacity to laugh when you are in the depths of clinical depression can be a real challenge.

But laughter can be just as effective at alleviating the symptoms of anxiety, stress, and depression as many other self treatment methods, and apparently the body can't actually distinguish between real and fake laughter; so faking laughter can have just as therapeutic effect as real laughter. By making a conscious effort to laugh regularly, we could actually train ourselves to be more positive and cheerful, which in the struggle with many forms of mental illness, can undoubtedly be a real asset.

This article confirmed what I'd always suspected, and reminded me of the inherent message in the movie "Patch Adams"; that sometimes laughter really is the best medicine:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...handwellbeing4

Use this thread to post jokes, comedy clips, personal experiences, and/or your thoughts on "laughter therapy".

What I found funny is that I started a thread this week, "Cranky about the holidays?", which I will be until the axe falls and I recuperate from it, contrasted with the fact that my poor T has been doing spit-takes in session all week, which hasn't happened in a long time. So either he has a new girlfriend or is in a really good mood for other reasons, or I have been unusually funny, which again proves my hypothesis that when i'm miserable, i'm funny; but when things are going well, I cannot crack a joke to save my life. Also, T has said that he likes seeing me because there have been times when he is so down, that I come in, and by the end of the session HE feels better, even though he didn't tell me he was down, we didn't do anything in particular to address it; just something. I think it's because i'm just so glad to see people after being so alone for so long.

Sometimes the best humour and comedy comes from pain. Many top comedians have been tortured souls with a lot of problems in life. Billy Connolly, probably the best British comedian that ever lived is a survivor of child sexual abuse; his comedy is his therapy and catharsis.

Perhaps your T is attracted to you and harbours a crush?

Apparently T's are human too.

My t and i can make each other laugh hard. I love those sessions.

I'm really more of a Benny Hill fan Not bloody likely! He's a 9, if not a 10. I... am not. I already had 2 beautiful husbands - next time, i'm marrying an ugly guy.Soylent Green is people.

I can usually make people laugh just by smiling. I think it might be the prominent gap between my teeth.

At last! I see a chink of light.

I must be in an odd humor mood today, because this made me laugh.

1. French and Saunders
2. One certainly hopes not
3. The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.

Some days in session I have to bite my tongue. If T is talking about "self talk" my mind immediately goes to the SNL Stuart Smalley skits. But I don't want to be disrespectful, because t is making a serious point so I hold it in....but inside I am giggling away. Happens with scenes from "What About Bob" and "Anchorman" too. "I'm in a glass case of emotion!"

I don't want t to think I am making a joke of therapy. I'm not. If I wanted to spend that much time and money joking away an hour, I'd buy tickets to a comedy show, not an hour of therapy. I am just one of those people who quotes movies when I am feeling there's too much tension in the room. And because I don't think I'm that funny myself I just steal other people's material...

That one I see (sorry CE) has nattered on about sense of humour and how it is bonding and so forth. I usually respond it would be useful then if she were actually funny.
Then the joke is about how I am mean to her.

aw darn, you changed #2! I was gonna tell you WHERE TO GO to talk like that

Mine was not capitalized. Only a secular exclamation.

And I also like Joanna Lumley (I could very well be misspelling her name) . Tracey Ullman too.

Or for me, the argument clinic sketch.

Me" that's just contradiction"
Therapist "No it's not"
Me" "Yes it is"
http://video.search.yahoo.com/search...rgument+sketch

Just like my appointments. Including the bell at the end.

Fun joke "test" site to get jokes customized to your humor/taste:

http://shadow.ieor.berkeley.edu/humor/

Good links, Dog and Perna.

But why the hell can you not embed videos on this forum?

I've tried, and for some reason it's just not possible.

Ron White gets me out of a mood. I also use humor to tone down the events of the day and the news of the world. I love to watch the news shows, but I read a good tip that before going to bed, to sleep well don't have news be the last thing you watch or read. Instead, find something funny to watch or read before bedtime.

I got some good mileage out of the Ricky Gervais audiobooks off of iTunes. About 10 hours of comedy I've listened to a fair few times during sleepless nights. Karl Pilkington makes me chuckle, and Ricky's laughter is infectious. Got into them after seeing the cartoon by HBO.

I'm with stopdog on French & Saunders, too. Saunders especially.

British comedy can be pretty good - like, stand up and stuff - but British sitcoms are typically abysmal. Most British TV is, IMO. I like my American shows. Currently watching a bunch of Big Bang Theory reruns.

As for laughter IN therapy... I hope I'm funny for the right reasons! My T has had a chuckle now and then... and she can be funny sometimes, usually in a cute way. It's nice to share a laugh.

There's a video forum down below. Too large, too much bandwidth, copyright, the usual. . . It's not the kind of forum that would normally need video, not like one is going to post one's psychotherapy sessions?

Lol, OMG, can you imagine?

I was thinking of something more along the lines of comedy, music, and porn, you know, for some light relief.

This was a joke. < For the benefit of the humourless.

I have heard that laughter comes from pain.

Honest to god, the funniest television show I have ever seen is Psych. Almost every single time I watch it, I laugh out loud at something.

Typical conversation between the lead character (Shawn) and a gym coach at a school for gifted children:

Shawn: It must be great being a gym teacher
Coach: Are you kidding? I start my day with 300 letters from doctors excusing children from PE because of irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, rickets...
Shawn: Oh.
Coach: Yeah, I threw a ball at a kid once, he wet his pants and his parents filed a civil suit against me.

OMG. I laughed until I nearly fell off the couch.

Never fails to cheer me up.

What a lovely exchange.

I have pretty much this same conversation with MY T! One time my long-time crush made the utterly foolish mistake of saying something to me, and following it up with, "That's a joke." I didn't have a comeback at the time (hey, he woke me up, not in a good way, in a knock at my door too freakin early way), so T gets to hear the comeback and he totally gets the subtext: "Excuse me, but you're just a doctor - I'm the professional comedian here (i got paid ONCE - by old hockey Olympic standards, that meant I lost amateur standing and couldn't compete) - I'll tell YOU when you've made a joke!" T lives to make me non-fake laugh - kinda makes me wonder about that OTHER thing, you know - are the girls faking it? Why is this so important to him?