Comedy and Psychology

How does comedy change one’s psychology?

Let me try and appear intelligent with the blog post below. Imagine an owl typing this. 

Comedy has a huge part to play in shaping one’s psychology. If one includes humour in their day to day life, it has the power to mitigate stress, alter one’s perspective and much more.

These are some common ways in which humour changes psychology:

1. Releasing stress - there’s nothing better than a good laugh(well, except Nutella). A lot of stress gets released after a hearty laugh, making situations around seem less threatening than before.Of course, apply your discretion to this. Don’t sit and laugh if robbers come to your place(call the police), although I might laugh because I am in a position where I might have to rob robbers.

2. Change in perspective - there’s a common technique in Neuro Linguistic Programming, where you make your inner self talk funny or imagine a person you’re really afraid of, as a cartoon. This helps change one’s perspective rapidly. Unless you try to imagine the Joker as a clown. Cartoons might be thinking of humans when asked to imagine someone funny. Who knows, they might have a channel called Human Network(Just like we have Cartoon Network). 

3. Change in self perception - Laughter and humour allows you to take yourself less seriously, reducing overall stress in life and allowing more ease. Yes, you are free to wear that funny outfit to your office and make snorting (or snoring noises) anytime someone talks or mentions the word productivity in a 2 hour meeting.

4. Increased resilience - when we have nothing, we atleast have our sense of humour, which is known to increase resilience. It cuts through problems like a knife(not a butter knife) and makes you open to facing life’s challenges with ease and grace. Wow, I sound like Oprah!

These are a few ways in which humour meets psychology. I’ll be back to update this article, if I have a Eureka moment, although I must warn you. I don’t have a bathtub, I have a bucket, which I can barely fit into. Eureka, I got it!