How Humor Takes the Edge off Hard Times

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When life feels difficult, humor can be a coping mechanism that relieves stress and offers the breathing room to keep going, scientists say

By Meghan Bartels

November 25, 2024

Three psychologists walk into a bar to compose a witty toast to the power of humor. Or rather I picked up the phone and called each of them about the subject. (I’m just terrible at telling jokes.) But these psychologists do genuinely want people to understand the role that humor can play in helping one deal with stress, anger, fear, anxiety and other difficult emotions. Sometimes, that means purposefully embracing humor when things are going well, shoring up defenses against hard times to come. And sometimes it can mean spontaneously laughing when you want to cry or cracking an absurdist joke when it feels like the sky is falling and Earth is on fire.

“There is this autopilot, unconscious way that many people engage humor without thinking about it,” says Steven Sultanoff, a clinical psychologist and an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University. “It is a strategic coping mechanism, but it’s not a conscious one.”

To psychologists, a coping mechanism is any kind of behavior or thought someone uses to deal with stress, says Janet Gibson, a psychologist and a professor emerita at Grinnell College. Not all of these strategies are beneficial, she notes: drinking or binge eating, for example, are more dangerous coping mechanisms.

But humor is indeed a powerful way of handling stressors, which “activate how we feel, how we think, how we act—and our physiology,” Sultanoff says. Humor does exactly the same things, just in a different direction.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-humor-can-help-you-get-through-hard-times/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow

I hope so.