Building Bonds and Breaking Tension with Comedy During Cancer (this episode is Deb and I co hosted a conversation

Hey there, Lifter Uppers. I'm Deb Krier, the co-host of Cancer and Comedy, where our mission is to heal cancer impacted people through hope and humor, something we like to call turning the grim into a grin. Well, today on Cancer and Comedy, we're going to talk about how comedy breaks the tension about cancer. Now here's the host of Cancer and Comedy podcast, Dr. Brad Miller.

Hey, thank you, Deb. Always a pleasure and a privilege to be with you and to hear the smile on your voice and to see the smile on your face and to know that you are just energized and excited about life in so many ways, and cancer is not going to get the best of you, or have I, or of our cancer and comedy audience, and that's what we're here to do, to be a provide a place where people can indeed to know that a cheerful heart is good medicine in their life.

And we love to help people by offering a way to cope with hope with cancer or something we like to call to turn the grim into a grin. And we like to do that, among other ways, is help people get connected to our Cancer and Comedy community. And you can start to do that by simply going to cancerandcomedy.com/follow. Hey Deb, here I live just outside of Indianapolis, Indiana. I think the temperature got up to zero today. We've got about half a foot of snow on the ground, and you're in Atlanta. I don't got a little cold there, but I got a winter. I got a couple of cold-weather dad jokes for you. Ready for it? Why do bears have hairy coats?

I don't know. For-

Protection.

Cute.

Yeah. You know, when my kids were younger, they would sometimes complain about the house being too cold. And I would say, son, if you're cold, you should go sit in the corner. And my son would say, Dad, why? I said, well, if you go in the corner, it's 90 degrees there.

And I bet he rolled his eyes at you, didn't he?

Still does. Still does.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we love these jokes, and we will have another one folks after our conversation. But then, of course, we have our very important faith It or Break It segment. Well, we would love for you to be part of our Cancer and Comedy community, where together we crush cancer with a message of how to cope with hope and humor. Please follow Cancer and Comedy at cancerandcomedy.com/follow. Well, you know, as we are recording this, you recently attended pod fest, and you were telling me all about a speaker you heard who really was talking about kind of how to use comedy to diffuse this topic. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Well, indeed, I was privileged to go to pod fest, which is an annual convention of podcasters and people who are creative content creators, and that's what we work on here, the Cancer and Comedy podcast. And fact, that's where you and I met a couple years ago, isn't it? At pod fest? And I know I was in a group of people where we were talking about health related podcasts and so on. And I could, I heard your laugh, and I heard your story about overcoming cancer. And I said, that's a person I need to get to know. And so here we are a couple years later.

And we do that, but one of the things we do there is we get exposed to different approaches to doing content creation, podcasts and so on, and I was given the opportunity to give a, do a three-minute open mic comedy, open mic set at one a part of the occasions, and was able to give a talk at another occasion, but I went to the class taught by a professional comedian. His name is Stephen Kimbrough, but it's basically how to create a three minute comedy stand up routine, and I'm kind of, you know, very green at anything like that. So I went to his class and but he spent a great deal of the time, interestingly enough, Deb talking about, oh, not so much joke telling, but why, and kind of the dynamics and even the breakdown of how joke telling and being a comedian is all about.

And so he said the main purpose of, the main reason that jokes work, or comedy routine works is because it breaks tension. And I thought that was very interesting, because he talked about how the tension people have in their lives. It might be about politics, or it might be about your finances or your marriage or your job, or any number of the reasons that people have tension in your life and how a joke or a comedy routine as way to look at it, or to have an unexpected response to the expected statement of what the setup, of what the joke's about, whatever your health situation is, or whatever it is that and then the unexpected response or incongruent type of thing, which is far apart, usually from the setup, which is what makes it funny, you know, and so certainly, you and I know, and even with part of the discussion in this workshop about comedy was how our health and things like cancer are great sources of tension and stress in our lives, and there's a lot of research and so on, and that shows that tension and stress, you know, is often attributed to the cause of cancer or other bad things in life.

So the point was, How then, if you have this stress in your life, one of the ways that you could respond to the stress, cancer, something else is through comed is through laughter, is through some reason to break the stress. And how, if you keep it going, he said in a comedy routine of whatever 15-20 minutes, the idea is to get a laugh every 30 seconds or so, so that you build up waves of laughter. And I think, you know, we've all been had this where we've just got caught giggling or laughing, and we kind of get contagious, you know. One person laughs and the other laughs, and that's of course

Sometimes we're laughing at the person next to us.

That's right, or we get caught up, get the giggles, or whatever it is, you know, and he says, you know. And comedians are looking for that because there's a psychological, physiological response that happens if you can get that rolling laughter, you know, waves of laughter going and how people then feel. These people, you know, even think about how physiological people laugh. They start to shake, right? They start to maybe shake, or they start to kind of waver back and forth. Or they, you know, they throw their head back in laughter. Things of this nature that there's physiological changes that happen and I hadn't thought too much about that before, but Kimbrough. His name is Steven. Kimbrough brought this out about how this is a part of what you experience in a good comedy routine, and how there's a physiological routine. Or people say, I laugh so hard that my sides were splitting.

Right, the stomach hurt, all of those things.

Oh, yeah. Or I, you know, I start coughing. And people start coughing, or, Hey, you know, whatever, any number of things. You know, laughs hard about pick my pants. You know, we have

Somewhere in there, we piddle.

There you go. You get the idea how physiological responses to this. And that's really what a comedian is going after. They get that wave of things going. And it reminded me how some of the things we talk about here, how, therefore that is all good if you're dealing with some bad stuff in your life, like cancer. And so I just wanted to bring it up as an object of discussion here, because he went on to talk about, and I think it's true that, you know, there are, you know, it's psychological and physiological responses to that, but just giving your reaction to some of the floor needs that I had here from a comedian. What do you think?

You know, I obviously agree, and I think this is such an important topic to you know, always be thinking about, one of the things that you had sent me a note about was that comedy, in many ways, is a safe way to discuss a taboo topic or something that we're uncomfortable with, you know, and when we make it into a joke, it just kind of lightens things up. So we can talk about the fact and just kind of make everybody laugh a little bit. And it's that ice breaker, that tension breaker, and I love that concept. I think that's one of the ways where we use it a lot is, you know, and especially, I think, with cancer, when somebody's asking us how are you doing? And I always, you know, but I will often tell people, well, I'm not looking up at six feet of dirt. And that now there are, every once in a while, I get an uncomfortable, ooh, laugh, yeah, most of the time, people are like, okay, she's doing okay. She's fine with discussing this, you know, all of those things. And I think it's our way to signal that, yeah, it's okay to talk about this.

It reveals some of those dark places that we don't always want to go to. But if we can help us to be an inroad into it, and help us to, if you allow us, then to talk about it a little bit, the icebreaker, as you mentioned, there can there be empowering and enlightening and open up a door to a deeper discussion, to a deeper opportunity that can be even more healing and healing through the revealing of what is going on and so I think I, I heard this little story and kind of a research here, a little about a cancer patient went into their regular treatment session wearing a Superman t shirt and the nurse smiled and said, You're a Superman today, huh? The patient replied, Well, Superman has his kryptonite, and I have my chemo, but just like him, it only makes me stronger in the end. And so it was a little humorous aside. You can kind of see things from a different perspective. And I think that's part of what a good comedy routine does. It helps you see this, you know, whatever it is, marriage, cancer, workplace, sex, other stuff, and that is kind of in its place, but you see it in a different perspective. And you get jolted into a new understanding of it helps, helps you a little bit.

Right, you know. And, it also helps us build those social bonds and build relationships with our caregivers and I love this concept. And I might have mentioned this on the program before somewhere, when I started dealing with all of this, you know, they always ask you, when you go in, what's your name, what's your date of birth. And I tell them my name is Anastasia Beaverhausen. I don't know where that came from, but it's just a silly name, right? And so, you know, in the infusion room, they have picked up on that, and they have decided that I am princess Anastasia Beaverhausen, so we almost do the Queen wave. And, you know, so when I arrive for my monthly treatments, they will, from the back of the room, somebody will shout, the princess is here. I mean, you know, all sorts of things. And of course, all the patients in the room are looking at us like, what the heck? But it's something that I then joke about with my caregivers, and we have fun talking about that. And it's just, it's kind of a way for us to bond.

Yeah, and I think it can also diffuse the horror of it, if you allow it to. In some regard, I met a gentleman who dealing with number of health problems, but basically, in his case, he has a whole podcast about he was homeless at one time, and he was able to now do have a successful career as a nurse, but he then, among the many things he had to check to deal with was a really severe cancer situation. But he was saying now, he named his cancer. He named his tumors. He called him Seymour. He says, me, it's me and Seymour are going to battle here today, or I'm going to get ready to Seymour. That kind of thing, you know. And I haven't mentioned to this gentleman, how you do some of the same thing, you know? You give names to that.

Yeah, yeah, you know. And that came from the fact that, when I was first diagnosed, they kept saying I had artifacts.

Oh, that's right.

What does that mean? And I mean artifacts, right? I've got rocks, I've got, you know, whatever you know. And, but, yeah, I had artifacts. And so Artie was just kind of a natural extension of that. You want to and I have a little cartoon Artie. I mean, I have all sorts of things. I hadn't thought about that in a while, that I had done that.

Well, I thought about you when I met this gentleman. In fact, I hope you'll be a guest on our podcast sometime. He's agreed to it, and we'll get it done. But he, Seymour was his guy. Me and Seymour, were going to battle, or we're going to get ready to see him, or even here locally, there's a local radio team here in my community who's actually known for the Bob and Tom program, and any other Bob of the Bob and Tom had cancer, really bad cancer, and he was saying, how his radio partner of all those years, they've got a, okay, but this is a partner that you want to get rid of. So you want to get rid of his, get rid of his cancer partner that it was in his life. And so that's how we, if we put some identification on it, then it can help us to diffuse a little bit or deal with it in a different perspective, right? And I think this is what can the comedian, the comedic community I've been learning from helps you to see things in a little different light, with kind of an oddball, screwed light. And I'm I kind of like

You know, little morbid humor even, that's okay.

Yeah, where you can have self-depreciating humor and that kind of thing. Or I know that a lot of doctors and nurses and caregivers kind of have a little bit of that going on to kind of keep them sane when they deal with people. I have a son who is a hospice care worker, and he always has some funny things to say about some of the people that he works with or I've heard this type of joke said, I'm thinking you probably heard it and maybe been involved with people around who've said something like this kind of self depreciating thing about their hair, you know, losing their hair, things of that nature.

Somebody said something like, Hey, you know, I never wanted to be a trendsetter, but here I am starting the new fashion of no hair don't care, that kind of thing. Or, you know, I'm going to be a fashion model or whatever for the no hair don't care, type of thing, kind of a how you look at it makes a difference. And I know even in the, there was a community of people nearby here, where a bunch of guys who had a but this teenagers here, and this kind of thing happens once a while. You hear about it. But in my local area, whereas one of their buddies had whatever cancer he had, he lost his hair. So all his buddies guys shaved their heads. And a couple of the girls even got super short haircuts. They cut off their hair so, but they had their bond. I forget what they call themselves, but it was the Hair Club for whatever this high school. You know, that kind of thing. So people can do that to help to break the tension. And that's what Kimbrough was saying, that comedy is a great tension breaker, tension reliever. And my goodness, don't we need that if we're going through the grimness of cancer or something like that, we need something to intentionally break the tension. Do you agree?

Oh, you know, I totally agree. And you know, when I was growing up, teenager was when the TV show mash was so popular. And I remember one of the times somebody asked the Hawkeye, you know, the Alan Alda character, why they were always laughing and joking and being so silly and stupid. And he looked at him, and he said, we can laugh, or we can cry, and, you know that really struck me, because I think, you know, and right, a lot of times we'll do both, we'll start laughing, and then we might have tears, or we might have tears, and then we, all of a sudden, are struck with this is the stupidest situation, and we start laughing, you know? So I think a lot of times they are kind of tied together.

Oh, yeah, I think right, just on the flip side, or other side of the coin of that breaking attention is grief, you know, is the fact that we're dealing with our deterioration of our health, or, if it's a loved one, we're dealing with a change in the nature of the relationship. Or, you know, we are talking about our demise, and we're going to die someday, and this might be it that does it for us. But I think one of the things that Kimbrough shared, and I've learned as well as you know all this data, which is the connection between the actual act of laughing and the physiological, physical things you said, the grief. I'll just touch on a couple of now that was refreshing my mind. There's that, there's the dopamine release, and release of the dopamine creates feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. So that's laughter does that for us. And there is their endomorphin production, which helps to elevate our mood. So that happens too. And then I'll just touch into the other ones here, cortisol reduction. We've reduced the cortisol that's stress relief right there. It's a kind of a buffer. Also gets future stress and that kind of thing. And then there's one other, a couple other ones here, the neural network activation, which means our brain starts to function in such a way we start to light up by stimulation, rather than kind of being just kind of deteriorating, that kind of a thing, and it's over, the neurons are lighten up. In other words, we're thinking worth laughing. We're engaged. And one more serotonin effects, which serotonin helps to improve our mood as well. And it's kind of says why people with good sense of humor often show greater emotional resilience. So when bad things come, they can handle it better. That's what I learned in this seminar.

Yeah, you know. And we've talked about that a lot on the program, and I think that is one of the things, that is, you know, we don't always understand, but it is, there are physiological health benefits to the good belly laugh, the fun little giggle, you know, even just lightening your mood. And I've been studying a bit about this, and you know, one of the things that my courses are talking about is if you start feeling a negative thought reaction, whatever you know, acknowledge it, but then replace it with a very positive thought. And they said that when you start doing that, it actually becomes a habit. You don't want to ignore those bad things. We have to feel them. We have to go through them, but we don't have to wallow in them, as my grandfather would have said. And I think you know, we just all know when we laugh, we feel better.

Yeah, wallow. What a great word, wallow. I had heard that.

I think wallow, don't they?

There we go. Well, I think that's part of what we're wanting to do here at the Cancer and Comedy podcast. You know, cancer is kind of a metaphor, not only for the disease of cancer, but anything that will eat away at you and then it will just decay you. And then comedy is about things that can lift us up and to light us up and things like that, and to make a smile and that kind of thing, because they do help. They do. It's like some I've heard just said simply humor. Humor helps, and so I'm glad to be a part of this with you as we continue on this process of helping to offer hope to people coping with cancer and to heal them and help to heal them with hope and humor.

Right. Well, and speaking of humor, I know you've got another one of your bad jokes of the day.