How Laughter and Humor Help Heal Cancer Patients and Their Families

Hey there, lifter uppers. I'm Deb Krier, the cohost 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.

Today, we're going to be talking about humor as therapy.

Interesting. So here is the host of the cancer and comedy podcast, Dr. Brad Miller.

Hey, Deb, thank you so much, always a joy and a pleasure to be with you.

And as we talk about something that really matters, we talk about

cancer and other bad things that happened to us, particularly

health-wise, and how they can drag us down if we let them.

But how, there is an approach called therapeutic humor that can

respond to that with an aspect of joy in life for what life is.

We like to call that turning the grim of cancer into the grin of celebrating life.

And we'll need to develop a community here at Cancer and Comedy to help people

to face cancer and to cope with hope. And we'd love for people to get

connected to our community or cancer and comedy community by

simply following the podcast at cancerandcomedy.com/follow.

Hey, Deb, let's have some fun. How about a couple of dad jokes?

Perfect. I am waiting for him.

Why was the picture sent to jail?

I don't know. There was framed? Ah, but um, bump.

What sound do porcupines make when they hug?

I don't know. Of course, of course they do. I love it. I love it.

Well, oh my gosh, you know, don't say I'm not warning you.

But following our chat today, you're going to want to stick around for me.

There's one more Dr. Brad's Bad joke of the day. And then of course, us

very important faith It or Break It segment? Well, as we've said,

we would love for you to be part of the cancer and

comedy community, where together we crush cancer, with a

message of how to cope with hope and humor. Please follow us at

cancerandcomedy.com/follow. Well, today we're going to be talking

about how to use humor as kind of therapy when bad things happen in life.

Brad, can you give us examples of something like that in your life?

Well, you know, we all have things happen in life that are not quite cool.

And in my life, I'll just share with you right now we've got a

kind of a sad situation. And our next-door neighbor and community

where I live have been evicted. And there's furniture out in the street

furniture out in the street and is there was a couple of kids involved

in its kind of a sad, sad, sad, sad thing. And so, we are all engaged

about that. But all of us in our neighborhood also know that the

there's a single mom and two kids, a little girl about 10, a little boy about 12 involved.

But here's what we've all had said something to the effect that the

little girl involved, the 10-year-old little girl is going around all the

neighbors basically, kind of you know, she's always had a big

smile on her face usually and a good kind of a laugh in her voice.

And but it just talks a lot about what's going on in our home life, which

is not always good. But a lot of it is just that she loves her neighbors.

It says obvious she laughs and giggles plays with the neighborhood

dogs and cats, and is a joy in the neighborhood. And so, I can't

help but think about how, in this bad circumstance, whatever is

going on here with you know, there's literally even as we speak

right now, there's furniture out in the lawn, and things like this

are happening. And yet there's a little joy in this little girl. And

so, I think you could have bad things happen, you kind of have to

look for things that can put a smile on your face. And that's what's

coming to my mind right now. And it's a little bit therapeutic for

us to know this little girl at least even the midst of what's going on so joy.

I love it. You know and we see that so much is how can we bring joy?

And excuse me, you Alan Klein is kind of the grandfather of this,

the thought of having humor as part of this process. And it was

very interesting he lost his wife when she was just 34, he had a 10 year

old daughter crushing circumstance for most people. And he has l

earned that we have to have humor through this and so he

did you know and humor it applies whether it the loss of a loved

one or friend dealing with cancer or some other type of serious thing, and

I just love his concepts. You know, he's got a lot of really interesting thoughts on this.

Well, I been a person who have read a lot of his material, he has a great

book kind of a foundational book for people are involved

with therapeutic humor called the healing power of humor.

The subtitle is techniques for getting through loss, setbacks, upsets,

disappointments, difficulties, trials, tribulations and all that not so

funny stuff. And you mentioned about his background, but he had

cancer himself and his wife died of cancer. And he had, he is a

survivor himself, even now, he's still with us. And I've been able to

hear him speak on podcasts and YouTube videos a little bit and kind

of do very, very helpful and as think, so his approach to

understanding the therapeutic nature of humor is helpful.

So, I gave an example from my life, how about you in your life?

Deb, can you give an example of how humor kind of served as

therapy for you or a situation you're aware of? Right?

I think we see it often with a funeral. Right? Were either

during the service or after the service, when we gather for

the obligatory, you know, cookies, lunch, whatever it is, and people

start sharing stories. But we, you know, my mother passed

away back in March. And the minister who gave the eulogy

knew her very well. And so, one of the things that we wanted him

to talk about work, your kind of her, as we call them.

My mother's name was Tali. And so, we call them Talisms.

And one of them was when you would say something to her.

And she was rather skeptical about what it was, she would say, Oh, really.

And he had it down. Perfect. And it was so funny, because everybody

at the service laughed. You know, we'd all we all had heard it.

Right. And, you know, it was a way to kind of lighten the mood.

That was very somber, you know, but yeah, it was, it was okay for us to kind of laugh at that.

I think that brings the point that I think client Mitch is here, it's kind

of this nostalgia or these memories, which, which brings joy to us. Right?

And, you know, you like when your situation with your mom, you could, I'm sure you and others could not only hear

those words, but the tone of voice or the things that really the

facial expressions, anything along that line, any provoke

and emotion that happened maybe in the static, maybe

when you got in trouble as a kid was any number of things like that.

But it evoked emotion, it brought a smile, smile to your face. And I

think that's the kind of thing where we can start to the therapeutic

nature of is kind of can shift us from not focusing so much on what

we have loss, but to appreciate what we still have, right. And to

apply that to our situation,

definitely, you know, and we do get caught up in those bad memories,

whether it's watching someone be very ill and pass away,

like, happened with Alan, or with us, you know, being sick, being in

pain, all of these various surgeries,

and procedures and all that stuff that we go through. But there

are good times that we can remember about it, you know, whether I

t was, you know, maybe it was, you know, a friend brought lunch,

and you had a great time talking with them about that,

or visit in the hospital, you know, when you know, it just, it really

helped you get through that day. You know, there are it's kind of

weird to think about remembering good times on this journey.

But there are good times you and we need to think about those.

And the funny thing is, the more we think about the

good times, it kind of pushes the bad times down.

One of the things that I found interesting about Klein and some

other areas, other folks who practice therapeutic humor, it is there's

a place and an acknowledgement of kind of the spontaneous stories,

the storytelling, but they also really talked about kind of the

practice of it. Yeah, how you can seek out humor,

how you can seek out those memories can seek those things

out kind of by applying disciplines, if you will, to this and that's

part of what he talks about. He talks about the five stages

of turning loss to laughter, for instance. So, what do you think that is?

What is some kind of practical things that we might be able

to do in our own life or if someone's had a loss in life,

how we can encourage them to practice such and such a behavior?

Your which may be helpful. Do you have any thoughts about that?

One of the things that he talks about is on focusing on the good

that you do have, you know, he had a 10-year-old daughter that he

needed to raise. Yes. And, you know, and so we need to, excuse

me focus on that on our journeys to, you'll all start feeling sad, pitiful, sorry for myself.

And I will, you know, I frequently have the TV on and there will

be say, a commercial that comes on for wounded warriors, or St. Jude's or something like that.

And I, I always think, doesn't matter how bad my life is, that is so much

worse and look at them getting through it and thriving.

So, we do need to focus on the good, and maybe it's, I was able

to walk a block today, I was able to make it up and down the

hall at the hospital, whatever it is focused on those good things.

And sometimes you have to think about it, right?

You know, but I know a lot of people who get through this by

having a gratitude journal. And sometimes that gratitude journal really is just, I made it through the day.

I think what Klein looks at and helps us to understand what

you're describing here, Deb is having perspective on things and

having a perspective of our situation is different than other people's situation.

The value can be sometimes I'm worse off than AR, or sometimes

a value can be, I'm better off than they are. But the idea is

kind of a to apply an attitude here that everybody's going through

a different experience than I am and how can my perspective

be shifted from what we don't have, to what we do have and

celebrate life. And so, a gratitude journal is one great way of doing that.

I think, also putting ourselves in the presence of people who

have a perspective that is a little upbeat or a little with great.

People, we get gloomy,

You know, unhappy people tend to, you know, want other people

around them to be unhappy. And same thing goes for happy people

generally, have the opportunity then to lift people up. And we like to

say our followers are lift or uppers and people who choose then to be

lifted up themselves to be a lift or upper to other people. And you know, that's a good thing.

Right? Yeah. And it really is so important to surround ourselves with those people.

My surgeon, I love him dearly. And I mean, not a lot of people have

their own personal surgeon, right? You do something and you're

like, No, no, I'm a repeat customer.

I just did discover repeat.

And I have to ask him that. Do I get a discount? Yeah. But when I went

back to him last year for my thyroid cancer, that was the fifth or

sixth that lease surgery that he has done for me. And it was so funny, because

when I walked into his office, and he saw me, he went, Oh, God, you're back.

And, of course, I laugh. He laughs the other people

around, we're going, Oh my God. Because they didn't realize you okay, this was a joke.

And then when they saw the reaction, they knew, okay, this is a joke.

But yeah, it was just, he, it was it really was just kind of one of

those funny moments that, you know, others might have

been going who? Okay. But yeah, you know, I like my doctors

to laugh and joke with me. You know, they, they all have to be

very serious. You know, for all of our medical care people, they are

dealing with virtually life and death and, and horrible, awful situations.

So, I like to make them laugh. You know, and so I have a good

time doing that. And you have to be

appropriate and all of those various things. But yeah, can we

make them laugh? And like you said, you know, it's when we

surround ourselves with happy people. It's hard for us to be gloom and doom me?

Well, I think that's yeah, you put yourself in that position, and maybe

you're the one who can be helping other people as well. Maybe

that's the role of a therapy of a humor therapist, right, which I think is

part of the role that you and I play. I know there are actually for

instance, there are clowns and entertainers who kind of specialize

in going to children's hospitals. To do that. Something else I

wanted to kind of ask you about see what your take on it is because I

think you have a little bit of this spirit within you, as well, maybe a lot

of this, Clyde kind of mentions and some of the material that we

looked at about having a spirit of adventure, as a response to the

bad things he taught, he and his daughter doing some adventuresome

things together, but they kind of stretch their limits a little bit

and help Bond and his daughter together even at the

loss, right, sad loss of the, of the mom, adventure, you know, I'll give you an example.

You know, my, I'm getting ready to buy, I live in Indiana, and I have

a son who lives in Portland, Oregon, and my wife and I are driving

out there, and we're going to take four weeks, and we're going to

Oh, my gosh, see him but we're also going to see, you know, fair, several

national parks, and we're going to drive that whole way. And a lot

of some people said, why don't you just fly out there? Well, hey, we

could, but the part of the adventure is going to be driving, you know,

whatever, four or 5000 miles at sea on the western United States.

And that's part of the adventure, and that'll bond us together. And I

am more inclined, since I've dealt with my own cancer situation, I

think I've been more inclined to take some risks and to do some

adventures. So can you speak to this whole thing about taking a

little bit of a risk a little bit of adventure, as a way of responding to cancer things?

I'm always up for an adventure. You know, and it's, it's funny, like, during

COVID, I made it maybe three weeks, with the you have to be in

lockdown mode before I was like, must get out of the house. But

you know, and my husband had been doing the grocery shopping

and all of those things. And but yeah, I was just aside from going

to medical appointments, I had not done anything. And so, we

started doing what we called our Miss Daisy drives. And they would

be usually on a Sunday. But we would just go out and about

sometimes we had destinations in mind, sometimes it was let's go

down that road and see what is down there. You know, and we

never got out of the vehicles, you know, had masks alone, just in

case we needed to all of those things. But yeah, it really was sometimes,

let's go that way. You know, and, and we've continued that, with

at least once a month, we go on an adventure. You know, we went

on one just last weekend, and I posted a picture on Facebook

and I sit in and we found this really narrow road, that was your, we'd

met somebody was driving off, right. And so, me

post on it was, once again, we have chosen the road less traveled, which

is of course the Robert Frost poem. And you and I think that's the

thing to do. And maybe your adventure is you're going to pick a

different movie, you're going to read a book that you wouldn't

normally read, whatever it is, but have those adventures and certainly don't

think I'll do it next year. No, yeah. Right. Because sometimes next

year doesn't come. You know, for whatever reason, maybe you're just busy.

But yeah, don't put off having those adventures,

and go on an adventure, it's a little bit of the whole thing of

facing a fear, you're facing the unknown, or whatever it would be.

And certainly, when you deal with cancer, that things like that a big part of it is you the fear of the unknown, the fear of

the of the of the present crisis at hand. And it gives you kind of builds those muscles, if you will, those ways to deal with

it. One of the things I wanted to mention together is that client talks about I think it's important to is to take some joy in

the small stuff to write you know, and he talks about even if you find something in a TV show or podcast that you really

like, it makes you kind of smile or chuckle and just remember, make a mental note of it or write it down or make a little

video of it or something like that. That cherish it kind of thing. Right. Right. What do you think about that? Yeah,

sometimes it's I found a cool caterpillar on a on a flower. Right? You know, and, and whatever it is. I think we need to

train our brains maybe to be looking for those, you know, somebody else might go, oh, it's a bug kill it. And I'm like, no,

look at this cool, little fuzzy thing. You know, when and so yeah, what are those good things? You know, it's funny, one of

the things that my mom would jump on me about was that I didn't always say thank you. Now, as I told her, you know,

sometimes I was just trying to not die there. But, you know, showing that gratitude to others, I think is a huge part of

this. You know, we see it all the time where somebody says you might

be the only person who smiles at somebody that day. Yeah, that's great.

You know, we need to do that. How can we spread that joy?

What have we started this discussion by talking about the therapeutic value of humor? Therapy indicates this is a

treatment, you know, this is something that you do. It's not just something that just kind of happens that it's a treatment.

And I think a client in some of his writing says that the effect of that the value of therapeutic humor is finding

healing and resistance through laughter after experiencing loss or grief. And so, he, to me, that's also a transformative

statement, you know, you want to transform your life from a, from the grim to the grand as we like to say, so can you

kind of bring our conversation around to conclusion of how this comes into play here that, you know, that this is a

intentional process that we can use to get better in our life, both from

our personal health circumstance, and how we relate to others? Can you speak to that,

I that was exactly what I was thinking is it is a conscious decision that we have to make to do this.

You know, and, and, and it is your it is kind of like therapy, and maybe

it's like physical therapy, right? Once a day, you go and you do

this, you know, you do that exercise you do whatever it is.

So maybe once a day, we need to make sure that we're laughing,

you know, and be deliberate about it. Maybe it's you got to watch I

Love Lucy, maybe it's that you watch a child out playing, whatever it is,

make a decision and do it that you are going to deliberately find humor in your life.

Awesome. Well, one of the great tools we can use to apply

therapeutic humor to real lie's got several books that is kind of his classic

book is the healing power of humor, and he's got several other works out as well and videos and podcasts and so on.

We'll put connections to a lot of that at our website on cancerandcomedy.com.

Perfect. Well of course, speaking of humor, it is once again time for Dr. Brad's Bad joke of the day.