Stress Doesn't Have to Hurt: Embracing Humor in Cancer's Face.

[00:00:00] Deb Krier: 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 be talking about how to make stress your friend.

[00:00:20] Deb Krier: You know, that sounds a little odd, but bear with us. It's going to be a great discussion. So now here is the host of Cancer and Comedy, Dr. Brad Miller.

[00:00:29] Dr. Brad Miller: Hey, Deb. Thank you so much. And yes, indeed, we're going to be talking about stress today and hopefully, we can talk about stress in even a little bit of a positive manner about how we can make that work for us instead of kind of against us. Because we're here on the Cancer and Comedy podcast, we look to kind of flip the script, as it were.

When you get that diagnosis of cancer or some other bad, tragic news in your life, the tendency is to spiral in a downward direction, and we want to change that around.

[00:00:58] Dr. Brad Miller: We are all about helping to develop a community of people, helping people to face cancer-impacted people to cope with hope. And we like to call that turning the grim of a cancer diagnosis—or some other bad thing—into the grin of a fulfilled life. We hope people will get connected to our Cancer and Comedy community by simply going to our website, cancerandcomedy.com/follow.

[00:01:23] Dr. Brad Miller: So, hey, Deb, one of the things we like to do here is tell dumb dad jokes, and I usually have a few ready to go. You ready for a couple? Really, really, really bad ones today.

[00:01:34] Deb Krier: I'm ready for some groaners today. Some groaners. You ready?

[00:01:36] Dr. Brad Miller: Okay, here we go. Why do octopi always win in a fight?

[00:01:42] Deb Krier: I don't know.

[00:01:44] Dr. Brad Miller: Because they are well-armed.

[00:01:47] Deb Krier: Ha ha. Cute.

[00:01:49] Dr. Brad Miller: One more, one more. Why did the banana put on sunscreen?

[00:01:55] Deb Krier: I don't know.

[00:01:56] Dr. Brad Miller: Because it didn't want to peel.

[00:01:59] Deb Krier: That one's a groaner. That one's definitely a groaner.

[00:02:02] Dr. Brad Miller: Had to go with fruit for a little bit here today.

[00:02:07] Deb Krier: I love it. I love it. Well, folks, we're going to have another one of Dr. Brad's bad jokes of the day after our conversation. And then, of course, we get serious with the "Faith It or Break It" segment.

As mentioned, 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 Cancer and Comedy at cancerandcomedy.com/follow.

[00:02:37] Dr. Brad Miller: Well Deb, today I wanted to tell you a brief story that kind of sets up our topic, which is how to face stress and try to make stress work for you for you because stress can be something that can come almost out of the blue when you get a cancer diagnosis. It can really kind of shock you, rock you back in your heels or something else happens.

I remember one time about this time of year that a person came to the church I was serving and kind of unexpectedly it was like a Saturday afternoon. I happened to be at the church at my office and she came in and she was obviously stressed and upset, and you had a conversation with her, and it turns out that she talked about the scenario, which I knew had happened.

[00:03:21] Dr. Brad Miller: We'd had an automobile accident at our church building a week or so prior, where a person had ran off the road and ran into a telephone pole and the sign, the signage that says the name of the church, and it hit all that and ended up the church building. The car actually knocked the power off at the church for a day or two and we had to deal with that, and the car ended up on its top in the parking lot of the church and it was a really kind of a bad scene, kind of a bad accident.

But it turns out the young woman who was inside of the car basically walked away. Yeah, she was scratched up a little bit, but unhurt, certainly could have been devastating.

[00:04:08] Dr. Brad Miller: But the woman who came to my church to talk to me that day, quite upset and stressed, was the mother of that young woman. And she just wanted to talk to me about it a little bit in the sense of, she told me the story. She had to tell me the story. Basically the young woman, 18 or 19, broke up with a boyfriend and it was just gunning it through the neighborhood where our church was at and just basically just lost control. She was going about 75 in a 30 zone, something like this.

But basically this mother was so thankful and grateful about her daughter being basically okay and how the miraculous thing was that she didn't actually hit the, you know, the actual building of the church. She probably would have been killed if that had happened. And, but she, I remember she kind of broke down in tears and hugged me. Even though we're basically strangers. If we were our strangers, we're strangers. And there was a sense of relief that she had.

[00:05:04] Dr. Brad Miller: My point is to say is that she had great stress in her life. And, you know, I took it to mean that she had not only stressed from, you know, the relief of her daughter, but there, you know, there obviously is some family dynamic stuff going on there. And she was stressed about the, you know, her daughter's, uh, mental health and other things going on, but the sense of relief that she had that in the stress that she gave me a hug. And it was a nice moment.

And what I wanted to share, reason why I want to share this, is because stress causes us to do all kinds of things, and we need to try to, I believe, try to get it to work for us in some positive manners rather than spiraling down. So I think it's important, think of it, but this woman, this mom of this young girl, how she could have let that stress just really metastasize and really go to a bad place, but she chose to at least take some action to come to the church and talk to me, the site of where her daughter almost lost her life.

[00:06:01] Dr. Brad Miller: And so let's talk for a minute, you and I, about how when bad things happen, some stressful situation, how we have the choice really to go bad and go down with it or whether to make it work for us. If you've ever had a situation in your life either related to your cancer or something else, where some bad thing happened that you were either a part of or you witnessed that you were able to somehow or another make take a twist on it that made it a little more of a, of a positive thing or something that had some energy to it.

[00:06:29] Deb Krier: Well, you know, I'll be honest. In general, the whole thing in, in dealing with cancer is obviously very stressful. And, you know, and there are times where I'm not a happy camper, you know, and, and, but I have chosen to use it in a way to help others. And one of which is obviously this podcast with you. You know, I, I think it's a great way that we have turned something that is devastating in our lives into a way that we can help others kind of deal with it too.

[00:06:58] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, I think it's interesting sometimes we need to have a little sense of perspective on stress in our life, right? That we need a certain level of stress. Like a rubber band doesn't work when it's just, you know, just, just in the package, right? We need that little rubber band tension. Your rubber band, in order to hold something together, has to have the tension to work that way.

[00:07:21] Dr. Brad Miller: And I think in a lot of our lives, we need a little bit of positive stress to keep us going. We need to be encouraged to keep going and, every once in a while, kicked in the rear to keep going. Right? And yet, the perception of the stress is worse than the stress.

[00:07:40] Dr. Brad Miller: One of the studies I read in preparation for this, for our conversation today, showed that a lot of Americans—and people around the world—die prematurely not from stress, but from believing that stress was bad for them. Somehow, that belief manifested itself in other health problems.

[00:07:57] Dr. Brad Miller: So the belief in stress, not necessarily the stress itself, can have an impact on your body. For instance, when your heart pounds in your chest, some people think that's a bad thing. But it may be that your body is responding in an appropriate way to get oxygen to your blood. Heavy breathing isn’t necessarily anxiety—it might just mean you took a long walk. So physical stress is not always a bad thing.

[00:08:15] Dr. Brad Miller: Relate that to me a little bit. How can stress be a good thing, even when we may have the perception that it’s not?

[00:08:38] Deb Krier: Well, like you said, in so many cases, it’s really not a negative—it’s just something that’s happening. Your heart rate increases, you start breathing differently, all those things.

[00:08:59] Deb Krier: I think in many ways, stress is your body’s way of saying, "Hello, there’s something going on that you need to pay attention to." It triggers the fight or flight response and all those related reactions.

[00:09:21] Deb Krier: It also helps us know when we need to, maybe as you mentioned in your example, reach out to others and ask for help. Or perhaps we’re feeling stressed about someone else, so we need to reach out to them. I think it’s kind of like an early warning system in a lot of ways.

[00:09:21] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, I think that’s well said—an early warning system. A flag goes up, and we need to do something about it rather than letting it go deeper, where it can affect our health.

[00:09:52] Dr. Brad Miller: One of the things I looked at was what some writers and researchers have called the happiness-stress connection. Stress and happiness operate as kind of opposites psychologically.

[00:10:15] Dr. Brad Miller: If we focus on increasing happiness, that may be more practical than trying to reduce stress. The absence of stress creates space for happiness to emerge. I thought I’d share that with you to see what you think. Should we focus on creating happiness rather than trying to reduce stress?

[00:10:15] Deb Krier: Right, right. I love that idea. I think we shouldn’t ignore stress—that’s one of the biggest things. But how we deal with it matters. Are we going to fuss and fret so much that we give ourselves an ulcer or other problems? Or are we going to look at it, deal with it, and then move on?

[00:10:39] Deb Krier: A lot of times, the easiest way to deal with stress is humor—sometimes inappropriate humor. For example, someone might only have two weeks to live, and they say, "Well, hey, at least I don’t have to buy Christmas presents." That might not be quite appropriate, but still...

[00:11:06] Deb Krier: Humor is one of our natural reactions to stress. It’s a way of lightening the mood. Like I said, sometimes it’s inappropriate, but in many ways, it’s a natural way to deal with stress.

[00:11:21] Dr. Brad Miller: Well, I think you and I take that approach—cancer and comedy. It means we’re trying to take a comedic approach to something bad that happens to us.

[00:11:28] Dr. Brad Miller: And yes, sometimes humor is inappropriate, but timing also plays a role. We need to interject humor and lightness to relieve stress when it comes—not necessarily on our agenda or timetable.

[00:11:46] Dr. Brad Miller: I'm thinking, the church I attend right now, we're recording this about a week or so before Thanksgiving. So we're just about a month out from Christmas, but what our church is doing this Sunday afternoon is we're going to a cancer patient's house and decorating their house for Christmas. There are people coming who will decorate both the inside and outside. People are bringing in a Christmas tree to go inside and lots of people are bringing lights and other decorations to the outside. Unfortunately, this person is in a state of health where they may or may not be able to appreciate it beyond now. So it's a party to celebrate Christmas, celebrate life, and celebrate this person. I think it will be a delight not only to the person with cancer but also to the 15 or 20 people who will be involved in this process.

[00:12:43] Dr. Brad Miller: And I think that kind of leads to this social side of stress, which I've heard people talk about. When you approach stress with a social aspect, as you've mentioned—reaching out to people—some people say that stress can trigger the release of oxytocin, or sometimes called the "cuddle hormone," which is the need to be supported and touched in an appropriate manner. And you're connected to that. That's why, like you said, that woman hugged you. That's right. Or, in any number of dramatic events we've seen, either in real life or in movies or TV shows, when someone is saved from a fire, for example, the person being saved hugs the firefighter, or the mom hugs the firefighter.

[00:13:35] Dr. Brad Miller: And this shows this empathetic and supportive sense of others. I think it can sometimes bring out the best in us—that we need to seek out social connection in order to deal with stress. How do you respond to that? What do you think?

[00:14:00] Deb Krier: Well, you know, it's funny because as you were talking about that, one of my initial thoughts was the saying "misery loves company," but we don't really like that, right? When you get around a whole bunch of people who are not happy, it's just not fun. So, you know, I think it is more about what you were saying. When something bad happens, we do want to have that physical release, that physical support. And it doesn't have to be a hug. Maybe it's a high five, maybe it's something else, but it's kind of like that final release—an "aha" moment of, "Okay, we've survived whatever this was."

[00:14:41] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, and I think as we go through stressful times, whether it's cancer or something in the news, like war or politics, we need that release that comes from getting connected.

[00:14:55] Dr. Brad Miller: The analogy I use—when you mentioned "misery loves company"—reminds me of the crabs in a bucket analogy. Have you heard this one? It's where if you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, and one tries to climb out, the other crabs will grab it and pull it back down into the bucket with them. They all end up getting boiled and eaten. If they worked together, though, they could all have gotten out of the bucket. And of course, one of the things we like to talk about here is how we believe—don't you, Deb?—that a cheerful heart is good medicine, that laughter is a good thing. And you're being very intentional about it.

[00:15:41] Dr. Brad Miller: I think there are even studies—ones we've mentioned several times—that say people who have a miserable countenance live shorter lives. There's an interesting study in one of the books I've been reading by Dr. Brian King, The Laughing Cure, in which he mentions a study he did about baseball players from 75 years ago. In the team photographs from that time, some players always had a big smile on their face, while others had a frown. Someone tracked this, and they found that the players who smiled lived six or seven years longer than those who frowned. It's interesting that someone took the time to track this, but I do think it shows something that we naturally know—that people who smile, whether they live longer or not, certainly have more vitality, more pleasure in life, no matter what their circumstances are.

[00:17:05] Deb Krier: Right. You know, and it also goes to the point that if you're a cranky person, people don't want to be around you. You end up being alone and lonely. But if you're the happy person—or, you know, maybe you're not happy all the time, but at least you're not the sad, grumpy person—you're going to have more people around you. And we definitely saw that during COVID, where people were so isolated, and that caused so many issues.

[00:17:32] Deb Krier: You know, we are social creatures, and we need to be around other people, even if it's just on Zoom recording a podcast. But, you know, we don't want to be around those cranky people, and I think that is part of the reason why they die—they, in essence, die of loneliness.

[00:17:49] Dr. Brad Miller: Sure. Sure. Sure. One of the people we studied here was a researcher by the name of Kelly McGonigal, and she said that chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort.

[00:18:00] Dr. Brad Miller: So I think it comes into play here, too. We can try to avoid things here and there, but eventually, if you try to avoid a problem, you're going to hit a brick wall. You'll get really clobbered by the problem. I know your approach—you and I have both had serious health issues. Your approach, I know, is to face it head-on. Denial doesn't help you in the long term, does it?

[00:18:28] Deb Krier: No, it doesn't. You know, it's interesting. I had a PET scan several weeks ago. It was simply a test just to make sure everything was okay. We weren’t looking at anything too bad, but when I got the results online, I couldn't open the file.

[00:18:45] Deb Krier: I just stared at it, trying to open it. Of course, when I finally opened it, it said everything was "unremarkable." You know, one of the few times I like to be boring, right? But yeah, even though I knew it was going to be okay, there's still that moment of "what if?" And I think that's hard for everybody to deal with. But, of course, when I saw that it was unremarkable, I had to make jokes about it, right?

[00:19:17] Dr. Brad Miller: Of course. There you go. Well, I think that’s what we do here at Cancer and Comedy—try to be helpful to people. Let’s leave you with a thought. One of the guys I used to watch quite a bit when he was with us was comedian George Burns. You probably remember him.

[00:19:33] Deb Krier: Yes.

[00:19:35] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah. And, George Burns himself lived to be over a hundred years old, I understand. One thing he said—he attributed his longevity to avoiding worry, stress, and tension. He basically said that even if he wasn't going to live a long time, he still wanted to avoid worry, stress, and tension.

[00:19:57] Dr. Brad Miller: So he made it a daily practice to laugh. Why don’t you leave us with some thoughts on daily practices or ways to make stress our friend? What are some practices you have that we might be able to apply?

[00:20:16] Deb Krier: No, I think definitely acknowledge it, you know, and accept that it's there. When we ignore it, as you said, sometimes it gets bigger. So, we do that, but then there are certainly ways to cope. Maybe you write in a gratitude journal, maybe you watch a funny comedy before you go to sleep. And of course, for many people, they pray. Turning all of that over to a higher power is something that's very important for many people.

[00:20:45] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, and we hope that one of the regular practices will be for people to join us here on a weekly basis for the Cancer and Comedy podcast. Be sure to check out our archive—we have well over a year’s worth of material now, over 60 episodes, along with other live streams and things we do.

[00:21:07] Dr. Brad Miller: People can always go to cancerandcomedy.com/follow and find out more about what we do here. We hope that will help you join the community.

[00:21:15] Deb Krier: I love it. I love it. Now, please tell me you have another one of your bad jokes of the day.