Laughter Therapy: Using Humor to Combat Stress Eating
Turny, a 42-year-old accountant, survived a near-fatal air crash. While en route to Europe, the plane was thousands of miles above the ocean. When the oxygen masks dropped, Turny was shaking so violently that she couldn't put them on. A fellow passenger helped her. The plane eventually made a safe emergency landing. However, this incident was the most painful and terrifying of Turny's entire life. During the ten days of treatment following the safe landing, she was still shaking constantly. She would become tearful when describing the details of the event. After the incident, she lost control of her diet.
Two years later, Turnie recounted the same story in a completely different way. She laughed as she described how her hands trembled as she tried to put on the oxygen mask. It took some time to get a smile out of her face. Initially, laughter was a better physiological release than crying. Then, as she recounted how the event unfolded, she found that laughter helped her and others to be less hurt by the details. Friends were there to support her and prevent her from bearing the event alone. This experience also proved to Turnie how ridiculous it is to be stressed about trivial things when something worse is happening!
Of course, this is an extreme example. Most stressful events that lead to overeating aren't this terrifying. Interestingly, at some point, an experience might be horrific, but afterwards you can see humor in that situation. Humor is a very powerful therapeutic tool, a proven way to cope with some harms, and it has amazing therapeutic effects. Laughter boosts the immune system and reduces stress hormones. It can also lower blood pressure, an important factor in stress management. The chemical reactions triggered by laughter are very similar to the mood-boosting effects of exercise.
If you feel guilty or ashamed because of unconscious emotional eating, then laughter is a great way to distract yourself from the bad mood and brighten your overall mood.
Self-soothing techniques: Laughter Yoga
Laughter yoga, a modern form of yoga, was created by a family doctor in Mumbai, India. Since its inception, it has spread worldwide. The underlying idea behind laughter yoga (or "Hassha yoga"), or any humor therapy, is that laughter is another way to alter how the body feels. When you begin to laugh, the physiological movements trigger a host of responses in your body. Your brain sends signals to your body seeking relaxation. Simultaneously, specific neurotransmitters are released to make you feel good. Laughter relieves tension and helps you distract yourself from negative emotions. Furthermore, the instinctive movements associated with laughter also provide a workout for your abdominal muscles, diaphragm, and shoulders.
Try practicing this method: loudly repeat these laughs in a cheerful Santa Claus-like manner: Hehehe, Hahaha. Repeat this method for a few minutes. The laughter you actively induce is likely to turn into genuine laughter. Fake laughter is an effective way to help you achieve genuine laughter. You can think of this method as recording laughter in a TV sitcom. Have you ever noticed that simply listening to recorded laughter can sometimes make you happy? You can also search for videos online to learn how to practice laughter yoga.
Self-soothing techniques: Therapeutic laughter
Find the natural humor in the problem you're struggling with. To achieve this, look to the future. Will this situation keep making you laugh for the next five years? Is there anything in this situation that's truly hilarious? Try to imagine how your favorite comedian could turn this situation into a comedic sketch.
Do something fun. Send a funny text message to a friend, use a fictional name, wear a t-shirt that makes people laugh, or wear a hat that makes people laugh.
Learn a joke and tell it to everyone you meet.
Stick a funny photo of yourself or a humorous picture from a magazine on your refrigerator door; you could even put such a photo on the cookie tin in the pantry. That way, you'll see it when you start looking for food.
Some situations aren't funny, so humor won't work. If your question truly doesn't contain anything funny, then use humor in other situations. Distract yourself from your question by browsing funny websites or watching funny movies. Whatever triggers your laughter will benefit your physical and mental health.
When you feel hungry, choose the feeling of being half full.
I messed up again! Those chocolate chip cookies ruined everything. Why can't I do things right? I feel like a complete failure. How hard is it to control myself? To change this, I tried to focus on the bright side. Before that, I allowed myself a little regret. I had to remember this wasn't a do-or-die situation, even though it felt like it. The good news was there were no more cookies at home-at least the temptation was gone, so I could start over immediately. Like my mom used to say, "You have to break some eggs to make an omelet."
------Casey
Psychotherapists are experts at helping people feel better. You might be amazed to see how they can comfort their clients with just a few words. No hugs, no gifts, no food. It can be quite amusing. Psychotherapists skillfully combine these powerful words to make them effective. So, what's the secret? To some extent, it's the support and encouragement they offer. But what exactly do they say that helps people feel better, even when they're feeling their worst?
Much of what a psychotherapist does involves reconstructing the situation. The therapist helps the client experience it from a different perspective, rather than their original one. Instead of focusing on the specific problem that applies only to you, the therapist reorganizes the situation to see the benefits or opportunities presented by the difficult issue.
Let me describe a situation many stress eaters encounter. Emotional eaters focus heavily on their failures. They have a detailed list of everything they did wrong, and they blame themselves for reverting to old habits. Here's a way to reframe this particular situation: those moments of overeating aren't real failures, but mistakes. These mistakes offer valuable information for research and guidance; they are instructive moments that help identify what you need to commit to. The good news is you can do this reframe yourself without needing a psychologist to set a new perspective on your situation. You simply need to look at it differently. As the saying goes, if life gives you lemons, you can make lemonade. When you reframe a situation, you control how you perceive it.
Self-soothing techniques: The art of reconstructing
(1) Evaluate your language. Write down the negative language you used to describe this situation (failure, stupidity, bad, etc.).
(2) Choose new words. For example, change "failure" to "mistake", "fall" to "memories" or even "opportunity to start over".
(3) Consider how you can use this experience as a teaching moment. A teaching moment means incorporating an important lesson into a difficult situation. We often use teaching moments with children. If your child makes fun of someone's weight, that's a good teaching moment, and you can tell your child to be considerate and accepting of others, no matter what they look like.
(4) Now take out a pen and a 3x5 retrieval card and write down a valuable lesson you have learned from a particular situation you are currently dealing with or from an earlier experience. Place this card in an easily visible place.
Let's say you've just experienced emotional eating, and you're trying to stop this unconscious eating with breathing techniques, but it's not working. You can reframe this event and see it as "good news." Why? Perhaps this experience tells you that breathing exercises might work better if you leave the kitchen. Write this suggestion on a 3x5 card.
You can use refactoring in two ways: it can help you change how you feel about stressful situations; or you can use it to help cope with or recover from events that lead to comfort eating. Suppose you just finished a bag of M&M's when you weren't hungry, and now you feel guilty. You can tell yourself the following; it's not about indulging emotional eating, but about encouraging you to move forward:
This is a challenge, not a problem.
Crisis brings opportunity.
This is a learning experience, a very good lesson.
One day I will laugh at it, and it will become a good story to tell.
It could have been worse. But I did better than everyone else.
Being alive is good enough; suffering is just a part of life.
The cup is half full, not half empty.
Focus more on things I like about myself, rather than things I don't like.
Stress is a waste of time; everything will eventually turn out alright.
I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason.