To inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be. Learn about tackling mental health problems like Anxiety and Depression as well as simple tips to understand the world better, in a down to earth and genuine way with the Best Selling Author and Psychotherapist Richard Nicholls.
Happy Friday to you. It's the weekend then. Hope you're up to something good, if you've got a couple of days off. It's a long weekend as well. So hopefully this weekend you can do something that makes you smile or maybe even laugh, which is more important than you might think. Certainly an interesting subject, laughter, because like crying is, it's something that predates what we think of as language. It's a way of communicating without words. It sends a signal that says everything's okay. So two early human apes with their arms around each other laughing. Is gonna mean something different to the two human apes with their arms around each other screaming, even if they are both bearing their teeth. The diaphragmatic differences, the breathing differences are noticeable. The sounds are so different that once you hear it and you notice the laughing, our ancestors would've been drawn in to that rather than feel the urge to move away. And that's why even after all these years, we do see big, big differences in laughter in groups compared to laughing alone. People are far less likely to laugh at something if they're on their own than if they're shown the same funny footage when they're in a group. In fact, you are 30 times more likely to laugh with someone else than when you're on your own. 30 times. And sometimes just because other people are laughing. That's why the Skype laughter chain was so funny. It's contagious. We can catch a laugh. Laughter creates a bonding experience and that's gonna trigger the safety systems in the brain, which helps to dilute down anxiety. And although it makes absolute sense that if we have anxiety or stress that we should probably spend more time watching funny stuff than true crime, I don't think we always put that into practise. Research has shown that laughing every day even reduces the likelihood of having a heart attack or a stroke by 40% and live on average over four and a half years longer. There's been a few experiments and one of them involving monitoring blood flow whilst watching either stressful scenes from films, usually the beginning of saving private Ryan. If, you've seen that. It's pretty stressful. Or funny scenes like the restaurant scene in when Harry Met Sally, that was a common one back in the day to use. Both changed blood vessels and blood flow watching stressful things is gonna do things to your nervous system as well. But watching comedy trumped it every single time. So much so that it turns out a minute of laughter could even be as good for our body as 15 minutes on an exercise bike. Now, I don't know about you, I don't laugh anywhere near as much as an adult as I did when I was a kid. When I was young, it was literally every day. Every day there'd be something to pretty much belly laugh about at school. And for lots of different reasons, it was just easier to find things funny. And if it's gonna protect us from the effects of stress, strengthen our immune system, numb pain, improve our mood as all the studies from over the years of suggested. Then we need to encourage it, I think. Especially as the influence that laughter has on our mind and body continues long after the laughter stops. So it's not just in the moment. And of course neurologically, anything you repeat becomes second nature. That's no secret. So get good at finding things funny. And you'll find the funny side of things everywhere. When you can do that, you can create a psychological distance between you and something that could have been potentially overwhelming. I always remember, apologies if you've heard me tell this story before, I was in a nightclub once and one of the blokes I was with started an argument with somebody. Me and the other people in our group, we didn't quite know what to do 'cause it just sort of come outta nowhere. And a young woman who knew the guy that our friend was arguing with, she was defending him and clearly wanted to get involved in this argument. So she points at me and she says, and you can pack it in, you and your face, my face. And I just burst out laughing in the nightclub and I said, look, I'm sorry, that's just my face. I wasn't even thinking about anything. Just got a funny looking face and she sort of blinked at me and didn't know what to say and I just carried on laughing. But you've gotta laugh at things sometimes, haven't you? Anyway, that's your five minute short stuff, bonus episode for another week. I'm back on Patreon on Monday with a couple of episodes actually, because there'll be an early release of my September episode, which is gonna be about the benefits or not of complaining and venting your problems, how that affects mental health. So look me upon Patreon, if you wanna I hear a little bit more. Take care yourself. Speak to you soon. Bye for now.
