What's So Funny About Diabetes: Keeping Perspective
"Diabetes screening may not lower overall death rate!" the headline screams, reporting the latest insights from a 10-year British study. This is the type of headline that highlights the value of humor. It's way too easy to get depressed when all the messaging you hear is negative and downbeat. This takes a toll on your emotional health, obviously, and it can be bad news for your physical well-being.
Feelings of despair, hopelessness, fear, and frustration can manifest as cardiac problems. Sustained emotional stress has long been identified as a factor in cardiac disease. As you know, as a person with diabetes, you're already at higher risk for heart disease, and more serious heart disease, than a person who doesn't have diabetes. (You may have heard the term Diabetic Heart Disease. You can learn more about that here.)
Humor and Healing: Understanding Sarcasm and Dark Humor
You can use humor to help counter the feelings of depression and anxiety that can arise upon reading gloom and doom headlines about life with diabetes. Sarcasm has its place. Upon reading that diabetes screening may not lower the overall death rate headline, more than one reader was provoked to reflect that of course screening doesn't stop people from dying...stepping off of this mortal coil is on everyone's to-do list.
This type of sarcastic, darker humor points out an uncomfortable truth about everyone's existence while considering one's circumstances. It's a type of 're-framing', adjusting one's mental perspective on a situation to be able to better deal with it emotionally. This type of observational humor can make people uncomfortable. Sometimes people will say this humor is dark, or too dark. That doesn't mean it doesn't have value! Even bitter laughter lowers stress levels, improving circulation and promoting cardiovascular health.
“I only sing in the shower. I would join a choir, but I don’t think my bathtub can hold that many people. ” - Jarod Kintz
Learn More About Humor and Healing
If you'd like to learn more about the best ways to use humor to manage your diabetes more effectively, you'll want to read What's So Funny About Diabetes?: A Creative Approach to Coping with Your Disease It's a short, simple, fun-to-read guide teaching you how to make the Humor Habit part of your health care routine. Changing your life has never been so much fun.
