Catching up with Karyn

Over the years my husband, Greg, and I have entertained one other with hours and hours and hours of stories of our childhoods—him as a little boy in upstate New York, and me as a little girl in the small river town of Hannibal, Missouri. Greg's recalls sledding down snowy hills on his Flexible Flyer steel-runner-sled, putting together model airplanes (and that unforgettable smell of airplane glue that left you dizzy), and of chasing his very first girlfriend—in kindergarten!  I bend his ear with stories of a young girl stomping in the Mississippi mud, sneaking into cow pastures to jump on cow pies, and playing with the one and only doll I ever loved—Chatty Cathy.

For those of you who've never seen a Chatty Cathy doll, she’s 18 inches tall with blonde hair, blue eyes and freckles, and has a “chatty ring” on her upper back that, that when pulled, allows her to speak. (I was taller and didn’t need someone to pull my “chatty...

My friend and fellow medical professional, Dr. Lee Berk said it best when he said: “If we took what we now know about laughter and bottled it up it would require FDA approval.” It’s true that when we laugh, we feel better. There’s a reason why Facebook is clogged with funny cat videos and those “fail” videos that always seem to hurt a little but ultimately are just there to make us laugh. 

So, my question to you is, would you rather go to the gym and sit on the rowing machine for 30 minutes, or would you rather sit down on your couch and put on a really funny movie? Now, I’m not judging if you chose to go to the gym, but I feel like most people out there (including myself) would decide to put on their favorite, belly-ache-inducing, movie and call it a day.

The effects of a good bellyache, top-of-your-lungs, barely-getting-any-air-into-your-lungs laughter can be seen in the immune system and even the cardiovascular system. It’s...

Here’s a question: Do you think you’re funny?

Or better yet, do you think you have a sense of humor? These are important questions to think about when you’re about to set off on a humor journey. Maybe you think you’re really funny, or maybe you wish that you could just get one laugh out of your kids now and then (corny jokes might not land so well on the younger generation). Wherever you might be on your humor journey, it’s important to know that you can always change or better your humor abilities.

Like I’ve been saying for years: it’s more important to see funny than to be funny.

Not all humor has to be comedy, and the main thing to focus on is your ability to tap into your appreciation of humor and the things that amuse you because that’s what’s going to cause you the most joy. The idea of doing this is what I call intentionally looking for humor in your everyday life. It’s a perfect example of how to be able to see...

One of the signs that someone is a great leader is that their team isn't afraid to approach them when they need help or support. Murphy's Law touches every industry. No workplace is free of difficulties. The way a leader responds to these difficulties has a direct and profound impact on the morale and collective resilience of the organization.

Some of the most fascinating neurological research out there has to do with the way our bodies react in anticipation of an event. The events we're anticipating can be positive - knowing you're going to meet your funniest friend for a drink after work - or negative - telling your boss that a critical report is way behind schedule.

When we're looking forward to something good, we begin to experience some of the pleasure of the event before it even happens. Our blood pressure goes down, our circulation goes up, and we feel more energized and emotionally resilient.

When we are looking toward something bad, we experience some of the negative...

The other day at a shopping mall, I unexpectedly caught site of my backside in a reflection. When I came to, I couldn’t bring myself to tell the nice paramedic what had really caused my fainting spell.

Once home, I gazed in the mirror and uttered my daily prayer: “Dear lord: Grant me world peace, thin thighs, and hips without hail damage (not in any particular order).”

World peace seemed much more likely than thin thighs.

However, seeing forty in my rearview mirror has had its advantages. My thirst for knowledge has made me smarter than I was as a twenty-something (if nothing else, I recognize how much I don’t know). Funny how at that age I thought I knew it all—that I was wise beyond my years. I knew about life. I knew about love. My mother had assured me I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up, and I believed her. (Note: My interpretation was that I could do everything I wanted to do—big difference).

With years has come...

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs. Christopher Morley

Whether you're dealing with a chronic health condition like diabetes or heart disease, are a caregiver for someone with those conditions, or are just trying to make it through life with less stress and more fun, humor helps. At times when we feel stressed out or overwhelmed (an exceptional set of circumstances I like to call a Typical Friday Afternoon!) it can be difficult to maintain a realistic set of proportions about what's going on in our lives. All of our problems and challenges become enlarged: all of a sudden, the fact that you've lost your phone charger is as catastrophic an event as you've ever experienced.

Rationally, you know that's not true. Losing a phone charger probably doesn't even rate on your list of the 101 Most Terrible Things That Have Happened. It might not...

There's an important article by Brock Bastian, just now appearing in The Conversation, entitled "Is the promotion of happiness making us sad?" If you're living with diabetes, heart disease, or any other chronic condition, I'd really encourage you to take a look at it.

What you'll find there is an examination of the pursuit of happiness. Could anything be more American? We've even enshrined the words in our Declaration of Independence. We're a people that wants to be happy. If we're not happy, there's a tendency to pathologize that state - treating negative emotions as something that needs to be addressed with medication or therapy. Tremendous social pressure is placed on individuals to act as if they were happy, even if they're not. We're told to smile, and the whole world smiles with you.

Yet it turns out that the unrelenting pursuit of happiness, to the extent that it crowds out any other emotional state, such as sorrow or anxiety, can be counterproductive. Bastian's research...

This morning, I read a powerful piece in the Chicago Tribune Written by Liz Brown, When Funny Business Crosses The Punch Line is an intimate, personal examination of the role humor had in Liz's life as she supported her sister Lynn through her battle with breast cancer.

What's fascinating here is that even though Liz admits she often 'veers toward humor' when coping with life's challenges, there were times - especially after her sister passed away - when the funny t-shirts and jokes provoked emotions other than amusement. She responded more favorably to some humor than others and noted that her enjoyment was related in part to who was sharing the humor.  A funny t-shirt worn by a woman who survived breast cancer provoked some smiles; a sign held by a teenage boy who appeared to be a relatively disinterested party, not so much.

Humor and Healing: Understanding the Power of the Bond

This is a good illustration of how important the bond between individuals becomes when humor...

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." George Bernard Shaw

September 11th. 9/11. You know what day it is today. You know it, even though it's been many years. You know it, even though the New York Times and the New York Post aren't treating the anniversary as a front-page story this year. You know what day it is today.

Is it a day to laugh?

One of the questions that comes up often in discussions about therapeutic humor - leveraging the healing power of laughter to help us cope better and more effectively with trauma and stress - is if any topics are off-limits, where laughter is taboo. It's a question that comes up, especially at this time of year, when people are confronted, once again, with the memories of a uniquely painful event.

Humor & Healing: What's The Relationship

Before we talk about whether or not it's appropriate to laugh about the events of a particular day, it helps to understand why people want...

I think that one of the hardest things for any of us who has cared for a parent or loved one with Alzheimer's Disease is the knowledge that the condition has a genetic component. It's one thing to be there, helping someone else navigate once-familiar neighborhoods or making sure they've remembered to shut the front door. It's another thing entirely to contemplate needing that type of assistance ourselves. Caring for my mother made me think about my own future in a way I never really had before. Perhaps you've experienced the same thing.

How Humor Helps Caregivers: Facing the Future

None of us know the future in advance. We can't peek around tomorrow's corner and see what is going to happen. Every day, it seems, medical science has a new theory on what factors contribute to Alzheimer's. A week doesn't go by that we're not told about the preventative measures we should be taking to stave off the disease.

The last time I checked, that meant more red wine, more chocolate, less red meat,...