Learning how to Laugh Can Help You Begin to Recover
Divorce is no laughing matter. Not for Lynn Pickett, Kate Halpin, John Buckles or anyone else who’s lived through the emotional gut-wrencher. But laughter or the ability to gain or retain a sense of humor can speed the healing process, free the mind from worry, improve health, and even prepare one for the next love of their life. Seem impossible? Their stories are proof it can be done.
Pickett, Halpin and Buckles leaned on their senses of humor when life hurt the most. It didn’t change the outcome — their marriages ended as do about 40 to 47 percent of marriages in the United States, according to the Divorce Statistics Collection Web site — but it helped them put their positions into perspective and helped them move forward with their lives.
They each have self-described off-beat senses of humor. How each views life and shrugs off obstacles that bog down others is something that amazes even their closest friends.
Thirty-seven years have passed since Pickett’s divorce. The 55-year-old Indianapolis resident leans hard on her sense of humor and has put together a career to be proud of with family and friends all around.
She says she laughs easily and often, finding more humor in the unexpected and the unusual than in triteness. She calls her humor goofy; her friends might use a different word. “I think they would say weird because at one time I can be very witty…other times my humor is caustic and still other times, it’s rather predictable,” Pickett says.
Whether it’s goofy or weird, Pickett has a sense of humor that she wouldn’t trade. It’s helped her through challenges in a career that has seen her venture into print journalism, work as a commodities broker in the agricultural industry, get her teaching certification and eventually teach high school journalism and English for Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana.
The second of seven children, she notes that her parents are still married, and her family members are her best friends. “Humor is the great equalizer,” she says. “It can bring about an atmospheric change in the boardroom as quickly as it can create a breathing space between quarreling spouses or playground rivals. I believe that God has a beautiful sense of humor and has graced us with a portion of it to use as a tool of communication common to all humans. Because of its equalizing properties, I have put it to good use with difficult customers, difficult students and their parents as well as being able to keep myself uplifted and positive.”
Kate Halpin is uplifting and positive. So says her close friend of 11 years, Molly Gressly. Halpin, who lives in Dayton, Ohio, credits her sense of humor for helping her regroup when her first marriage broke up. She rallied behind her self-described “dry, a little sarcastic” disposition and found the good that can come after life’s letdowns.
“If you can’t laugh you’re going to cry and there really isn’t a point in crying, especially if you have kids, it just freaks them out,” the 43-year-old Halpin says. “You have to move past it the best you can. I found that joking about things and poking fun at yourself is the best way to deal with issues.”
Her demeanor impressed and inspired Gressly. The two met on the job at LexisNexis in Dayton, where Halpin still earns her paycheck. “She doesn’t get too worried or bent out of shape about things and has always put her daughter’s needs before her own,” Gressly says of Halpin. “She has been consistent over the years in all areas of her life when I know it has not always been easy.”
Halpin finds a big difference between having a sense of humor and being “funny.” She’s quick to observe that showing true, deep emotion in public can be troubling for those who are nearby, that crying or constant complaining isn’t going to “win friends and influence people.”
She thinks one reason she was “funny” during her divorce is that her ex-husband got most of the friends after the split. She was left with her work friends and feels fortunate to have transformed them into true friends – those who were willing to stick with her when she needed their contact and support.
“I’ve gone through many difficult things – on the whole nowhere near as bad as others that I know, but I have often found that a good joke (or a really bad pun) can help defuse a difficult situation,” Halpin says. “I am very good at funny comments when I’m in pain for some reason. Maybe it turns off some kind of restraint switch in my head or something.” Halpin remarried 12 years ago and she and Sean are going strong, she says. Her sense of humor is right in the midst of the mix.
“When you are still in the process of making deeper friendships you can’t put as much pressure on them as you might to a longer-term friend,” she says. “For me it’s easier to joke about things.” About 90 miles to the northeast, John Buckles wonders about his own sense of humor. The Westerville, Ohio, pastor shares a deep passion and concern for his family, friends, church members and those who have endured life’s hardships. He’s aware of his own sense of humor. It helped him cope when his first marriage ended in a dissolution; it helps him today when the pressures of work, marriage – happily, he says, for 12 years – and two kids test his 51-year-old resolve.
He wonders about a lot of things regarding his own humor: Does it work? Do others see it the way he intends it? And, when asked, is it something a person is born with or can it be developed?
“I don’t think you’re categorically born with a sense of humor,” says Buckles, who runs marathons in his spare time. “Humor is tied to other things. It’s tied to the grid you have — certain situations you have it and others you don’t – but it doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It’s tied to your own internal, emotional self personal talk. It’s tied to your humanity.”
Buckles says he finally agreed to a dissolution in his first marriage as a desperate last step. It was something he didn’t treat lightly and something he’d never want to go through again, though he appreciates the strength it built in his character. “The cool thing is I forget I’m divorced because of the healing that went on. I look back now and never could have envisioned that,” he says.
When considering the role humor can play in a person’s makeup, Buckles decided to check out its benefits. He went to the Internet, googled “Sense of Humor” and saw the upsides – it helps you feel better, lowers your blood pressure, kicks out the endorphins.
“And it draws people in and connects you,” he says.
One person drawn to Buckles is good friend Scott McAfee, another Buckeye marathoner and regular attender of Buckles’ church on Columbus’ north side. He’s known Buckles for about two years and is impressed by his positive outlook on life.
“He talks up others, is self-effacing and very humble. He’s approachable and perfectly suited to be a connections pastor. I know he puts a lot of people at ease,” McAfee says. “But he’s also human, going through what we all go through. I’ve often told him he has no idea how positively he has impacted people by just being the way he is.”
Buckles contends his humor comes, in part, from not taking himself too seriously. Anyone going through a life crisis, divorce included, can fall into the trap of seeing no further than his or her own problems.
When that happens, there’s no room for humor because thinking of others has been eliminated, replaced by a woe-is-me attitude that crowds out an appreciation for life’s lighter moments. “If it starts and ends with you, you won’t see humor in the room or creation but will only look at yourself,” he says. “You can only have so much humor if you treat yourself too seriously and are too self-focused. When I was broken and humbled and gave my situation over to God, I released it to Him; then you’re freed and can laugh.”
Indianapolis’ Pickett agrees completely. She says the need to develop or retain a sense of humor isn’t simply helpful, it’s a necessity for healing. She points to the releasing of endorphins in the brain that elevate a person’s mood when triggered through positive emotions. Science aside, a good laugh makes everyone feel better.
“In a divorce, so much of what happens deflates a person’s mood which causes a downward spiral of self-esteem and self-worth,” she says. “Laughter, even a little bit per day, can help to reclaim both.”
TIPS FOR KEEPING YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR
From Kate Halpin of Dayton, Ohio
1. Look at things in perspective. Your situation is never as bad as someone else out there. You can always say: Look, it’s not as bad as (insert celebrity name here) at least I’m not going through this in the tabloids!
2. Keep your children in mind – you can always find something funny in something that a child has done that day, or week to chuckle over.
3. Rent a lot of really sappy movies one night and have a huge cry-fest. Getting all the tears out over something that’s not related to your situation is very cathartic. Then you have a better handle on things and it’s easier to be cheerful.
4. Become a bit fatalistic. Once you are actually taking the steps to divorce, it’s pretty much over. I found that many people commented on how well I was taking/dealing with it, but honestly by that time it was a relief to have it over. I had already gone though the first few stages of grief.
4. Find a support group either through work, or a book club or a religious organization or something. The ups and downs of life are much easier to handle if you can go through them with friends.
From Lynn Pickett of Indianapolis, Indiana
1. Laugh! Even if you have to turn on Saturday Night Live and force yourself to giggle at the stupidity of it all.
2. Spend time with children….if they can’t pry a smile out of you, you may be a lost cause….but I don’t believe in lost causes.
3. Spend time with teenagers…they will make you remember why you’re glad you’re not a teen anymore!
4. Spend time with old friends and allow them to tell stories about you!
5. Keep a thankfulness journal and promise yourself that you will only be thankful for the funny things that happen to you each day.
6. Pray God grant you a light heart and a bit of humor every day.
From John Buckles of Westerville, Ohio
1. Don’t take yourself too seriously. If it starts and ends with you, you won’t see the humor in the room or in creation but will only look at yourself.
2. Humor can be a superficial coping strategy or a powerful thing — but it must be real to be a powerful thing and be effective.
3. Be careful if you use humor as a minimizing technique because it doesn’t always fly with other people.
4. Humor is a tool that, like a lot of tools can be misused. It’s a gift of God; use it as such.
Brian Guth has worked for newspapers in Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio in a 20-year career.
