Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The Coping Humor Training Program

The research evidence is now in. Studies over the past three decades have shown that humor and laughter are, indeed, good medicine for both body and soul. Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The Coping Humor Training Program shows how to get the emotional and physical health benefits of humor into your own life. The book contains the first-ever Humor Skills Training Program with evidence from multiple countries documenting its effectiveness in first strengthening your sense of humor and then learning to use humor to cope with the stress in your daily life. This Humor Training begins by building key foundation humor skills to the point that they become daily habits—a new part of your personality. You strengthen one skill/habit at a time, but don’t start applying the skills to daily stressors until the different humor habits are well-developed. The initial focus is on becoming a more playful person in general (humor is actually just another form of play—mental play or play with ideas). It then focuses on learning to laugh more often and more heartily, building verbal humor skills, finding humor in everyday life and laughing at yourself. Only then does the Training shift to using these humor skills to cope with daily stress. Research has documented the Humor Training’s ability to increase life satisfaction, increase your ability to control your own internal emotional states and boost optimism and reduce depression and anxiety among clinically depressed individuals. The Training’s effectiveness has been documented across all ages from college students to adults in their eighties. These findings with seniors make it clear that it not too late for YOU to start reaping the benefits of building more humor into your own life. This book provides the path for learning to do that.