Why Humor?
Ronald P. Culberson
Last week I attended the 23rd Annual Caregiver Conference, Shedding Light on Dementia Care. Ronald P. Culberson, author of Is Your Glass Laugh Full? opened the session. His speech titled, “”Humor and Caregiving: How to Lighten Up When Things Get Heavy,” was well received by the audience of about 200. On a dreary, wet day in Fairfax, VA, what better way to open a conference than a speaker talking about why humor.
In stressing why humor, Culberson said humor is a way to do two things:
- Manage stress
- Connect with others
As a way to manage stress, he said if you can laugh in the midst of stress, it cannot overwhelm you. He emphasized that you have to see humor all the time, otherwise you won’t be able to deal with it when you’re stressed. Humor is always there if you’re always on the lookout for it. In our world, however, Culberson said sometimes we seem to love to “out negative” each other.
Second, humor can help us connect with other people. We tend to like people with a sense of humor. When you share humor, funny things happen; it changes the relationship. Hence, humor should be used as a tool.
I bought a copy of Culberson’s book, Is Your Glass Laugh Full? at the conference. Somewhat autobiographical in nature, he shares incidents in his life and presents them in a delightful, humorous fashion. It’s a book that’s difficult to stop reading. Being a primary caretaker is not easy and extremely stressful. I highly recommend this book to remove some of the stress.
If there was a simple recipe for care-taking, life would be a lot easier. But every case is different. For example, I met someone at the conference whose husband has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He will not cooperate and listen to anyone and hence, she’s unable to bring in outside help. He sleeps during the day and is up all night. This conference was a good chance for her and others to get away for the day and get some ideas from the wonderful attendees, speakers, and vendors.
Sponsored by The Northern Virginia Dementia Care Consortium, I was not aware of it previously (probably because my attention was not focused on Alzheimer’s), but I’m definitely looking forward to it next year.
One of the grestest lessons I’ve learned about humor is that it is all around us, in every corner of our lives. If we keep our humor antennae up and look for laughs we’ll find reasons to smile every day. ~Ron Culberson in Is Your Glass Laugh Full?
