Building Resilience through Laughter

What is resilience? It has certainly become a buzzword. People talk about resilience as the ability to bounce back from adversity, to buffer stress. It sounds like a process of coping with the ups and downs of life. Or is it a character trait? One way to think of resilience is that it is the ability to maintain our shape and continue moving forwards despite forces from within and without which threaten to disrupt balance and interfere with optimal functioning. Put like this, resilience sounds more like a skill.

I like Ann Masten’s definition. She has studied the lives of children and young people growing up in incredibly tough circumstances and was often surprised at just how well people developed in spite of a really difficult start in life. She thinks of resilience as “the capacity of a dynamic system to adapt successfully” (Masten, 2014).  Is resilience a strength of character that is present in all of us to varying degrees? When life throws up potentially destabilising events, we have to actively respond in a way that is appropriate for the situation. Developing resilience requires us to use what coping tools we have available. And, in deploying dormant skills they become honed and even more helpful in the future.

One exciting thing about resilience as a skill set is that it is clear that it can be taught and developed effectively. Marty Seligman, one of the founding fathers of the field of positive psychology was involved in a resilience training programme for the US Army (Reivich, Seligman & McBride, 2011). This was a huge programme, training over one million soldiers in a ten-day programme which covered six key pillars of resilience.

Although the programme was developed for people in the military, there are lessons which apply to all aspects of our lives. In fact, many of the soldiers who took part in the training commented on how it had affected all parts of their lives.  The skills taught incorporated improving self-awareness through identifying thoughts, emotions and behaviours, as well as self-regulation to regulate impulses and self-expression.  There was a focus in the programme on developing an optimistic explanatory style which looks at challenges as tending to be generated from outside (not my fault) and being specific to a particular situation.  An optimistic approach reflects thinking that things will get better and there is a brighter future ahead.

Another pillar of the programme was developing mental agility, encouraging cognitive flexibility, and practising perspective-taking. Participants undertook a character strengths assessment and were encouraged to examine their own strengths, as well as looking for strengths in others. This strengths-based approach highlighted complimentary characteristics within teams, encouraging people to play to their strengths.

How does laughter fit in? Laughter is often used after the stress of a challenging situation has dissipated. Laughter helps us cope by both distracting us and distancing us from difficulties. Laughter and humour are widely acknowledged as useful coping tools when the going gets tough. We often re-frame seriously challenging events as funny after the fact. Sharing the experience of a resolved difficulty with a smile and laughing about it together helps to forge and build connections. So, we use positive emotions at the time of challenge to broaden perspective and to open different options for action, as well as using them to build resources we can use in the future. This is resilience in action.

On a lighter note, laughter helps to develop resilience through play and fun. Childhood is often a time when play helps us learn about boundaries between having fun and becoming fearful of being hurt. Playing and laughing together creates a powerful learning environment where strong positive memories may be laid down. There is nothing like an old school friend and sharing school-day memories together. 

Next time you are playing a game and there is laughter, take a look around. Enjoy and savour the experience of having fun together, knowing that, on some level, the playfulness may have the serious side effect of building resilience.

References:

Masten, A.S. (2014). Ordinary Magic: Resilience in development. Guildford Press

Reivich, K. J., Seligman, M. E., & McBride, S. (2011). Master resilience training in the US Army. American psychologist, 66(1), 25.

Ann Masten: Inside resilient children

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBMet8oIvXQ