What's Fun Got To Do With It?

What's Fun Got To Do With It?  Asking the Right Questions

Sometimes our mental health hinges on asking the right questions. When experiencing a bout of depression or anxiety, it may become easy to pathologize our current state i.e., view our condition as psychologically unhealthy or abnormal.  Certainly, in the present day environment of being trauma-informed, it seems like all the focus is on healing childhood "wounds" or grieving losses in adulthood.  But, what if it wasn't as complicated as all that?  What if we've been asking the wrong questions?  What if focusing on how bad we feel, or our anxiety was better dealt with by making a slight shift in our mindset?  This is where the question: What's Fun Got To Do With It? comes in.

When was the last time you had a roaring belly laugh?  Or grinned from ear-to-ear so hard your face hurt?  When was the last time you intentionally set out to have fun?  Do you even know what fun feels like anymore?  Fun is a necessary prelude to joy.  Fun brings us lightheartedness.  Fun is a giant stress reliever.  It resets our nervous system and offers a coffee break from becoming over focused on the negative.  Fun is a respite from the daily grind of life's responsibilities and chores.  Fun and laughter bond us to the people we care about and creates memories we share together.  Fun brings us back into balance and shifts our perspective making life worthwhile.  Fun eliminates the drudgery we can get caught up in when we work too hard.  Fun helps recharge and rejuvenate our physical energy.  It can also provide the space we need to shift into problem solving mode, instead of endlessly ruminating.

Just like getting enough sleep can reduce stress and anxiety levels, fun makes it easier to cope with emotional challenges.  There's something to be said for gallows humor.  At the end of his life, my father developed Lewy-Body dementia.  In our morning phone call, I would always ask him, "What's going on?", and he would reply, "You're asking me?".  Even though my Dad's memory was slowly waning, he never lost his sense of humor and was able to laugh at himself to keep going.

Here's a challenge for you.  Make a list of the top ten activities that make you laugh, smile, giggle, or feel joy.  Make sure to add silly nonsensical items to the list.  Then the next time you feel super anxious or depressed, pull out this list and do the quickest activity you can manage in the moment.  Take time to lighten up, put your emotions into perspective, and recognize not all negative feelings mean we are suffering from ongoing trauma or wounds.  

Here's my top ten list of fun mental health activities:

1.   Watch YouTube videos of the Beatles. 

2.   Joy ride in the car to my favorite rock-n-roll tunes.

3.   Watch the sunset over the beach.

4.   Pull goofy faces in the mirror.

5.   Watch dance videos on YouTube.

6.   Go to a Comedy Open Mic night.

7.   Tell Knock-Knock jokes to my friends.

8.   Pull a prank or practical joke on a friend.

9.   Listen to an oldie but goody AM radio station.

10.  Make up irreverent words to my favorite songs.

You get the point.  I leave you with a laugh track video from my YouTube channel. 

A fun laugh track from a sketch comedy improv writing session with my friend, Stan. 

In loving memory of Stan Fleisher, soulmate and running partner.  May he RIP.

 

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Those Pesky Things Called Feelings

Turn a Bad Day into A Good Day - Managing Feelings

When life or people become frustrating or unmanageable, it's natural to feel emotional, annoyed, and even succumb to acting out.  But afterwards we may experience a morning-after, "emotional hangover", when faced with the consequences of our ill guided actions.  In a fury of frustration, eating an entire bag of chips in front of the TV or sending out a nasty email feels so good in the moment!  Yet, what's left 24 hours later is mostly self-recrimination and collective misery.  No one feels good.  Like a compound fracture, an annoying situation becomes broken in two places - packing on the pounds or damaging a relationship only piles on icky feelings of guilt and remorse making a bad situation worse.  "What was I thinking?!!" is hardly a good platform from which to assess what happened in going forward.  Having a stomach ache or losing a relationship isn't helpful either.

Loss of control is the result of being hypnotized by the powerful pull of negative emotions and distractions i.e., eating junk food, spouting off, spending money you don't have, etc. Then, like any trance state, the momentary "high" wears off.  Those feelings of annoyance and frustration will eventually ebb away no matter what.  What do you want to have to show for it after, something positive or something negative?   It's totally up to you.  True power comes from self-control and positive distractions.  Take a deep breath, take a walk around the block. You get a time-out with the added bonus of a positive payoff - burn off a few calories.

Imagine feeling good, staying peaceful in the midst of frustrating circumstances.  It is possible!  However, it does require some effort and conscious thought that can be difficult to muster when you are upset.  Negative emotions induce a trance-like state that hinders good judgment.  Cultivating inner peace takes practice, but is absolutely worth it!

The secret is having positive distractions planned ahead to fend off making a catastrophic situation out of a bad moment. Then, when a negative emotion or situation pops up, it won't take over and kill your impulse control by making you reach for that bag of chips or lashing out in anger.  

 

 

Plan ahead to positively distract yourself!  Stock the fridge with healthy foods, i.e., grab a piece of watermelon.  Or dark chocolate.  Share your frustration with an impartial individual who can offer good judgment and objective feedback.  Or, help someone out.  Random acts of kindness for yourself and others are a quick and dirty way to feel better and rack up time well spent.

Annoyances and frustration are an inevitable part of life.  Getting angry and making yourself (and others) suffer by making things worse is NOT.  Just ask yourself: How do I want to distract myself here?  How do I want manage myself and my emotions?  Positively or negatively?  The good news is it's up to you. Like a well developed muscle, peace takes practice.  And, I'm loving that watermelon.