Stress test

Laughing along with Loretta LaRoche

by Bill Rodriguez

Loretta LaRoche

Please select one of the following statements if you can imagine yourself uttering it with sincerity and gusto: A) "Ohmuhgod, ohmuhgod, this is awful, this is terrible!" B) "God, I love the smell of adrenaline in the morning!"

Own up? Good. (By the way, reaction A may be OK when your plane is plummeting; probably not when you drop a jar of pickles.) Loretta LaRoche has some smart advice for you whether you're a worrywart or a stress junkie, and she'll be coming to the Providence Performing Arts Center on Friday, February 2 to share the skinny.

Stress expert and lecturer LaRoche is one of the pioneers in observing that when we stand back and take a good look at the knots we tie ourselves in, we can have a good laugh. And that can be quite therapeutic for body and mind, if it gets to be a habit.

Using her own tendencies as bad examples, she has been known to dress up as such character types as the Martyr, the Fairy Godmother, and Attila the Hun, to spark an "Ah-ha!" of self-recognition. The Massachusetts-based LaRoche has conducted numerous Fortune 500 company seminars, and holds twice-yearly workshops, titled "Humor, Optimism and Cognitive Restructuring," under the auspices of Harvard University for psychiatrists and other health-care professionals. Pretty good for a woman with a degree in speech therapy who dropped out of an MA program in dance therapy because, divorced, she had to support three kids. The stress part of her background is obvious, but her therapeutic skills and specialty developed as she studied meditation, yoga and hypnosis and took courses in behavioral modification and cognitive therapy. PBS has filmed three specials on LaRoche, and as a result she was invited to join the adjunct faculty of the Mind/Body Medical Center in Boston, run by famed Harvard researcher Dr. Herbert (The Relaxation Response) Benson. Her first book, How Serious Is This?: Seeing Humor In Daily Stress, was published in 1998.

LaRoche spoke recently by phone about how funny the serious subject can be.

Q: You titled your lecture and workshop company The Humor Potential, Inc. rather than something like Stress Management, Inc. You don't want anybody to lose sight of your main point, do you?
A: The interesting thing to me from having been in this for almost 30 years is that humor is not given its rightful place in society. We'll often look at people who laugh as frivolous. Especially in the workplace. If they're having too much fun, we're suspicious because they may not be working hard enough, where in fact the absence of humor actually denotes depression. (Laughs)

Q: Do you find many people who have been so serious and strict with themselves that they feel threatened by the notion that they should laugh more?
A: Oh, definitely. But I'm also bring in some physiological evidence showing that, for some people, laughter is indeed problematic because their chemistry is not there either. We are born with a certain chemistry toward feeling good and being happy. There's no doubt about it. Brain research has even provided us with MRIs that show that there is probably a funny-bone in the brain. When people have strokes and that area of the brain is compromised, they have a very difficult time laughing.

This is a very profound subject. It's not easy, because there are so many pieces to the pie -- it it's not just standing in front of people and saying: "All right, let's all crack up." Because you may have 20 people who are on Zoloft, who need anti-depressants, who just don't have the ability. There are people who have gone through their entire lives only seeing gray.

Q: How do you approach them in the context of a larger group, where most people are able to recognize that need for laughter? It could be a guilt trip for them.
A: Well, that's the thing I try very hard to stay away from. I never want people to feel guilty about their human condition. It's about recognizing the human condition. Because [otherwise] that's like saying to a cancer patient, "You know, if you had eaten more vegetables you wouldn't have gotten breast cancer."

My goal in life is to point out what's going on, and then say, "You might want to take a look at this; maybe the way you're living your life or perceiving your reality is not serving you at your highest potential." That's much less threatening -- especially if you do it in a funny way. I use myself as sort of a battering ram. I don't say to people, "Look, see what you do?" I say, "Look what we all do -- isn't it funny?"

When you get an Ah-ha! you may be someplace like the supermarket or in traffic or wherever, you may have a sort-of Pavlovian response. So you can say, "Oh, my God -- this isn't a Chicago Hope segment -- I'm only standing in line!"

Q: The over-dramatizing we can do to exacerbate our annoyances into tragedies.
A: Exactly. Because, you see, the very same mechanism that you use to disturb yourself and feel bad is the same conduit to humor. It's called exaggeration. So when you exaggerate, anything can make it worse -- you can do the same thing and laugh. Does that make sense?

Q: In terms of accepting where you are, what about the matter that all stress is not bad?
A: I think this is what people do, what the media does, they make it all into a tragedy -- "Isn't this awful! Oh, my God! Look at what's happening around us!" And the fact of the matter is that without stress you'd be a limp noodle. It's what propels you out of the door in the morning to go to your office. It's what makes you make that doctor's appointment when you notice something's not working in your body. It's what makes you look at your relationships at home or at work, the signals that emanate from stress or the feeling of not being quite right. If someone is mugging you, you want to be able to run! (Laughs)

Q: If the Inuits have a hundred words for snow, we should have a hundred for stress, this continuum from benign to harmful.
A: Well, the Chinese symbol for crisis has in it two meanings: danger and opportunity. So when you look at stress, it can be an opportunity to recognize danger or it can be a catalyst for resiliency.