Laughter as Medicine: Using Humor in Health Advocacy

Chronic illness is no laughing matter, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some laughs when we advocate about it. Our bodies are always joking around with us, so it’s only right we have a laugh back too.

My favorite part about the advocacy work that I do is using humor to discuss serious topics. Not only do I have fun when I do it, but it can be a great way of spreading your message more effectively.

Here are a few reasons why you should consider utilizing humor in your advocacy work:

Cheer up the community

Sometimes the chronic community can be an overwhelmingly dark place. So why not brighten things up with a bit of humor - as they say it‘s better to laugh than cry!

I often find myself scrolling through posts online and notice that the vibe can be quite negative. This is entirely understandable as we are living very difficult lives, but do we really need a constant reminder of how challenging and painful our lives can be?

If anyone deserves cheering up it’s those of us who have to deal with waking up sick every day! Give the community some moments of joy to provide a much-needed break from the stress of chronic illness. Laughing is a great stress relief, so you will be spreading some smiles across the community and helping them find a positive mindset to continue their fight against their bodies.

You may even find that you benefit too. My coping mechanism in life is to find the funny side of things whenever I can and this actually perks me up too!

Positive environment

Creating a positive environment with some humor can also encourage people to open up. Keeping things light hearted can often make difficult conversations easier and encourage people to comment and share their feelings and opinions.

Providing a safe space for your followers to discuss their feelings also helps to increase engagement on your posts. This means your content will be boosted on the algorithm and you are more likely to reach a larger audience to spread your message. It’s a win-win!

It is also a great way of building a stronger connection with your community. I have built many incredible relationships with others through joking around about the things we go through as spoonies!

Getting attention from outsiders

I have found that one of the most useful parts about using humor in my advocacy work is that it’s a great way of engaging people outside of the chronic illness community.

Raising awareness about our conditions means educating people that may not be familiar with these health issues or challenges we face as a result. By keeping these people stimulated with a few jokes, they are likely to continue reading and learn something about the difficulties faced by us spoonies.

I have had many comments from followers that don’t live with chronic illness telling me how they have come to my posts for some laughs and left with some lessons.

Don’t go too far

It’s very important to get the balance right. We are still talking about very serious topics so it important that you don’t go too far joking around and take away any seriousness from the topic. Make sure that when you use humour, you include some serious elements too.

The humorous side is intended to supplement the important messages we are putting out there. Make sure that you don’t accidentally turn any piece of advocacy work into a stand up routine. We don’t want people to think chronically ill life is all a barrel of laughs, as we know that is certainly far from the truth!

Tips

The best advice I can give you on how to add a funny side to your advocacy is to just be your authentic self. We all have our own individual sense of humor so just be true to yourself and make funny comments in the same style as you would in your everyday life.

My personal sense of humor in has always been a bit warped so this is reflected in my posts. Having arthritis makes this easy as morning stiffness innuendos write themselves! I also have a cringey dad joke side to me and love a good pun, so I’ll squeeze in a play on words whenever I can. Just use whatever works for your personality and your brand.

How do you use humor in your advocacy? Let me know in the comments