Ron: Why Laughter is Key to Your Healing Journey

"Humor gives us a break from the stress. So if we're in this state of stress and we have a chance to laugh, that's a momentary break and that's helpful and healthy and healing." - Ron Culberson

Laughter can be a powerful tool for healing, and Ron Culberson, a humorist, author, and advocate for mental well-being, shares how humor has played a transformative role in his journey of personal recovery. In this episode, discover how laughter and a positive mindset can support emotional healing and offer resilience in the face of life’s challenges. Ron’s story proves that laughter isn’t just a coping mechanism—it's a vital key to unlocking personal growth and emotional well-being.

Ron:
https://ronculberson.com/
You can also research and purchase his books on his web-site.

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Book: Why I Survived; Where Survival Becomes Strength

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Let's begin today's episode. Today's story is about the impact laughter has on our healing journey. Laughter is often a coping method a survivor uses to heal or so they think. Yes, laughter can be both a positive or a negative coping skill.

Interesting. How do you recognize the difference and create a healthy balance of humor? I'm gonna introduce you to Ron Culson, speaker, author, and humorist. I listen to his interview with my friend Darlene on the senior living guide.com podcast. I love that podcast too. And I must say I was enthralled with his message.

It captivated my attention and I wanted to learn more. As a speaker, humorous, an author of four books, including Is Your Glass Laugh Full. Ron uses his experience as a hospice social worker, healthcare leader, E m T, and firefighter to deliver a practical message that helps his audiences become more successful in life and work.

He is an expert on humor and laughter. Ron, thank you for accepting my invitation in joining me on the I Need Blue Podcast. Well, I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Absolutely. I couldn't wait to have this conversation. You know, typically the format is we have a story followed by their healing journey.

In this time around, I, I really am focused on just what you do. Some wouldn't see humor as like your traditional therapy, so really excited. But what I would like to do is have you introduce yourself to our audience a little bit more, cuz I was kind of general in your introduction. It's impressive and I, I don't wanna miss that opportunity to, for you to share.

Well, sure. I I appreciate that. You know, you talk about a story. My journey is wondering if you will, it's all over the place, but I'm gonna go way back because there's a context to it. Um, I was the guy in high school who wanted to be class clown in the yearbook. And, uh, I got teacher's pet and it really irritated me because I thought, What I wanted, I was doing all these funny things, but I was writing funny announcements for clubs in my high school to make, to advertise a bake sale or a dance or something.

And I got to be a little bit of a celebrity my last year in high school because I was on the intercom making funny announcements and that was very cool to me. I liked, I not only liked the attention, but I liked the, the creativity behind writing the humor. I then went to college and I had two opportunities in college to write humor.

Uh, one for the band that I was in and one for my fraternity. So I get outta college and I'm just curious about humor. I'm not a standup comic. I've never been a standup comic. That environment does not interest me so much because it seems really anxiety provoking to be in front of, you know, a wild and raucous crowd who expects you to be super funny.

But I was curious about it. So I went the other direction and started studying the psychology of humor, and I was funny. So I used the two combined. So start to start teaching about humor. So I was teaching about the benefits of humor and I was doing it for free initially. I then got a job in, in the world of hospice care.

It fit perfectly there because it was, it was a nice balance to the serious work we were doing, and I found that that was a coping mechanism people used. But I started speaking at hospice conferences to make a long story longer. Um, I actually started getting business. Because I was speaking at conferences and people wanted me to then come and speak at their events.

So started my speaking business in the mid nineties originally to focus on the benefits of humor. But over time the topic kind of morphed and it changed a little bit, but, but that was the basis of my whole career. So when you say I'm an expert in humor, you know, I can't say that I'm an academic, that I'm out there researching humor like some people do.

But I did my graduate work on it and I did study it and I do keep up, uh, with some of the trends that are going on and I, I really like this opportunity to kind of go back in my history and revisit something that I don't, don't talk about quite as much today as I did back then. Absolutely. And I, I just am curious, so what is today's trend in humor?

Cuz you said you study the trends. Well, I think if you watch overtime, uh, in the late seventies, 1978, and this I think is very relevant to your podcast, is there was a guy named Norman Cousins who wrote a book called, uh, anatomy of an Illness and essentially he was stricken with a, a disease that broke down the connective tissues in his joints and he had a lot of pain and he didn't want to be on all this pain medicine.

So he found through research that if he could laugh, For like 20 or 30 minutes, he could sleep pain free for two hours. And so that became his pain control mechanism. And he just watched old comedy shows and everything to watch to laugh. So that was the very early stages of people really saying, Hey, there is something to this.

Let's start studying it. Prior to that, there was not a lot of academic study in the field of humor, so over time it's ebbed and flowed. I, I wouldn't say there's necessarily any new trends except today I think there's a lot more work. In literature, you'll see it in blogs, you'll see it on articles where people are looking at it from a business proposition.

So as a leader in a business, can I use humor to be more effective as a leader, uh, as a team in an organization? Can humor help us to be a better team or be more creative? So I think that's where a lot of the focus is on today. Some of the stuff in the old days where it talks about the health benefits or the, uh, maybe the psychological benefits.

Have kind of given way to more of the business, the business benefits, uh, today. Yes. And I was thinking to myself when you were talking how you relate that to hospice work. I mean, not only is that great for the patient, right, to kind of lighten the atmosphere in the room, but also for the worker or for them to go into their job, which is not easy, and kind of look at it from a different perspective.

So it has twofold benefits. Right. You know, one of the things that people always ask me, especially when I was doing more programs focused just on humor, was how do you possibly use it in hospice? It's a fine line to walk, and I didn't walk into a patient's room and just start telling jokes that was not appropriate.

However, I used it as a way to assess where people were. So I'd ask people, what part or what role has humor played in your life? And if they said, oh, you know, we love humor. It's a, it's a big part of our coping mechanism. It helps us to get through the day. Then I knew that I might be able to introduce it a little bit more.

If they were very closed off to the idea, then I knew that they probably were not in a place where they would be receptive to humor, or humor would be helpful to them. Uh, so that's the patient care side. So I found it to be a great tool on the staff side. I mean, that's how we coped a lot of times. And in the e m EMT world, the EMS world, in, uh, the medical world in hospice, Behind the scenes, the way we cope a lot of times with tragedy is that we, we use humor as a way of coping.

So I saw a lot of that in hospice and uh, and certainly see it a lot today in, uh, in the EMS world as well. It really comes down to understanding your client, your patience, and then listening to them, and then being able to tailor your approach is what you said, because not everybody is at a point where, where humor might be appropriate, I believe is the word that you used.

Right. And you know, that's a really good point to, to sort of dovetail off of when it comes to why people don't use humor more. I think a lot of people are afraid it will bomb. Like they won't be funny. A lot of people are afraid that they'll offend someone inadvertently. And then we have the people who use it indiscriminately and do offend people.

You know, you, it's that radar. It's having that ability to pick up on something when it's going on. I mean, if I ever tell a joke that someone's offended by. I immediately would own it and apologize because that's never my intent. But you just never know. Sometimes a certain, a certain bit of humor or something will hit someone just the wrong way, and I think we just need to understand that may happen from time to time, but if our intent is genuine and heartfelt, You know, we usually can apologize and things will be fine.

So let's move into the healing journey because we, I know you also have a, a mental health background as well, so how can we use humor to heal? I know you're familiar with my podcast and we talk about traumas and and triggers in life events. It can be a violent crime, doesn't have to be a violent crime.

But how can we use humor then to heal? You know, I think my answer to that has changed the, from what it would've been 20 years ago. There are a number of benefits to humor from a psychological perspective, but the two that that really stick out in my mind are. The fact that if we are, uh, bombarded on an ongoing basis with stress, anytime we get a break from that stress, it allows us to regroup and continue coping with the stress.

It's just like any kind of work or fatigue. If you get a break from it, you have more energy to continue. So just the same way stress works that same way and that's proven in the research. Humor gives us a break from the stress. So if we're, if we're in this state of stress and we have a chance to laugh, that's a momentary break and that's helpful and healthy and healing.

The other part of it is the perspective part of it, and this is the part that I think my answer has changed a little bit. Humor by its very nature changes the way we see things. If I were to tell you a joke, there's a setup and a punchline. The setup goes one way. The punchline changes directions. And that gives you a different perspective on the original premise.

The benefit in that is it's, it's teaching your brain how to see things differently. In essence, it's creating a different neuro pathway in your brain. And so the more that you practice seeing things from a different perspective, the more you may see your own circumstances from a different perspective.

Now today, what's changed in my view of that is, Is all the time that I've spent studying mindfulness, I'm totally convinced that 90% of the stress that we experience in life even and I will go out on a limb here, say with traumas, is based on how we're viewing it as opposed to the actual trauma. And what I mean by that is not to say that the trauma is not significant.

But that once the trauma is no longer there, we're not experiencing in the present moment. So we're experiencing it in our head and in the thinking and the, uh, remembering and the p s d or whatever you wanna call it, but it's not actually going on in the present moment. And mindfulness teaches us to live in the present moment.

There's a great book out there called The Power of Now by Eckhart Toley, and he talks about how most stress is caused by being here, but wanting to be somewhere else. So if you think about any time we experience stress, typically what our mind is telling us is, I don't want to be here. I don't want to experience this.

I don't want to go through this. I don't want to have to relive this, the fight or flight, right? Right. And when you think about that, that's a mental activity because you're not actually going through anything in that moment except how we're viewing it. Now, I don't wanna make this sound simplistic at all, and I don't want it to sound like I'm minimizing anyone's stress or their experience.

I've just believed now so much more than I used to, the power of our mind for creating our reality. And that's something we do have control over. And the beauty that that's connected to humor is that humor lies in the moment. There's humor everywhere. If we're present in the moment, we will see it. And when we see it, then we get to experience it.

Like I, I gave you an example. I got an email the other day from the US Post Office, and they're, um, raising their rates. The subject line in the email says, Our rates have changed. Our value hasn't. Now that's like saying we are, our rates went up, but we're keeping the same bad value we've been providing for years.

You know, the wording on that, if you look at it carefully, is not really clear. Right. And that's the kind of thing I'm talking about is that is a moment in our day where if we're really paying attention, there's a bit of humor that we can enjoy. And that adds to the, to the balance of whatever stress we might be going through that day.

I really believe this mindfulness and the sense of humor and the ability to see humor is very closely connected. Yeah. You know, I actually have a funny story too for you. So I did a lot of retail and one of my last jobs was in luxury goods. So people would come in, what do you have on sale today? And I was like, well, everything is on sale.

It is Buy one, pay for one. Great. They would stop and then they would laugh and it was like all of a sudden there, I need a deal today. Or I'm not buying anything kind of dissipated, right? Because I took that whole, like, nothing's on sale, but we can still have fun here and, and find you something. Right?

That's a brilliant example. Um, anytime we're in a customer service situation, we're always uncomfortable. And, and I as a customer, if you're calling to complain about something to customer service or you, you need a refund, or you're, you know, you walk into that retail store and they zoom right over to you, it's always like, don't please know, you know, but, but if, if someone says something like that to me, It immediately diffuses the situation, and that's one of the social benefits of humor is, is that it creates a connection and it breaks down tension.

It's, it's, it's just a great way to interact with people. It makes you seem more human to the other person and brings everybody down to earth on the same playing field. And that's exactly why it should be used in that kind of situation. Yeah, I have a little retail job now, and they'll be like, okay, what register you want me at?

I was like, well, all of them will take your money. Yeah. So, you know, you pick or I'll be like, okay, so today we are playing the prices too high. Anything I can do, because, you know, especially in retail, we're we want everything fast, fast, fast, fast. And God forbid you have to wait in line. You know what I'm saying?

Well, you know, I, I have a friend who's uh, unfortunately he's older and having a lot of physical problems. He's in a nursing home, he's in his mid nineties. The other day I called and he wasn't available cuz they said he was at occupational therapy. And I said, I want you to tell him he's too old to be looking for another occupation and, and whatever else is going on that day.

Hopefully that was just a little bright spot, you know, just something to change the flow of things. Absolutely. And you know, people notice. And when you smile, they notice that as well. They pick up your energy. So sometimes you don't even have to crack a joke. If you just are, are open and positive and smiling, people will react to that as well.

The non-verbal communication. That's right. And they say that we mimic, when we see people smile, we tend to smile. And there's a lot of, uh, sort of biological things that happen inside of us When we smile, there's like, our body reacts to that in a positive way. Yes, I was in outside sales and you smile and dial.

They even through the phone, they know when That's right. They're smiling. That's right. Absolutely. You said a lot of really important things that have become relevant in my world. Recently I happened to meet, her name is Alex Conner. She's local and she's a a hypnotherapist, and I had never done hypnotherapy of any type before.

She talked about our neuro pathways, which you had talked about is well, and one of the things that really surprised me with. That experience is, she didn't want you to go back in the trauma. She was like, you've already lived it. I'm, I'm not here for you to, to live it, but I want you to look at it now outside of it with adult eyes.

And she said, Ben, we're gonna talk about what positive came from that experience. We're gonna change your narrow pathways. And I remember in sessions I would be like, oh, nothing positive came out of this. And she was able to break it down. To where now when I think back to those experiences, I don't have that anxiety.

I don't even have that anger. In fact, if anything I have now more compassion for that situation or that person, even though I was the quote victim, it kind of replace that and it's been an amazing journey in itself. And, and I'll share our information in the show notes, but I completely get the neural pathways.

The mindfulness is so important, being present in. In the moment, definitely our minds are way more powerful than we can possibly imagine. Just touch back on the Neuro pathways thing, because we used to talk about this in grief and loss is that almost everybody grows through the process of grief and loss.

If nothing else, if the only thing you experience that's better than it was before is that you now have an understanding of what someone else is going through when they go through grief and loss. That's growth. And that's, that's an ability to be more compassionate or more connected or more understanding of someone else.

And we used to say, we don't want someone to have to go through grief or loss just to accomplish that growth, but it is what happens. And so I think there's, it's a real value in understanding that, again, a different perspective is to see what have I gained? Through this experience, even if it's small, you know, it still is a a positive step forward.

Can I stay on your grief and loss for a second, because that is really amazing that you said that. Thank you for bringing that into the light because we do have audience members who have lost a loved one. Um, I have previous guests who due to a violent crime loss, their loved one, but I also, for a minute, if I relate it back to myself, I was in an abusive relationship and I felt like I lost myself.

Mm. Within it. And so, grief and loss is something we don't really talk about or touch upon, but if you have a little bit more information on that you want to share. I'm, I'm intrigued. Some helpful advice, maybe steps. Well, again, this is an area where I've sort of added to my understanding of grief and loss than when I worked in hospice.

But one of the things we have to always understand is that our tendency as human beings is to avoid things. We tend to, we don't want pain, we don't want discomfort. And so I used to see when I ran bereavement groups that a lot of the participants would want to be on the other side of grief. They didn't want to have to go through it.

And really one of the only ways to get on the other side is to go through it. You have to actually experience it and express it in order to, I don't wanna say purge it. That's not really what you're doing. You're processing it, you're dealing with it, you're experiencing it. I think that, that our tendency is to avoid it.

And then on top of that, um, I think we have to understand that nothing is permanent. And this is the mindfulness part that really was, uh, enlightening to me when I, when I realized this, that we have a tendency to want on, wanna hold onto things as they are. Whatever that is, whether it's our health or whether it's our loved ones or whether it's our pets, but nothing is permanent in the physical world.

Nothing is permanent, uh, in, in the things that we know and, uh, and understand. Everything changes or everything goes away eventually, and. Once we understand that, then it goes back to the whole idea of mindfulness, of experiencing and, and appreciating and valuing what is actually, now, you know, what do I have now and, and, and treasure that.

Because who knows what tomorrow will bring. We don't, any of us know what tomorrow's gonna bring, but we have a tendency to want to clinging onto it, and that then makes it a, a bigger loss when it does go away. And I think that's a very powerful concept too. Absolutely. I know my sister, uh, sadly my nephew, she lost him at.

Uh, age 20. Oh wow. A motorcycle accident. And I, as a mom, I can't imagine her grief and her loss, but I know what I went through as the aunt and I had two boys, they would all play together. Right. And so I know what that was like. And I started to do puzzles. Um, I know my mom and my sister started to do coloring books.

Anything that they could find to healthily deal with their loss in, in their grief. So, um, I'll give you a an example cuz you talked about your sister. My brother and his wife lost a child when they were seven. When he was seven to a brain tumor. And this is what got me into hospice care in the first place because I realized I'd never experienced anything like this and I'd never really know a lot about grief and loss.

And, you know, you think that's kind of crazy in our world when everybody will die and we don't talk about it. I was kind of, uh, kind of fascinated by that. But my brother told me this story about how. He had two other children. They were younger. And how there's this great book out there called The Fall of Freddy the Leaf, and it's written by Leo Buss Glia, and it's an allegory about loss, but it's told about a tree in Central Park where one leaf doesn't wanna fall off the tree in the fall, wants to clinging on and hold on and you know, eventually falls off.

And it's, you know, it's a metaphor for death and dying. It's a great children's book and a lot of people use it. We used it in our work in hospice as a way to read something. It's metaphorical to kids, so they kind of get it, but they don't have to, you know, cuz they're not at the age where they can really process out loud and talk about it.

So, my brother and my brother and sister-in-law decide they're gonna read this book to their two other children after, after their son died and they're sitting, you know, by the fireplace one night and they're reading the book and the two of them are just sobbing because it's, it's, it's raw grief.

They're, and they're going through this book that's just bringing up everything and they're going through this very emotional experience and they finish the book. And they look at their other kids and they say, so what did you think? And uh, the oldest of the two kids goes, my feet are hot.

Because they were sitting next to the fireplace. It's a fireplace, it's just this. And the two of them just burst out laughing. And I thought, you know, it's just a brilliant example to me of how we can be in the throes of just this, it's this awful emotional. Journey and then something like that comes outta left field and it just puts things in the proper perspective.

Absolutely. You know, the kids, as much as we were worried about the kids, they were doing just fine, you know, and they were gonna get through it and, uh, And so my brother and sister-in-law just talk about what a funny experience that were still today. They just look back upon that fondly. But, uh, that experience will help them cope.

It doesn't mean that the next day they don't wake up and they're still grieving, you know, they're not still grieving it. It just means that for that moment, It gives them a little bit of a burst of energy, a little bit of coping, a little bit of perspective. And that all goes into the bucket of how they then continue to deal with this loss.

Yes. Well, and I would have to wonder if, when they start going back to the, the sad memories of their loss, if eventually it's replaced with that one humorous moment. Right of my feet are hot to where it helps them to cope and eventually get over it. Because there was that moment and, and maybe the children brought even more moments of humor after that, you know?

Right. Well, you know, it's funny you say that because that's, that's a really good point, is the way that the healing works. Um, the best metaphor I ever heard was that grief is like a scar. When you get a cut on your leg, initially, let's say you have a serious cut on your leg, it's hurts, it's painful, it's har, it hurts to touch it, and then it turns into a scar.

And over time, the scar will always be a part of you. You'll always remember how you got it. It'll always be there, but it won't hurt to touch it so much. And I think that's a beautiful pro, uh, sort of image of how grief works. It'll always be there. Your experience will always be there, but maybe it won't hurt to touch it so much.

And if that's the case, then that's how Healing Healing plays out. Yes. And I think, um, what's really important, and you had said this a little bit earlier, is it's important to, to grieve, allow yourself to feel the emotions, the sadness, the anger. There is steps to grieving. You know, they talk about that anger and whatever they may be.

And give yourself permission. And allow yourself to feel that that's right. It's important just to get the process going. Absolutely. And seek help along the way. Therapy, whatever. Support from church, personnel, family, whatever you need. Um, because you always come first. I always say, you gotta take care of yourself with whatever you're dealing with.

We we're talking about coping, using humor to cope, the positives and the negative ways that we use that so people can recognize the difference. I think it's really simple. We used to talk about this a lot in hospice. It was like, you know, at what point do you feel like someone's having trouble or difficulty with something?

And, and it boils down to is it affecting their functioning? It's a really simple way. It doesn't mean that people don't have issues or challenges or whatever. The point at which I felt like we needed to sort of be a resource or assist people is if they weren't coping effectively or they were not functioning effectively.

It's one thing to get up in the morning and be sad all day. It's another thing to not get up in the morning, you know, because you're sad. That would be something that might be a warning sign. I think humor can be a great way to help us. To get our perspective, right, to enjoy moments of humor when it happens to not be, uh, so closed off from it that we can't enjoy something funny because then we're, we're basically then rejecting an opportunity coming towards us that might be helpful to us.

So the healthy ways of, uh, of coping with humor are the times when we embrace it, when it happens. We might introduce it occasionally if we want to, but we don't ignore it. We don't ignore it. Now, the way that it can be maladaptive, if it's the only thing we're doing, and we all know those people, the, we all know those people that joke about everything and you never really feel like they take anything seriously.

Well, I think that's more of a barrier than a resource or support, and I think that's when we start to see that it can be, uh, something that's not as helpful. If we're using it instead of actually dealing with whatever's going on. You know, we talked about this earlier about the EMS world. One of the things that I learned when I went into the EMS world is that.

They're very protected. They're very self protected in that world because they are exposed to so much traumatic experiences on a regular basis. And I think that's how they cope. And so sometimes it's hard to kind of break through that exterior, but I know in our department and in other departments, they have, uh, peer counseling resources available to people.

So if, let's just say as an example, somebody works a really terrible accident and there's just a lot of things that are hard to see. There are resources available for those people to talk about that and to process that. But I think one of the ways those folks tend to kind of continue working is they do create kind of a little bit of a barrier so it doesn't break through.

And the risk with that is that then that stuff's in there and it has to come out somehow. And so, you know, it can come out as anger, it can come out as anxiety or frustration, and it's not. So easily related to what, what the experience was. So sometimes it's hard to figure out where it's coming from. Is it possible as a first responder or anybody who is exposed to traumatic things, like to view things like that, even our military that have gone to war or whatnot, right?

To see those things and live in your mind thinking, oh, it's okay. It'll never, it doesn't bother me. It didn't affect me, it's just part of the job and move on. Can they spend the rest of their life with that never affecting them? You know, my social work hat says, no. My graduate fields field work. When I did my, my, um, internship in grad, grad school, it was at Fort LV in Northern Virginia, and it was a military base, it was an army base, and we were providing counseling services to dependents and retired personnel in the military.

And one of the things that I learned in that job is that when you, the, the higher level of intensity that the role is, The more people tend to compartmentalize their emotions. So let's take a fighter pilot. A fighter pilot gets up in that plane and goes into a mission. They can't let their emotions affect their job or else they wouldn't be effective.

So there's almost a training of com compartmentalizing what's going on. So you're really truly focused on the mission and not so much on fear or anxiety or one of those things. The only problem with that is if, if, if you're not able to then disconnect with that methodology, when you stop, like in your personal life, then you start doing that, you start just stuffing the emotions.

I used to use the example of a water balloon that the emotions go into us, whether we wanna acknowledge it or not. They're in there and it's just like filling a water balloon. There'll be a point where we'll fill it up and it'll burst. And we don't know how, then those emotions will come out. My view of things is that, yeah, they eventually have to come out somehow and uh, you know, and we have to process that information.

Doesn't mean we have to wallow in it. It just means we have to somehow deal with it. Uh, that's my thinking. Absolutely. I say that because my, I was talking to my son not long ago and he's in the military and he was sharing some things and he said, oh, it's okay, mom. He was like, you know what, I, I've seen it before.

It's no big deal. And with what I've done now for a couple years, I. That was like a little red flag of eventually, you know, that that's gonna have to come out. Yeah. I didn't say it in the moment, but that, to me, I was like, okay, I'm, I'm just gonna watch and listen to him because I do think that it, it catches up at some point and just knowing that it's okay to ask for help, especially in the first responder field, you're used to being the helper, right.

And not being the helpie. And one of the other things that I have found with our first responders is they all say it's important to have normal friends. That are outside of, yeah, the first responder field that, that's really important too. So. Well, you know, you mentioned that, and I used to have a social worker that worked with me in hospice.

In about every two or three weeks, she would poke her head in my office and look at me and go, this is not normal. Uh, that we were like exposed to death and dying every single day. And she goes, this is not normal. And it was a nice reminder, but I wanna go back to what you said that I think is so important.

It's good to talk to somebody. And I think counseling and therapy have such a stigma in our culture and I was trained as a social worker and we were basically encouraged to get counseling or encouraged to get therapy cuz it helps us to be better as a therapist. But I will say that it doesn't have to be a therapist or counselor.

Just talking to a friend, you know, to have somebody that you feel, or a spouse or a partner, a significant other, it's someone that you feel comfortable just opening up and being yourself to. That's perfectly okay. It doesn't have to be a trained professional. Just having someone that you can open up to, that's, that's where it, it gets to be, uh, important I think for all of us to have that.

And that's just whether you have a stressful job or a trauma or any experience. It's just good in life in general to have that good per one person or two people or a group of people that you can talk to freely. Absolutely. I highly agree. That is so important as part of your resources, you've written books Yes.

To kind of share your message and help people as well. So can you tell us a little bit about that book writing? It's, it's an interesting world these days. It's a totally different ballgame. And so it's not too difficult to write a book. It's difficult to sell a book, but not so difficult to write one. And so I started out and wrote one book on seeing humor in the world and just being aware and open to seeing it is your glass Laugh full.

And I remember people argued with me about whether I should make that the title because they sounded, they said it sounded confusing. I'm like, I've never had anybody once that looked at it and said, I don't get it. You know? They always went, yeah, I get that. My second book was this ridiculous book that I started writing Funny Facebook posts every, every day, and I thought, I'm gonna just write a whole year's worth in a book.

And it's just random nonsense things I. The title of the book is called My Kneecap Seems Too Loose. I was sitting there at my desk one day and I reached down and my kneecap moved, and I was like, well that doesn't seem like that should happen. And so that, that became the title of the book. Now, here's a funny side story, is that the Mayo Clinic bought 30 copies of that book cuz they thought it was a medical book,

and about two weeks later they were returned and asked for a refund, but. That was funny to me. My third book was really my flagship book, which is called Do It Well Make It Fun, which is the focus of everything I do, which is to do a good job in life and work first and foremost, whatever we do, do a good job.

And secondly, enjoy the journey. I mean, and that if we do those two things, you know, we really will probably be effective. People will like us, we'll be connected to people, you know, this kind of stuff. And then the last book was just taking a bunch of blogs and articles and columns that I'd written over the years and.

Combining 'em into thematically sort of, there's a lot of mindfulness stuff in there, but all of this is done with humor since day one. My delivery mechanism for everything has been to do it with humor because I just feel like that makes it easier to read, more fun to read, and it connects with people.

People remember the stories and the humor. They don't always remember the points, but they always remember the stories and the humor. Anything that you wanna add today that maybe we missed that was on your to-do list to talk about? Well, I just wanna say, you know, I'm not an expert in trauma. I did spend a year at Children's National Medical Center in DC and I worked with abused children.

So I do have that, but that's kind of a little bit different because it was with work, working with children. But I just, I just wanna say that I think, you know, this work is very important because today, and I talked to a, a therapist friend of mine about this recently. You know, this whole idea of trauma informed care or trauma informed interventions is huge right now.

And I think what we're seeing is that more and more connections are being made to trauma and life and how that affects people. And, uh, so, you know, this is, this is such relevant work right now and you know, back in the day when I was trained, we didn't call it trauma. We looked at it the importance of life experiences, but we didn't really have a name for it.

Per se. Um, so I think you, you know, it's cool that, that this is going on, that you're doing this. Thank you so much. And you know, I think a lot of times our trauma happens in our childhood. Either we remember it or we don't remember it, or whatever the situation is. So really allowing space for people to talk about that.

Childhood abuse is really important too. I'm sadly finding that it's more common than we realize. It's just not. Talked about. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, as much. Good point. And thank you for the compliment. I appreciate that. No, you're welcome. I love what I do. I absolutely do. Oh, and I am a published author as well.

Oh, great. Yes. So I completely understand the whole process. It's been fun and I'm. Doing Amazon, so print on demand so I don't have to deal with a lot of other things. So that's nice. But um, I know the work that goes into writing a book, so I appreciate you putting the pen to the paper and sharing all of your information.

Thank you so much for being here. I absolutely appreciate it. I love it. Thank you. Yeah. Well thanks for having me. This is G Lee with the I Need Blue Podcast. I can be found on all of your favorite podcast platforms, apple Podcast, Spotify, whatnot. Also, all of my episodes can be found on my website, www.ineedblue.net.

And remember, you are stronger than you think.