Using Humor...

I am not sure if I told this story already.

My James has a 25 year old schizophrenic daughter...who went off her meds last week, so was back here for a week getting back "on" her meds. I have a whole huge problem with this, but that's not what I'm here to write about.

Once she was back "on her feet," she was outside with me helping clean up the garden. At one point she just stopped raking and said quite seriously "Do you think that the world is coming to an end?" (This is the sort of thing that she does -- whether it's "I met aliens at the Mall yesterday" or whatever.)

When confronted with that sort of question, her father gets very strict, 'upsettish.' He basically handles it with "I don't want to hear that sort of thing, we are not going there." That's the way that he is.

Interestingly, when she asked me this, she was REALLY concerned (I could see it on her face -- obviously one of her "voices" had just raised this question with her). What did I do? I started laughing. I said "We should BE so lucky! Can you imagine how much easier it would be if the world was coming to an end?? We could just run up our credit cards, and no bills! Heck no, there is no WAY that the world is coming to an end -- the IRS would NEVER allow that." She actually nodded her head, and said "Oh! Yeah that's a good point. That totally makes sense" -- and started raking again.

Now -- I am not sure whether she would still be "worrying about" that question if she had asked her father, and gotten his usual response (which just basically says "We're not going to discuss that, be quiet.") With my response -- which of course comes out of my being a smart *ss I guess -- she was TOTALLY happy in the next minute.

This is a little bit of a strange example, but I was thinking about it when I was typing up my notes from the NSA seminars. I think that there is a lot to say about that "laughing makes you breathe again" thing.

Just a thought.

S