How Humor Helps Teenagers Deal With Stress

Featuring David Granirer, Counselor

Duration: 1 minute, 31 seconds

As we go through our life, as we grow up, as children, we laugh a lot more than adults do.

Especially when we’re going through our teens when there’s so much stress around belonging and schoolwork, and just drugs and all the issues that teens face, sometimes it’s really easy to lose that sense of humor.

Teens have this wonderful sense of irreverence; irreverent humor towards adults, towards their teachers, towards their parents, and it really helps to develop that sense of irreverence.

It’s that sense of irreverence that gives people who feel powerless a sense of power, a sense of getting their power back. A lot of the stress that teens face is because they feel powerless in a system that they didn’t create, but that they have to be part of.

Having that irreverence helps them to equal the power balance and reduce their stress, and feel better about themselves. Irreverence can be expressed in a variety of ways. There are some negative ways of expressing irreverence, like, crime, smashing cars, fighting, drinking, that kinda stuff, and it can also be expressed in a humorous way.

When it’s expressed in a humorous way, it’s like a release valve, and it’s less likely that people will need to act out in that negative way if they’re able to find that sense of humor, and if it’s encouraged in them by the adults around them.

Presenter: Mr. David Granirer, Counselor, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Counselor