With a background in science journalism and an unshakeable curiosity about the world, Catherine Price helps people question their assumptions, and make positive changes in their lives. How often have you resolved to stress less? But what does that mean? For journalist Catherine Price, she found the first step to making us happier, healthier, and more present is to. You can watch a few YouTube videos that make you laugh as an antidote to reset your body chemicals and then get back to work.Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Stay Resolved All that negativity without reason can impact your productivity at work and your social life. Taking a bit of a break from social media is always a good idea when you find yourself preoccupied with negative news. This biological function precludes deep thought and reason. Our reaction is to, obviously, run or fight to protect ourselves. Ruminating on fearful and anxiety-provoking things increases negative moods (Ciesla & Roberts, 2007), triggers our flight or fight instinct and decreases our cognitive capacity to think clearly and effectively. It’s good to be informed, but if you find yourself obsessively reading reports that increase your anxiety, then taking a break is a good idea. We are hardwired to notice scary stuff-it’s how we’ve survived for millions of years. The flow across social media makes it easy to ruminate.

It also makes us better able to evaluate real danger from arm-waving. Generating laughter (or even a smile) changes our body chemicals and improves our optimism and resilience, making us better able to withstand anxiety and fear (Rossouw, 2013). Humor is an excellent source of distancing and reframing. These tweets and posts defuse anxiety and can make us more open-minded and more able to hear another side. The political jokes, memes, videos and parodies across Twitter are positive because they can make us laugh, take pause, step back and share, increasing our sense of social connection. This works to his benefit as a politician as it keeps his supporters on high-alert and seeking a misplaced sense of security because he “stands tough.” It creates confusion, anxiety, and distrust elsewhere, in addition to whatever longer-term damage may occur on many fronts, from continued social divisiveness to the dissolution of international relationships. His kneejerk grandstanding and lack of respect for others not only sets a terrible model of citizenship for young and old alike, but it continues to create a climate of fear and anxiety.

Whether or not you agree with his philosophical stance, Trump’s rhetoric has added a whole new collective dimension to social anxiety. Social media platforms like Twitter are not the real danger, of course. Jokes and parodies defuse our anxiety and increase our ability to reason. Seeing others making light of scary things can make us less anxious. So, no matter what our politics, we should be grateful for the responses that are jokes and parodies across Twitter. Like the telephone game, it’s not long before the story takes on a life of its own, raising our collective blood pressure.

The psychological impact of the fire and fury climate lays as much at the feet of traditional news channels as social media-they report the event AND the response to it on social media.

Humorous antidote