Giggle Stress My friend B has this coping mechanism where she giggles when she's stressed. Unlike commonly dispensed advise, where stress-bearers are told to giggle at stress, B's strategy inlvolves giggling with stress. This seems like my kind of coping strategy. You're not trying to find a silver cloud in some crappy lining. Instead, you are hysterically embodying the idiocy that modern life sometimes is and displaying it for all the world to see. For glass-half-full chicks like me, a reminder that it sometimes really is half-empty is a necesary correction to a tendency to remain chipper in face of doom. Moreover, laughing with stress doesn't involve that energy-sapping effort of picking yourself up by your bootstraps. Instead, giggle stress teaches you that self-realization may rise from a complete lack of self-reflection. You are what you giggle, indeed.