Laughing at 'the wrong time'

[Gummi27]

Ha! I like to laugh. I used to laugh a lot more when I was younger. A lot of times it would be at a thought I had, related or unrelated to whatever I might be doing or talking about. Sometimes, something as common and mundane as something falling off its hanger in the closet could get a giggle out of me. I laughed when having fun, when nervous, when sad.

-Tee hee-

"What's so funny?"

Sometimes I would answer this question with a thorough explanation, and it would often happen that I was alone in my opinion of something being humorous. Eventually I just held back on my laughs, and if one got through I would lie and say "Oh I dunno why I laughed" which, looking back, probably made it weirder for people thinking that I was just laughing for no reason.

The thing is, sometimes I don't know why something made me laugh or why I thought a serious discussion was the perfect time to make a joke. However, holding back on laughter has affected how I behave even when just by myself, and I would really like to get back to laughing more. It made life a little more palpable. Laughter is a part of who I am and I don't want to erase myself, especially since this world has been trying to erase me from the beginning. I am going to give myself permission to laugh as much as I please. And I want to encourage you to laugh more too!

How about you? Do you like to laugh? Do you often find you're either the only one laughing? Or sometimes realize you're the only one NOT laughing? (Haha, I get that too.)

 

[Progster]

I have triggers - certain things make me laugh (not necessarily things that other people find funny), and my family and other people who know the triggers deliberately trigger me to make me laugh.

 

[All-Rounder]

I remember how silly i used to look in class when i got hit by a laughing fit. id try to muffle it and not seem like i was laughing, it was either a memory or a thought or something id seen. I felt odd when my teacher was teaching the lesson and i just started laughing out of nowhere. Im a NT though, by the way.
I love to laugh at my own jokes, there are some people who dont get them but i had some really funny friends that got my fav game experience to be laughful even when they werent around. I started laughing at how id make a mistake or at how someones character moved, really small things, or at glitches. When the game was taken down I was crushed. Its back up but I no longer play.

 

[garnetflower13]

I started laughing at how id make a mistake or at how someones character moved, really small things, or at glitches. When the game was taken down I was crushed. Its back up but I no longer play.

I can relate to the glitches thing. I was attending a play once; it was West Side Story, being performed by a local college. There was a point when the lights dimmed on the stage and the stage props were being shifted for the next scene. A tall building prop suddenly rocked and nearly fell over, and I could not stop laughing!

 

[Fino]

I didnt read every comment because that's a lot, but am I the only one whose first thought when reading the OP was, "this person sounds adorable"?

And I laugh when I shouldn't, usually at my own thoughts that others don't find funny. And my laugh is really loud and sudden. I've scared myself before!

 

[Nightingale121]

Another thing I've noticed is that this is more likely to happen to me over something spontaneous and unexpected than any event where I know something grim is about to happen.

Sometimes I want to lament and just say that many of us simply don't handle things in real time as well as others. That it takes longer for things to catch up with us to parse them in their proper perspective.

I agree with this.

In general this phenomenon rather focuses on smiling or grinning than laughing for me. It's probably not as terrible as laughing, but it's inappropriate nevertheless.

I think for me it's often like a first reaction that my brain automatically comes back to if I haven't processed the event or situation yet, but know that some sort of emotional reaction is required, being expressed through an adequate facial expression.

There are actually two processing steps for me:
1. Processing the unexpected situation for myself and figuring out my emotional reaction/state towards it.
2. "Translating" this state and turning it into an outward reaction that is seen by the other person.

It always takes a while for my brain to get there (and it's not guranteed that the end result will actually be appropriate). During the processing process the smile or grin appears, so that there is at least some reaction while I'm not up-to-date internally yet.
Smiling seems to be the easiest facial expression to show quickly and without thinking too much about it for me as it often happens rather subconsciously.
For example, I smiled when someone told me about his broken ribs once. I didn't find this funny, but I couldn't "translate" my feelings quickly enough to express them accordingly.

Once I notice it, I try to stop it and not to smile anymore because it's inappropriate and doesn't reflect my true feelings, but of course this can't undo the first impression I made by smiling in the first place.

However, there are also times when I laugh when it's not appropriate because there's actually something funny I notice or think about at the time. I better don't think too much about random stuff while attending funerals because it happened before that I could barely stop myself from laughing out loud during one funeral I attended. Unfortunately, even just listening to what is said during the funeral doesn't always help because I might find some random statement really funny and then have to force myself not to laugh.

 

[Sab]

Does anybody else here have spurts of uncontrollable laughter at really inappropriate times?

I think for me it comes from nervousness cuz it usually happens when someone isn't feeling good and telling me about it and making themselves vulnerable. I just feel really nervous about saying the right thing and sometimes burst out laughing and feel really bad about it. I am really not finding anything funny but it's like my body reacts that way out of stress.

It also used to happen a lot to me when I had oral presentations in school. I would laugh so much that I wouldn't be able to put sentences together. Then I'd be so scared of laughing that I'd just not do the oral presentations and have bad grades because of it.