Impulsive Laughter...would like comments

[reallyME]

Hello all.

I'm wondering if any of you know or struggle with a somewhat unusual habit of impulsive laughter.  What I mean is, no matter what the conversatoin, the afflicted person just laughs.  You could tell them you are having a terrible day and they will laugh.  You could tell them something funny; they laugh.  They could just say hello to you on the street, followed by their own laughter.  These people laugh to a point that you are asking yourself "what's so funny?  I didn't see anything funny about saying I lost my shoes somewhere in the house?" (or anything)

The laughter I'm referring to, is a defense mechanism of some sort.  Often people have this tendency running through their family, I believe, as a result of years of keeping secrets and pretending everything and everyone was ok.

If you are familiar with or personally struggle with this, please write me back and tell me what the solution is, for the adult who just can't stop the reflex.  When others are talking to people who do this, they tend to feel very uncomfortable quickly if they are not expecting that.

In some oriental countries, the people will smile and laugh when ANGRY, but in the USA, this is felt as very WEIRD. 

ANy help is appreciated.

~Laura

[Certain Hope]

Hi Laura,

I'm interested in exploring this topic, too, because I know people who laugh at odd moments... or maybe not laugh, but let off a few... well, almost snide "chuckles"... about the strangest things, like when mentioning a news story about someone who's just passed away.

Here's a bit from Wikipedia, just for starters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter

Abnormal laughter
Researchers frequently learn how the brain functions by studying what happens when something goes wrong. People with certain types of brain damage produce abnormal laughter. This is found most often in people with pseudobulbar palsy, gelastic epilepsy and, to a lesser degree, with multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) , and some brain tumors. Inappropriate laughter is considered symptomatic of psychological disorders including dementia and hysteria. Some negative medical effects of laughter have been reported as well, including laughter syncope, where laughter causes a person to lose consciousness.[3]


[edit] Why we laugh
A number of competing theories have been written. For Aristotle, we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel a joy at being superior to them. Socrates was reported by Plato as saying that the ridiculous was characterized by a display of self-ignorance. Francis Hutcheson expressed in Thoughts on Laughter (1725) what became a key concept in the evolving theory of the comic: laughter as a response to the perception of incongruity.[4] Schopenhauer wrote that the perceived incongruity is between a concept and the real object it represents. Hegel shared almost exactly the same view, but saw the concept as an "appearance" and believed that laughter then totally negates that appearance. For Freud, laughter is an "economical phenomenon" whose function is to release "psychic energy" that had been wrongly mobilized by incorrect or false expectations.

 [This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.

Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.]

Philosopher John Morreall theorizes that human laughter may have its biological origins as a kind of shared expression of relief at the passing of danger. The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) proposed by Victor Raskin and S. Attardo identifies a semantic model capable of expressing incongruities between semantic scripts in verbal humor; this has been seen as an important recent development in the theory of laughter. Recently Peter Marteinson theorized that laughter is our response to the perception that social being is not real in the same sense that factual states of affairs are true, and that we subconsciously blur the distinctions between cultural and natural truth types, so that we do not normally notice their differing criteria for truth and falsehood. This is an ontic-epistemic theory of the comic (OETC).

Robert A. Heinlein's view of why people laugh is explained in one of his most praised novels, Stranger in a Strange Land, "because it hurts", is empathic but also a release of tension.

Laughter can also be used as a coping mechanism for when one is upset, angry or sad. It does not necessarily always occur in a humorous or comedic tone. However, the 'comedic tone' is not an existing reality; rather, the reality becomes 'comedic' only when laughter ensues. This concept is intended to debunk the false categorization of 'funniness' to a situation.

I'm looking forward to hearing others' stories/opinions about this and will keep reading. Thanks for the topic, Laura.

Hope

[Certain Hope]

Hi again Laura,

Thought I'd share the rest of what I uncovered here... for you or anyone else who's encountered this.
I think what I've observed has been more a manifestation of attention-deficit, but it could also be a form of "tic"... dunno.

Here's forum post with the suggestion that this inappropriate laughter may be linked to anxiety.
http://pub9.bravenet.com/forum/752756846/show/188019

Here's from a medical publication about brain lesions http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7919634&dopt=AbstractPlus

Witzelsucht and moria are time-honored neurobehavioral terms. Witzelsucht is a tendency to tell inappropriate jokes, and moria is euphoric behavior. Focal right-orbitofrontal parenchymal lesion is often the anatomical substrate for these behavioral attitudes. This case report presents a patient with a longstanding witzelsucht-moria behavior. Single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) showed hypoperfused right-frontoparietal area in the absence of structural damage.

And, kinda interesting, from an LA Times article:
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-esoterica25jun25,1,7211546.column

But laughter has a dark side too. Laughing allegedly brought on the stroke that killed British novelist Anthony Trollope and caused temporary blindness in a Massachusetts man cracking up at an episode of "Seinfeld" — mysterious occurrences that still have scientists perplexed.

Inappropriate laughter is also a hallmark of a handful of rare medical conditions, an indication that something has gone awry somewhere in the brain.

The lobotomies commonly performed in mental hospitals in the 1940s and 1950s occasionally resulted in a new problem for the patients: fits of uncontrollable and involuntary laughter, brought on by damage to the brain's frontal lobe, the seat of voluntary movement and emotion.

A rare developmental disorder known as Angelman Syndrome is accompanied by seizures, jerky movements and paroxysms of inappropriate laughter.

A type of epilepsy, known as gelastic epilepsy, is also characterized by fits of out-of-place laughter; "gelos" is the Greek word for laughter.

Kuru, a now very rare degenerative brain disease affecting the natives of New Guinea, and a related disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, are both accompanied by seemingly unprovoked spells of laughter. Both diseases involve such extensive brain degeneration (caused by infectious proteins known as prions) that scientists are still unsure how, precisely, they cause such pathological laughter.

Diseases aren't the only cause of out-of-context laughter: Toxic substances can bring it on too. Manganese poisoning once caused clumsiness and chuckling in workers who mined the mineral for a living. A deadly herb native to the island of Sardinia causes the same strange laughter before resulting in the death of its still-smiling victims.

And then, of course, there are the less-toxic, laugh-inducing gases nitrous oxide and ether. Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, first became a popular recreational drug back in the 19th century. In 1844, an astute dentist decided the feel-good gas might have a place in his clinic too. To test his hypothesis, he had one of his own wisdom teeth extracted while intoxicated. Painless dentistry for all of his patients (and also others) ensued.

I've also been reading of pathological laughter as being a sort of "tic"... related to mental illness and, as described in the case study here, obsessive-compulsive disorder.
http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ProduktNr=224276&Ausgabe=230036&ArtikelNr=77583&filename=77583.pdf

And at an AD/HD forum, a poster described something similar (which I think is what I've encountered with some folks):

"I also have vocal tic disorder which makes it even harder not to mention mental tics (mental tics are when you have say for example a funny thought go through your mind at a time when it's inappropriate and you nearly respond with a facial expression or laughter etc etc) mental tics are tics the sufferer has but others can't see."

Then there's "hebephrenia"   
A form of schizophrenia in which the individual behaves like a child (for example, inappropriate laughter and silliness).

But Laura, you may want to do a google for "vocal tic disorder" and see whether that info sheds more light on what you're asking. There's lots there... and I was interested to read that these chronic tics can be vocal and not just "motor"... also  that they are not always just single sounds, but can also be complete sentences, over and over.
Here's just one:   http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/chrontic.htm

Hope

[dandylife]

Laura,

My N-ish husband "cackles" under stress. I usually notice it when he's on the phone talking with someone else. But he does it with me sometimes, too. It's a horrible sound (to me). It's a sort of grating heh heh heh really loud laugh and he does it in response to things that people say that cause him stress. Like if he's in a negotiation and he doesn't like the number, or if he has to lie (us intimates KNOW when our spouses are lying, esp. on the phone!)

I think it's a pretty common response to high stress. I feel it's inappropriate - it's always out of context and I always wonder - how the person on the other line is feeling when they hear it. It's almost like "don't even f*cking kid me that you really think that." That's always what I think he's trying to get across when he does it.

It may not be relevant to what you're experiencing, but .... my two cents.

Dandylife

[reallyME]

I appreciate any and all comments, Dandylife.

Actually the person I've seen this laughter problem in, will just basically laugh at anything I say but also laughs at her own conversation.  It bothers her now too and she is going to therapy to work on it.

~Laura

[dandylife]

Some people have strange, annoying, interesting habits in communicating. A friend ALWAYS apologizes. Every conversation - she thinks she has to apologize. "Sorry I didn't answer the phone I was...." "Sorry I didn't call sooner, come sooner, breathe softer, take up air space." I just want to tell her to stop stop it. She's SO sweet, such a good person.

My daughter has a weird tongue clicking thing she does, but not always.

I think all these things may be tied to stress - their individual reactions to it. Including your friend's laughter. IMO

Dandylife

[teartracks]

Hi RM,

I'm wondering how long you've know the person with the impulsive laughter.   Do you know if there was a time when she didn't do it?  In my church a missionary couple came home on furlough.  In a few weeks we heard reports that she was repeating everything said to her.  At first it was thought she had developed a tic, then it got worse.  Many tests were done.  It ended up she had a brain tumor that was causing the odd speech.  She also has ten children.  We speculated that she was simply exhausted and fallen into brain fog.

Now the tumor is being treated.   I suppose there is a possibility that something could be going on in her brain that is not related to emotional or psychological issues.

tt

[Bella_French]

Um..I'm not sure about this one. I have come across people who laugh when they seem to be nervous, and it felt kind of off to me. I even had a lover for a brief time (he was virgin when i met him), and he would laugh in a nervous kind of way when he touched me `down there' . It really put me off him, and I stopped seeing him.

The best explanation I have had for laughter was that it occurs when we hold two opposing thoughts in our mind simultaneously, causing us to laugh.

X Bella

[reallyME]

Dandy,

I know all about the "I'm sorry.  I'm sorry"  I had a sort of foster daughter who used to do that CONSTANTLY, due to having grown up in a house with an abusive maternal figure.  Within a year I was able to break her of it, but then she let the "lady" back into her life, and went right back into all the "kiss my butt" habits she had around that person again. I was FURIOUS for her letting this creature back into her life, her marriage, her home, after we had an order of protection out against her for slapping this girl's 2 day old baby in my house!  At this point though, 7 children later, this same girl has a son, dying if he doesn't get surgery soon, so my sights are on prayer and hope toward her, rather than anger and confusion.  That same maternal figure, of course, is right there with the girl and her children.  Go figure how life works.

Teartracks,

I have known this person a couple years now, and I have no clue if she always had the inappropriate laughter problem.  I do know that almost everyone in her family does it too, including the mother.


Bella,

That's an interesting story.  thank you for sharing, I think just kiddin...glad you are free of Mr Laughter

~Laur

[Overcomer]

When I am in a stressful period of my life, some things strike me as funny.  Then when I am telling the story to someone I will laugh uncontrollably to the point of crying. 

[Ami]

Dear Bella,
   That guy must have lifted up your self esteem.
Kelly-- I remember on one of my M's visits that she was running around my house like a "dictator" disparaging my 'housekeeping". I was crying  AND laughing hysterically at the same time.
   My former bf( sociopath) would always laugh at tragedy. If I told him any sad story, I would wait for him to laugh. He had a long term friend( from childhood) who had a stroke and couldn't do anything. He was laughing very hard at this one. He  laughs at deaths , operations and illness.I know how to pick 'em.     
                                                                                                Ami

[reallyME]

I just want to make it clear that the lady with the laughter problem is not a sociopath, but I'm pretty sure she has some psychological issues from covering up painful things in her past, that make her giggle out of nervousness and it's become a habit.

She's going to get some help with it soon...long overdue help.