Laughing

[paranoid_cataclysm]

Do any of you ever get so stressed out and handle stress so badly that you start to react to it by laughing or giggling uncontrollably?

[ILADVOCATE]

Yes in the past before recovery. I would hear a song in the supermarket and it would fill me with a flood of emotions and memories of the past even though it was some kind of easy listening garbage and then it would get worse than that as it would "predict" what was going to happen. Then again I had psychosis as well. I had to self document all that on request and some of is very familiar to me but as my psychopharmocologist said years ago I was "manic with psychotic underpinnings". I thought the term itself was funny then but now I can look back clearly and see it for myself.

[Delusion]

Does anyone ever express the opposite emotions to the ones they are feeling? An example for me is pretty stupid but i buried my cat last year and i actually had a tear in my eye because i had had him since i was a little kid... but when i was told my grandmother had died i actually almost smirked and someone saw and thought i was such a **** person but in my mind it was sarcasm kind of a 'something else fantastic why does god ******* hate me so much' kinda thought.. but i was really sad but i couldnt cry or try and fake the emotions for it for people even though i felt it inside..

[ILADVOCATE]

Actually that can happen as part of bipolar or other psychiatric disabilities. Sometimes its a reaction from people who don't have it such as nervous laughter. Its not whether you laughed. Its what you felt inside and I'm sure you really didn't find it funny. As for the clinical term for it google "inappropriate affect". Very common depending on how people are doing. People can see someone getting angry over nothing but the same can occur with other emotions.

[Twelvesgirl]

I do, it makes me feel like a mad scientist.

Leta, you crack me up.  I have actually laughed at funerals, not uncontrolably, but I think I am a real a$$hole because of it. I cope w/ things in such strange ways that I feel like I shouldn't even leave my house.

[LetaB]

....not a funerals....it used to happen to me a lot when I was young - especially if I was feeling shockingly guilty. Like if I told on my brother and he got in more trouble then I thought he would....I was so shocked when I had to smother laughing. Happy to say it hasn't happened in years.

[bastet56]

yes, it's a coping mechanism. You are ok, just under stress that needs to come out somehow. Beats breaking into tears.....

[Delusion]

I dont know if its the same but when doctors screw me around asking me things over and over again i usually have a smile on my face when i describe things or often give a short laugh after explaining something indepth and the doctors find it very strange but i almost do it unconsciously. I guess its my way of coping or denying playing it all down in my mind so it effects me to a lesser extent.

[ILADVOCATE]

Yes a while back before recovery. It just happenned spontaneously. It was a matter of releasing tension while holding back a manic state from what I can remember.

[paranoid_cataclysm]

And I don't mean because you found something funny about it, it just happens for no reason at all.