Most of us have been in a situation in which we were caught laughing when we probably shouldn’t have. Maybe it was during a funeral service when you feel like crying. Perhaps you gave a nervous giggle when you made a mistake in front of your boss. It could have been when you were all by yourself looking at a bill you can’t afford to pay; you laughed, even when you didn’t mean to. Why? Well, there are different reasons but, overall, experts agree that it’s your brain trying to prevent you from being overwhelmed from other emotions.
While many likely know that laughing while being nervous is common, it could also be a traumatic response or a sign of an incongruent affect in action. An incongruent affect is when a person’s verbal emotions don’t align with their physical expressions. One example is laughing when discussing the death of a loved one. While it’s not enough to diagnose anyone, an incongruent affect could be a sign of physical brain trauma or a mental health disorder, but it can also just be a learned behavior from childhood.
@theimprovguy Anyone else laugh when they’re nervous 😅 #nervouslaugh #nervousenergy #laughing #musicalmonday #improvbroadway
If we’re not taught as children by our parents how to express sadness, process anger, or properly grieve, we might choose to laugh past it without confronting those big emotions. It could be to protect ourselves or to delay confronting those emotions out of fear or not knowing what else to do.
The brain’s fire alarm
Commonly though, experts say we laugh during uncomfortable moments or in lieu of more appropriate emotions due to how powerful they are to us. Laughing inappropriately could be due to past trauma or how potently sad or upsetting the event or topic of conversation may be. It’s similar logic and reasoning of why we cry when we’re ridiculously happy.
Laughing when we’re hurt or overwhelmed could be your brain putting out an emotional fire. The act of laughing releases potent feel-good endorphins that are compared to painkilling opioids, according to doctors. It’s our brains looking at the current situation and saying, “Nope, can’t handle that negative emotional load, have this opioid to calm you down.”
However, if you are able to cite a specific topic, event, or reason that commonly triggers inappropriate laughter out of you, it might be something that needs to be addressed through therapy.
@7indso my therapist learning I cope with trauma with humor “heh heh heh” #FriendsReunion #fyp #mentalhealth #therapyforwomen #therapysessions
Laughter could be a cathartic career requirement
For some people, laughing during unfunny moments is just a part of the job. People who work in heavily stressful situations such as police officers and first responders often resort to "gallows humor" in the workplace to help alleviate the constant barrage of disturbing imagery or tragedy that often comes in those occupations. Prisoners even try to find comedy in their circumstances to survive through their sentences. Even so, there is still a limit to how and when laughter is tolerated in such locations and scenarios. The wrong laugh at the wrong time can lead to offense or worse.
@tarvintalks Have you ever noticed how humor can be a lifesaver, literally? Let me draw from an experience I had while working with emergency first responders. One of the participants shared a joke that, for most, might cross the line of being acceptable. To give you the gist, dark humor, or gallows humor as some may call it, is often a stress reliever for those constantly dealing with life-and-death situations. The jokes may be grim, but it's their way of dealing with the harsh realities of their job. Humor can be a coping mechanism, not just a source of amusement. Share this post if you want to understand the value of dark humor in stressful situations and discover your own humor type. #DarkHumor #EmergencyResponders
While there are many reasons why we laugh inappropriately, it doesn’t happen without reason. If you find yourself laughing during an inappropriate time, it might be worth asking why. Depending on what you find, your next step might be consulting a professional to see what truly should be addressed and what a healthier, more effective response would look like. The worst case is that you end up with something to laugh about later.
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.