Inappropriate Laughing, anyone else with this problem?

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Wow, how did I miss this?
We must have had another one of these same topics a little while ago, I remember telling one of my stories about this.

I have always laughed or giggled when nervous or uncomfortable about things.
Working in the medical field... this doesn't always go over so well, so I have to be careful about it.

I was talking with someone once and she was telling me about the time when her dad was trying to teach her to tell time.
She wasn't doing something right so he "...smashed my face against the clock..." according to her.

Right when she told me that I let out a laugh of sorts and she got really pissed off at me.
I knew this was not a happy story she was telling.. but I had that uncontrollable bit of laughter come out.

My former wife always used to ask what it was that I thought was so funny, until she finally figured out that not all my laughing or smirking, was due to something being funny.
Nor the big grins I would get on my face for seemingly no reason or at the wrong time in a conversation.

The grin is still something I have a hard time controlling... more than the audible laugh.

Sometimes my mind will briefly wonder during a conversation or some event and the idea that pops into my head makes me smirk/laugh. That confounds people too... they think I am either not paying attention or I am quite rude and not very compassionate about the issue.

Oh gosh yes.
The other day it was awful, luckily we were in the car because it was really bad.

The man driving in front of us either had a bad twitch or had tourettes and I don' find that funny, im not one of those people who stares or is cruel or laughs at people or teases. Im nothing like that. But for some reason I couldn't stop laughing in the car, I couldn't help but think what if his twitch makes him turn the wheel suddenly.
Its one of the unfunniest things ever and my mum was shocked so I ate my hand

Also in our local supermarket all the people who do the reading out on the microphone have speech impediments either lisps or stutters and every time they start talking, every time without fail I start giggling and then laughing and then my mum ushers me out the shop. I just can't help it.

Oh another thing that makes me laugh without fail is orange people, who use spray tan and sun beds to much. I don't really understand it, why its done and it makes me laugh and apparently im incredibly obvious

Yeah! This is both bizarre and sadly funny!

I see it when I have to clean a patient's arm to draw blood... one lady even commented to her husband while I was wiping that crap off her arm... "He's wiping my tan off!"

I do this too. It took me over 30 years to understand that it's a form of panic attack that's related to all the bullying I've gone through in life.

I know exactly what you mean. Our family was watching a sad movie and there was a sad violent part, so my dad fast-forwarded it, but it was a DVD so it stuffed up and he had to rewind it to the same part, showing more of it than what we would have seen if it had just played through. This thought made me laugh. I didn't even think how it could be misinterpreted. I got a stern telling off and people got very emotional at me, as if I was a horrible person. I explained it immediately, but they didn't understand, so I had to explain again, then they asked how that was funny (I hate that question. People ask it even though they know there is no answer.) and then continued to talk about how bad it was to laugh at the said part of the movie. What a very logical reaction, considering my explanation.

Some years ago a guy jumped on me in a park with the intention of raping me. I started laughing my head off and this freaked him out so much that he got up and left me alone!

I always laugh during the most serious of times, dramatic tv shows, intense movies where the peole are tring to be really serious, day time talk shows with people talking about their problems, i also laugh when I remember a joke, and it's completely quiet in the room, or theres a serious conversation going on and everyone just stops and asks me "whats so funny?", normally it's something thats funny for a moment but trying to explain it ruins the joke.

That happens with some films to me as well, I watch 'A Walk To Remember' with my friends once, it was a bit rubbish but they were all crying and I kept laughing, and then the main character collapsed and was I hysterical with laughter, it was a birthday party and they made me leave. I had to go stand outside in the dark and call my mum to come get me.

Bump

I laugh at things I'm thinking of all the time, usually at work where I'm trying to preoccupy my mind. I've been working quietly around some people before and laugh so abruptly that I choked on something I was eating, drawing one out of every two eyebrows around me.

I've had situations where I laugh at the wrong time, used to happen somewhat often... but for the most part, I don't really laugh a whole lot anyway, and will only laugh when it's appropriate (and I get the joke/reference/etc.)

Well, sometimes I burst into laughter randomly even if nothing is funny. Would that count as inappropriate laughing? Anyways, I don't really laugh a whole lot because jokes and other things people find funny aren't funny to me.

Wow, that's a heck of a bump! Two years, must be some kind of record. But it's a good thread (alright, what I read of it was). I don't think it's inappropriate to find it funny when someone falls in a funny way, on the contrary, it's common and sometimes frustrating to be trying to determine whether someone is hurt after seeing them slide, flail their limbs, and finally fall, ending up half-upside-down on their face. I would give any blame to TV or cartoons specifically. I like my cartoons, mind you, I'm just saying most of us grew up laughing at unnatural amounts of pain and suffering. It's always been my impression, though, that there will always be odd things that strike us funny sometimes.

When I was in an artist's anatomy class, I sat in front of one of those trios, you know the kind, a few middle-aged ladies that like to chat with one another, sometimes during lecture. But on the whole, this one was a friendly trio, if frustrating. We were studying the ear, or the visible parts of it, anyway. The teacher had been grilling us on the names, helix and anti-helix, referring to the outer and inner curves of the ear. I remember the names well because I got a terrible case of the sillies that night when the teacher asked, "What is this?" to which several people responded, "The helix," and he then pointed to the next part and said, "And what is this?" and one of the trio burst out, louder than the others, with, "Double helix!"

Now, you may have chuckled but I doubt it. I find it silly, but can't figure out why I laughed so hard. I was pregnant, maybe that affected my brain.

We used to laugh in church all the time, too, my husband and I. That was fairly embarrassing, and our own fault. Y'see, we have various church members speak each week rather than one guy giving a sermon and that provides endless chances for inappropriate laughter, say, if one guy gets up to speak and he tends to say "Uh" to buy thinking time.

Like many people I've too had my fair share of inappropriate laughter.

I felt awful after this but my mum got her finger caught on a foldable table the other day and I automatically felt an eruption of laughter brewing up. I asked if she was ok, thankfully she was then I went out of the room,to have a private laugh.

Makes me think of a comedy due called hale and pace and one of the characters, was a man who can't take anything seriously and laughs randomly

http://youtu.be/sJZ8NEEw5Jo

Yeah all the time I also crack inappropriate jokes at times although it makes me laugh and some of my friends laugh hard other people esspecially the ones who are overly PC and serious about everything are silent and scowl at me, ....then I start to feel uncomfortable and bad afterwards.

Yup, guilty. I don't find actual harm to another funny, but silly things that people do, e.g. Harry Hills Have you been framed, crack me up. I think having a dark sense of humor helps a person move forward or deal with issues they might not otherwise be able to communicate about. "Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying"
For me it's a liberating feeling to laugh at the daft things I do, even if it's not an appropriate time to laugh. Sometimes it works with social blunders, or the comedic value occurs to me weeks later, when I laugh about it I usually move forward from that point.

I was thinking about this since the threads a few months ago about jokes; comedy walks hand in hand with offending sensibilities. Small topics can be a guaranteed giggle, yet topical issues stir deeper emotions and bigger laughs.
Sometimes other peoples humour offends my deeper sensibilities, because the topic is personal and i don’t agree with desensitisation or creating a climate of complacency. I also see it as confirmation that ‘the very notion of the topic is wrong’ from those with a darker sense of humour, I think that is part of what makes it funny for them, not so much the content. It's a way of introducing a question about the darker things in life.

I have my own sense of humour, it doesn’t usually make other people laugh, but I get a giggle. Occasionally a pun makes its way out of my brain. I use a little humour when nervous, or talking about difficult subject, it creates a distance between me and the topic or puts me in a more relaxed mindset. Again, not always an appropriate time to laugh.
Breaking the discomfort with a moment of levity allows me to release tension and move forward being less influenced by intense emotions. A lot of people I know were raised to laugh at themselves, to develop a sense of fun and mischief, and the ability to laugh at and be laughed at.

My wife hates it when I laugh about her obsession with her "bed."

She has to have the bed made "just so." She has all these things on the bed, things which I never heard of before I met her. Like: Shams (or Chams?), Duvets, Bedskirts, things like that.

I grew up with just one sheet and one blanket on my bed.

She takes this stuff VERY seriously. I just find it funny.