Oh hey everybody.
This week on Ask Cristen the potential psychological impact of laughter is no laughing matter.
[Snorts] Just kidding.
No I’m not.
Mart-Juahn wants to know, ‘How do you know if people laugh at you or with you?
I’m in introvert but sometimes I spontaneously stand out in conversations with classmates
and sometimes they laugh after I’ve made a powerful or funny statement.
But did they laugh because they didn’t expect it, was the statement funny or because I became
emotional during those discussions?
What are signs on which I can know what they think or do they think at all?’
Mart-Juhan unfortunately I am not a mindreader.
I do have some tips distinguishing the types of laughter that might be going on around
you.
And I wanted to mention my personal connection between social phobias that I’ve dealt with
and a fear of being laughed at because research is increasingly exploring the link between
those two things and how gelotophobia which is not a fear of gelato but rather a fear
of being laughed at is cross-cultural and relatively common.
So Mart-Juhan if that is something you’re experiencing where you’re getting nervous
about even going to class for fear of being laughed at when you speak, I would recommend
not just looking at your classmates and whether or not they’re laughing at you or with you
but also look inside of whether this is attached to a bigger issue of some kind of anxiety
or fear.
And if that’s the case there are all sorts of tools out there to help you manage that.
So how can we maybe read some body language to help you distinguish whether people are
laughing at you or with you?
The first thing that comes to my mind is paying attention to where people are looking.
People who are laughing with you are basically in sort of a conversation with you.
They’re going to be looking at you.
They’re not going to be looking all around to be like who else is laughing at this person,
ohhh.
You can also pay attention to the loudness and the openness of people’s laughter.
I have a hunch that people who are laughing with you, they’re not going to be trying
to hold their laughter in, they’re going to just laugh, hahaha!
People who are laughing at you tend to snicker more than guffaw so they might be like [snickers].
And then finally there’s the whole issue of how they treat you after the laughter is
over.
Anecdotally, people who are laughing at you are not going to hang around you that long.
They might make some kind of snide remark on their way out to go talk about you and
laugh about you behind your back.
Chances are that people who are laughing with you are going to be nicer after the fact and
that doesn’t necessarily mean that they immediately run up to you and ask to be your
best friend but they’re not going to be intentionally shunning or ignoring or ostracizing
you in some kind of way.
All of this leads to the question of what if people are laughing at you?
To me it all depends on the context of why people were laughing at you.
Sometimes slapstick laughter happens, where you trip and fall, you drop something, you
slip on a banana peel, someone throws a cream pie in your face.
You just got to get up and brush it off.
If it’s a situation of people laughing at you because you are not really adhering to
proper etiquette rules and the right kind of interaction like me joking at inappropriate
times as I have done throughout my life.
That’s an opportunity to step back, be objective it possible, dial down your emotions, and
consider maybe your communication style could use a little bit of work.
Finally there’s the mocking laughter, people are laughing at you not because you’ve done
anything wrong at all and not because there’s anything wrong with you.
They’re laughing at you to make themselves feel better, to elevate their own social status
by subordinating you because you look different, you sound different and you act different.
This is a tough one, this is where we do get into clicheville, because I don’t want to
sit here and tell you just be stronger.
No that sucks!
But what you can do is approach it as an opportunity to meet that laughter with strength and self-acceptance.
It takes a really big person to be able to do that, so if you can you are lightyears
ahead of anybody else around you.
The more I personally have embraced the stuff that I know people have found distasteful
in me, quirkiness-wise not just me being like a garbage human wise, the happier I’ve become.
And now dear viewers I want to know from you, does this ring a bell for you, do you have
any insights, tips or experiences that you would like to share?
Let’s start the conversation in the comments below and as always ask me your questions
so I can give you some answers.