Laughing for no reason - please help if you know anything about this
stas...@gmail.com
My wife has been laughing for no reason all her life. Consistently
every night for the past few years. Sometimes it's not a laugh but
crying if she feels sad at the moment. It never lasts for more than 10
seconds. She says she has done this for along as see can remember.
She's now 28. When we first started dating 6 years ago, I notice that
the 'laughing-for-no-reason' would come at random times sometimes two
or three times during a day or on other days, none at all. She says
when it happens, it didn't hurt. She says she can feel it coming like
a sneeze. When it happens, its uncontrollable, no matter how hard she
tries to control her laugh or cries. When I asked her if she thinks
of anything when it happens (laughing or crying). She says she doesn't
think of anything nothing in particular. But now it has become more
consistent in recent years, right before falling asleep. She would
almost fall asleep and this would wake her up and then she goes to
sleep. It has almost become a ritual.
I have tried everything I could in trying to convince her to see a
doctor, although I'm a little conflicted myself. The thought of
finding out that this thing is something horrible is what frightens
her (and me. i know i'm selfish for this) more than anything else.
She also argue that on one hand, this 'thing' has not gotten worse and
it seems to be becoming more stable. It doesn't hurt her. It doesn't
do anything, besides making her look loony when she starts to seemly
laugh for no reason out of the blue.
The closest thing I found on the web that this could be is 'partial
epilepsy' which I really hope it's not. If anyone knows anything
about this, please help if you know more about this. Thank you very
much.
Sincerely,
Mark
stas...@gmail.com
Entertained by my own EIMC
It is very likely (most likely) that the motivational force behind this
symptom is nothing but neurons that have been "long-term potentiated"
and chronically tend to "let of steam" (fire in bursts) as a result of
experiences early in the life of your wife, experiences that caused a
conditioning-in (or neural imprints) that has been given different name
by different people - for example "primal pain" by Arthur Janov.
It is likely the laughing is (though perhaps somewhat unusually frequent
and regular) a way that your wife's brain has come to deal with "primal
pain type memories" and (iow) that it is part of how your wife's
"defense system" handles the potentially deeply distressful memories.
These are a kind of memories that are normally *not* consciously
registered (or at will recallable) but instead chronically actively
"specifically/synaptically hibernated' ['me so to speak'] - in different
people more or less efficiently and adaptively so - and automatically
and inertly thus *kept unconscious* by this particular AND FAR FROM
unique "safety-valve"-like synaptic route. What reveals the origin of
the symptom is precisely that it is very close to and sometimes actually
is being routed into crying instead of laughing.
I have personal experience of this kind of effect, in that when a sad or
grief-like feeling is about to surface within me I sometimes *actually*
sneeze the feeling away.
I recommend you to take a serious look at Arthur Janov's website at
www.primaltherapy.com.
Sincerely,
Peter
J.A.Legris
I'm no expert - you should get some professional advice. Sounds like
she has so-called gelastic seizures, which can be relatively harmless.
Here's an article:
http://www.ilae-epilepsy.org/ctf/gelastic.html
Evidently, the thing you don't want is hypothalamic hamartoma, which,
judging from her stable symptoms, is not what she has.
Notwithstanding, here's some more info:
--
Joe
pwola...@gmail.com
We all have weird quirks of our own, and its best not to sweat it.
