How Can People Laugh At Themselves?

[hailstorm]

@RussH I so get how you feel about people laughing at you. I have had people hurt me and then laugh at me because of the way I looked afterwards. The humiliation that is felt when people laugh at you is a sudden reaction that has terrible memories attached to it. In order for me to be spontaneous I have to literally be toasted so that I don't care what people think of me. Only thing is I don't remember what I did the next day. Which sets me up for more abuse. It's a never ending cycle.
You are right. People have robbed you of the ability to feel the joy of doing goofy things. They have robbed you of the ability to have a spontaneous sense of humor. I believe you can develop one by performing for yourself in the mirror when no one else is around...kind of like singing in the shower at the top of you voice when no one can hear you...
It could be a form of desensitizing yourself from the ridicule and humiliation that you feel when someone laughs at you. Almost like exposure therapy but without the therapist there...

 

[Friday]

I'm on the other side of this fence... It wasn't until after trauma that I really, and truly, learned to laugh at myself. In fact, I can really clearly remember the day when it happened. Something broke inside me and I just started laughing so effing hard. There is just a really clear before & after. Before that day I couldn't laugh at myself, after that day there are only 2 things that can't be made funny: the death of a child and someone else's pain.

Not that I don't feel crippling embarrassment and pain over things, but they tend to be surrounding things like paying a bill or making a phone call. But I also make fun of myself for feeling that way.

 

[Notsowild]

I hated my father taking videos of us as children. Like we had to pretend we were happy children while meanwhile he was severely abusing us. To this day I hate videos and pictures. Like @Solara I feel ugly and want to be invisible. I feel I ruin the picture if I'm in it.