Laughing at serious things/Guilt

Hi everyone. My OCD tends to revolve strongly around guilt, but I've usually been able to manage. The past few months, however, I've started feeling compulsions if I ever laugh at something that has to do with a serious issue. This would only happen occasionally, but now my brain actively seeks reasons to laugh at serious things. Whenever I read the newspaper, I feel a jolt of panic if I see something about death, and close the paper before I can laugh at it. This was bad enough. I used to watch the news and read serious books all the time, but now that was out the window.

Then my intrusive thoughts got in the way. Now, unless I'm distracted enough, I feel constantly assaulted by thoughts of serious things, closely monitoring my reaction. If I feel a laugh (which does happen at times), I have to redo whatever it is I'm doing. This has made nearly everything impossible--listening to music, doing work, taking notes in class, etc. I can't go on like this. I'm spending most of my time in tears because I feel like my life is over. I know I don't find these things funny, but my brain finds a way to twist it into a joke (example: thinking of something silly, then a serious thing at the same time).

The worst part is I don't think I've seen anyone else with this. I'm scared I'm totally alone here. I know the key to stopping it is to let go and let it happen---if I don't give these thoughts power, they'll go away. But I feel so ashamed laughing at such horrible things. Anyone experience anything like this? Or any advice?

I'm not Master Otter, but this padawan will go out on a limb, and say this sounds very like the OCD fear of acting socially inappropriately. Which is actually not uncommon, I believe. Some examples would include intrusive thoughts of loudly cursing in a meeting, or church. Leaning over to kiss someone who is not a love interest, etc. Socially unexpected/unacceptable things. I've experienced both those examples.

Only cure I know of is what I did with my harm-ocd. Remind it you'll do no such thing and then ignore the thought. Don't resist the thought, just let it pass thru your mind untouched by worry. It takes practice but it worked for my harm OCD.

This kind of reminds me of an episode of the UK show Coupling "Sex, Death, and Nudity". Where in there's a "giggle loop".

Pretty sure this kind of thing happens to non-OC people too. OCD is just blowing it out of proportion.

RTE45 wrote:my brain actively seeks reasons to laugh at serious things.

This happens to me too. I don't know why, but I'd not say it's due to OCD. Sounds like an "inability" to take things seriously enough.

HopelessBoy wrote:

RTE45 wrote:my brain actively seeks reasons to laugh at serious things.

This happens to me too. I don't know why, but I'd not say it's due to OCD. Sounds like an "inability" to take things seriously enough.

Well, not that I have any experience with this, but that sounds like a compulsion. Compulsions are what OCD sufferers do in order to quickly alleviate the obsession. It could be that your mind, in order to alleviate stress and obsession, makes you laugh at the situation in order to subordinate the severity, to quickly deal with the obsessive thinking that would usually quickly follow.