Laughter Actually IS Good Medicine

Laughter is one of those things that a person who feels healthy and happy does often, and the same person will often do less and less when things are not going well. The irony is that laughter itself is part of keeping a person healthy.
When I don't feel well or am in a state of fatigue, I tend to NOT take the supplements or do the exercise or care for myself like I do when I'm feeling well. So which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
So when I'm anxious or depressed because of something (or someone), I laugh less and less.
Also, when I'm around bullies and controllers, my tendency is to keep my laughter shut down in order to avoid their negative attention. Controllers don't like it when people laugh at anything outside of their control and approval, and they also tend not to like it when targets laugh out loud, because it's a confidence and even a dominance display (primates). (Further, a person with certain serious disorder might get triggered when a person around them laughs; it could mean something sinister to them.)
Also, maybe I'm working or learning something and am very focused for prolonged lengths of time. While this can be necessary and even a good thing, it can cause us to set aside our laughter.

So for many different reasons, I laugh less. The less I laugh, the less I laugh, and then I just don't laugh much at all. If it lasts a long enough time, laughter itself might become annoying to me. Other people laughing, comedies on TV or at the movies, quips and wit from people around me, they all become annoying, even anger-causing, and I don't even realize why. I USED to laugh a lot, I must have been immature at the time?... No, that's not it. I probably WAS immature, but that's not why I used to laugh so much and stopped later. And while there are a lot of people who "laugh" because of meanness, insecurity and bully issues they have, that's not the only kind of laughter there is, not by a long shot.
Laughter is like those vitamins that I forget to take when I need them most. I don't feel like taking them because I don't feel good. But when I don't feel good, that's when I need them most! My body needs those supplements, they're not "extra", above and beyond what my body needs. They're part of what keeps me  functioning and healthy.
Laughter is the same, it KEEPS me healthy, it's not just a RESULT of being healthy. I do forget this frequently when I'm fatigued or seriously stressed, just like I forget my vitamins. Then the cycle starts and I have to heal myself again enough to remember TO LAUGH because it's GOOD for me! :)

Feeling Like Life Sucks And There's No Way To Make It Better


Depression, anxiety, darkness, greyness, crappiness, dead-end job, no future, no life, etc.

People who grow up around abusive and Narcissistic people often end up feeling like "losers", or like life itself is just one big gerbil wheel with no real way off.

All of those feelings are just that; feelings, perception, outlook, and the more dismal the people around a person are, the more dismal the person probably going to feel.

Narcissists project things onto other people, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not, either way it's usually nerve-wracking and anxiety-producing.
 
A Narcissistic parent for example might project anxiety onto their child, they might project "inability to make good choices" onto their child, they often project a "everything is terrible" attitude onto their child, and living with them can be a daily stress, so much that one internalizes all this stress and just forgets that it's coming FROM outside one's self. Children (and adult children) are supposed to have family they can talk to and feel heard, supported, wanted and normal, but Narcissistic family members DON'T DO THIS. Everything is a judgment, a worry, a failure, it's all ruined, it's not good enough, you're not good enough, look what you DID, Oh my GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH!!!! Children of Narcissists are often depressed and severely anxious, because that's what Narcissistic parents and other family members PUT ON THE CHILD, instead of "love, light, peace, and guidance". Instead of grounding a child for doing something wrong and keeping it enforced, the Narc. parent will shaaaaaame the child and make the child feel like they're no longer worthy of the "good people" in the family... Everything is emotional and dramatic, and wound up tight like a rubber band, all the time, and children internalize it, of course; children internalize what their parents and family members project onto them. They also internalize what the community projects onto them, so a person can have effects of Narc. abuse even if their parents and family were "healthy". Politicians do the same thing to get people to vote for them.
So, there are lots of people projecting "Ohhhh NOOO Everything is so bad" or "You're not good enough, and we're all losers" or "Only certain people can be happy, you have to be rich to be a good person and be happy, otherwise life is TOO HARD and AWFUL and you should be depressed and a workaholic, or you should drink beer every single day to COPE with the HARDSHIP of LIFE"
 onto kids and adults.

We each are living our OWN lives, if we want our life to be happy, we can STOP LISTENING to people who like misery and anxiety!

Get rid of extraneous baggage like other people's misery-mindedness, including one's own behaviors that aren't "above board", they cause STRESS to one's SELF.  The straighter we fly, the less baggage is weighing us down. It might take some effort and a little while to find one's path, but that's okay, you're not going anywhere. You're in this life and miserable, or you're in this same life and not so miserable, you have a lot more power over that than you might realize.

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well", ~Julian of Norwich









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