Fear of being Laughed at

Gelotophobia is the fear of being laughed at. “Gelo” means laughter and “phobia” means fear in Greek. A new study in the European Review looked at the French version of short questionnaire for identifying gelotophobia. This fear causes you to have negative reaction to laughter from other people. Psychologists have described gelotophobic people as becoming suspicious when they hear other people laughing. Michael Titze, a German psychologist described how this phobia can make a person lonely, distrustful, and feels frequent shame. Recent studies have shown that gelotophobia is related to social anxiety. There are no specific treatments but researchers such as Titz have found benefits with therapies.

This relates to science because like any other anxiety the brain is affected by something that occurred in your life. If something traumatic has happened to you the brain stores it, so somewhere in the back of your mind that events occurs all the time causing you to react in that way. In order for scientists to study this condition scientifically, they created a model of the causes and consequences of geletophobia. In infancy development of primary shame failure to develop an interpersonal bridge. In childhood & youth repeated traumatic experiences of not being taken seriously, and in adulthood intense traumatic experiences of being laughed at or ridiculed.

This article is important because there are many people out there with this problem that are not even aware of it. It will be a relief for them to know that they are not the only ones with that problem, but its something that many people around the world experience.

Source:http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/27/afraid-of-being-laughed-at/