In therapy the other day we were talking about some BS from my childhood and I mentioned that a weird side effect of that is that my reaction to pain from impact (e.g., being hit during sparring) is to laugh. Made me really unpopular as a sub while I was hanging out with the SM crowd, because the harder Doms hit me, the harder I laughed. And it made it pretty hard to explain to them that I wasn't trying to challenge them but that it's an involuntary reaction.

Without missing a beat, the therapist responded with, "Oh, I know. You do it here, too. Every time we stumble upon something particularly painful you just laugh and laugh."

Somehow that was news to me and I wonder in what other contexts I do it. I remember that when I had surgery last year I basically laughed all the way from intake to the operating theatre, and was pretty weirded out when the nurse said cheerfully, "Keep laughing, that's the spirit!" when I was actually terrified and also hurting quite a bit because they couldn't find a vein and kept stabbing me.

More insidiously, I think it also plays a role in how I (fail to) protect my boundaries. Something that basically all my exes (that I keep in touch with) have in common is that they would always get physical with me when we meet up. Doesn't matter that I'm married, doesn't matter that they might be in a relationship. It takes half an hour before hands start to roam over my body, hugs linger way longer than normal, lips surreptitiously brush skin. I always felt like shit for letting this happen. But I think what really happens is that I freeze, so I can't disengage, and I start laughing, which gets interpreted as encouragement and not as a response to fear/pain.

I don't really know what to do with this, but it's food for thought.