I do apologize for not validating your sensitivity or even maybe the possibility that people around you all your life have laughed at you or made fun of you in a teasing manor that has created your extreme sensitivity to laughing. I know when my mother was growing up......when no one had glasses & she couldn't even read the board in school. When she ended up with glasses everyone made fun of her & her "four eyes" (the teasing comments that were made back in the days before like now when everyone wears glasses). I also was always the quiet one in class all the way through getting my BS degree in Computer Science & even classes I took after graduating. I remember comments in class about how quiet I was. I didn't let it bother me because the quiet at that time was MY CHOICE. Even though I had top grades in my classes & I always wished I had the self-confidence & the quick thinking to be able to respond in class like the others. I was a slow at putting my thoughts together & afraid that I would say the wrong thing or that I wouldn't answer the question correctly because I might have mis-understood what was asked.

That came from listening to my father say very STUPID things in conversations with other people from the time I can remember. I always thought if he would just keep his mouth shut no one would know how stupid he was....I was always so embarrassed by him & he was oblivious to the stupid things he said. He didn't drink or do drugs....he just never read or knew anything about what was going on in the world around him but would talk like he did through opinions & no knowledge. So for me, unless I really thought something through before ever opening my mouth, I was afraid I would sound like my father & to me that would be the worst thing in the world.....so it was better to be quiet even if I did know the answer....at least if I didn't, no one would know & it was more embarrassing for me to say something wrong than it was to stay quiet....so the choice was mine.

It's also important to be able to put your quietness into perspective. Being oversensitive about how you are & placing the responsibility on others to be sensitive about how sensitive YOU ARE is something that is important to deal with because life around us isn't sensitive to our sensitivities & it's important to put our experiences into their proper perspective. That is why my post was a "food for thought" not a "get over it" reply. It is important to learn from these experiences because the working world is not sensitive. You will run into co-workers that love to joke around....you will run into those who are quite serious, then in your nursing field, you will definitely run into sick people whose only interest is that they are not feeling good.....their reactions are usually a lot less pleasant than laughing at someone.

I just want to share a horse experience I had in college when you commented about your dog laughing at you. I was in a horsemanship class....we were all gathered on our horses around the instructor....my horse was being fidgety. The instructor said to smack him on the rear with my crop. I did. The next thing I knew, I was flying over his ears & landed on the ground on my back right under his smilling little horsey face.....I could see his teeth in his little smile.....laughing at me.....saying....you thought you were going to get me to stand still. In reality he wasn't really laughing....but it was definitely my thinking that made me think that was what he was doing because in reality, I was laughing myself while rerunning the picture in my mind of what just happened.

Also, I have found over my 59 years of life that I am better off when I can do what I did with the horse.....replay what happened in my mind & see the humor in it rather than taking everything so very personally when in fact, there is Nothing really personal in it most of the time.......that is why placing things in their proper perspective is so very important & it makes life so much happier & easier to deal with in the long run.