So. Apparently caring when someone dies is a thing people do? .-. I used to think that grief was yet another emotional response that gets played up by the media, but no, actually, observing various actual people has gotten a result of "yes, actually, people have negative emotional reactions when someone they care about is No Longer There". My own reaction to people dying, or thinking about people (including those I enjoy spending time with and could probably count as Friends) dying, is "well, there goes that resource, moving on..." so. This seems a little unusual. Pretty sure the conclusion "I am not a person" is wrong, but I'm having trouble... categorizing?* this reaction. It's not the apathetic "I don't even care" from depression/overload. It's not "ignoring emotions because Emotions Are Bad" from the abuse trauma. I just... react to the information like I would if some event I was going to was suddenly cancelled. "Okay, information noted, I'll just do something else then." Grief just doesn't happen for me somehow. *I am not sure what word I'm looking for here, "categorizing" is a placeholder until I find the actual one. I want to know What Is This Brainweird, and I'm having trouble finding a... space? label? A thing I can say "ah yes, this Makes Sense" about, and note down to mention if/when actual psych help ever happens.
I know this is a thing people have described before, and i think it may be something that's difficult for people on either side to understand the other. All i can say is that grief, for me, is like an intense version of missing someone. except if someone lives far away, there's a chance you'll see them again someday. But if they're dead, you can't. That's probably why people have stronger grief reactions the better they know the person who died. I guess I'm curious, do you miss people in general when you're not around them?
*follows this thread because interesting* I read a thing one time which described grief as "an appalling sense of loss", which resonated with me. Although if you don't particularly feel loss, then qualifying it as "appalling" doesn't clarify things much.
hmm. lemme try to describe grief in a more physical way. for me, grief is... pain. literal pain. I feel grief so intensely that it is very similar to someone giving me 3 degree burns. Grief is PAINFUL, and it does heal, but sometimes it leaves a sore scar in it's wake. It's very much loss, but in a blindingly painful way that's difficult to describe really. Like chopping off arm, and then attempting to still reach for a thing with the missing limb. That feeling of "thing that was there and now is gone forever" can throw people very hard. It's not unusual for some people to never truly recover from a loved one passing away. Another way I tend to accidentally think of it is "this person was MINE and now someone has TAKEN THAT AWAY" and that will make me very angry. because then i not only do not have the person in my life, i will never have them back.
@Enzel there have been moments where I'm like "X Person's input would be useful here, except they're NOT," but... again, reaction is "oh well, that input is not an option, find a workaround." Does that count as missing someone? .-. I'm introverted in the first place so People In General are not a thing I tend to miss. come to think of it, homesickness hasn't really bothered me on long trips either? .-. (Then again, my bar for homesickness-comparison is Sister, whose reaction of "it's been more than two days since I saw Familiar Person and/or Beloved Pet, I need to cry for a few hours now," which seems kind of extreme even by media-normal standards.) @EulersBidentity thanks but yeah, loss is not a thing that's really... familiar? .-. I've had pets die, but... we live out in the countryside. "Don't get attached to the barn cats, they'll probably get hit by a car or attacked by something at some point" was a pretty early lesson. And object attachment doesn't seem to be a thing for me either? Like. I honestly cannot think of anything that I wouldn't be okay with losing. *shrugs* (At least part of that is probably survivalthink-- "thing will be taken away eventually anyway, may as well not do anything important with it"-- but not much to do about that right now.) @Void okay that explanation makes sense a little. I can see how attempting to draw on a resource that's no longer there would be disorienting, and naturally would affect some people more than others. It's the emotional part that's just not parsing for me, and emotions are by their nature hard to describe .-. gg English language. The pain thing is kind of confusing? I'm trying to figure out what the negative equivalent to "so cute my heart hurts" would feel like and coming up blank, sorry. Thanks for input, all :3
I definitely think this is one of those things where people are all across the spectrum in terms of what they experience. Which is p fascinating. I know regular (for lack of a better word) people will get very offended and horrified if you don't grieve, and I used to have the same reaction, but after talking to some people with your experience I think I understand it a bit better, or at least accept it as a Thing. Personally I'm always worried about wasting or losing time, so losing someone means I can never spend time with them, and it's very upsetting to me. Some people are just better at coping, I think. Idk if it has ties to empathy at all but it does seems to tie into "are you bothered when certain people are not there or not".
Yeah! Emotions are very difficult to describe, especially if you don't have a reference point. I think for the pain thing it's like... You reach for a thing that never used to be painful before, but when you touch it, it burns you. Like expecting a stove to be cold and it isn't actually cold when you touch it! Grief is that way for me sometimes, when you think something is okay and normal, you accidentally burn yourself on the thing.
Hm. Interesting! @Enzel, I have definitely noticed the 'offended over Not Grieving' thing. Had chalked it up to mother's general inexplicable reactions, but it makes sense that people who experience Strong Emotion A would be confused over someone not experiencing it, and since the concept of 'grief' is so ingrained in society (in the US at least)... yeah, okay, there's the moral component coming in. Blaaaah. Grief tying into missing someone certainly seems a natural connection. (I wonder if there's been any formal research on this...? *wanders off to Google* Edit: There does indeed seem to have been some research, but all I'm finding are things referencing the one paper I want to get my hands on. Guess I need to find a physical library sometime.) Ahhh, okay! Thank you for the additional clarification, Void :3
I think the "people getting mad you dont grieve" thing is also maybe tied to attachment? Like, if you dont miss someone i think that implies for a lot of people that you're not particularly emotionally attached to them or that you dont care about them. Thats hurtful to people who genuinely care about the person who's gone and also kinda scary cause what if you dont care about them either? That would hurt too. And then theres the social expectation that you have a responsibility to care about the wellbeing of certain people like family members even if you dont emotionally care about them, so if you dont perform a certain level of "respect for the dead" even if people know you dont emotionally give a shit then they'll still get mad at you. Like, i know a woman who refused recently to go to the funeral of her abusive ex-husband. Everyone knew she didnt like him, but they share a kid and the rest of the family was close so there was a certain amount of talk. Its kinda bullshit but people get antsy about people refusing to uphold the rules in any area because then its hard to predict what other rules they might reject.
no problem, i hope it was at least a bit helpful! i am sometimes bad at figuring out how to describe an emotion.
i actually talked about this with my psych, and what i basically got out of it was "you just have either a wider outlook on life or a smaller emotional range, both are fine, i know people who would give an arm and a leg to have little to no emotional response to loss"
"grief" is sorta different from "loss" in that grief also takes the existential-dread of "we are all mortal and one day you too will die" and combines it with "someone you care for was mortal and they died and that death is permanent." for me it kind of spirals out from there into a very existential-dread thing (panicking about my own death, what the hell have i done with my life) that i don't get from "loss" alone. but then what do i know. i've been to all of two funerals in my entire life. so it might just be that you don't get the existential facing-mortality dread from loss that other people do, that would push it towards grief.
I experience grief but not existential dread. I find the thought of my own eventual death comforting. (Also lol i fucked up so hard before i figured out that it wasnt comforting to most people. Who knew!) but its possible to do one without the other.
Grief for me is I get literally physically ill. I become nauseated and disorientated and it is hard to do things other than cry and feel a need to vomit. Which is also what existential dread feels like to me? It's both a physical and an emotional thing and it hits very hard even when it is not that bad. Like my lesser bouts of dread and grief are still pretty dizzying but I can like. Actually function? When my dance teacher died though I was not able to do anything, as an example. Like I legit had to leave class for the entire day because I just could not pull myself together and it took a while to get me to the nurse's office. This lasted for a few days. Even after I calmed down I'd still tense us and get woozy over the fact that I was never going to see her again. I still kind of do on rare occasions. Existential dread is one of my bigger fears, on a related note that might be helpful? Or at least intriguing. Like it is to the point where even thinking about myself as a child is overwhelming because I am not the same person I was then. Child me died and this me is going to die and I'm going to be 30 year old me. And then 30 year old me will die. And then I, as a whole, will die. Loss is very similar to grief but it's not as physically disarming as grief. Loss is morose. It's painful and it taints my mood, but I can deal with it. Grief is overwhelming to me though. I think a lot of this boils down to my not wanting things to change. Like at the center of it all I am just attached to things and demand that they stay the same.
I can say that I feel this a lot. I do not want things to change. Change is painful! also the existential dread is the worst because someone dying always has me freaking out that i'm next.
