I’d say mid-30s through about 40. I don’t honestly know what sort of losses they’ve had to endure, but I know that several of them have had mental health issues in the past, up to and including clinical depression/suicidal thoughts. My wife and I are generally considered the steadiest of the gang, in terms of emotional and mental stability, so maybe that’s part of why I feel like I’m reacting differently.
And yes, my grandparents were very dear to me- I grew up living 45 minutes from both sets (in the same small town), and spent quite a lot of time with them as a child and teenager. I’ve dealt with quick, unexpected death (heart attack) and slow, awful ones (congestive heart failure), and a mix of the two. One of my grandmothers is still alive at 87, and doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to dying.
My wife and I have also dealt with a miscarriage, so I’ve had personal losses as well. I just don’t mope around or be dramatic about it like others do, so I always feel a little guilty that I don’t.
If anything, I’d say you might be experiencing repression . . . pushing unwanted feelings out of the way, so you don’t have to deal with them. This is very common in our society, especially among men, who are not “supposed to” express certain emotions.
No, we aren’t faking it. We are empathizing: putting ourselves in their position, and feeling how we would feel if we were them, and then doing what we would want people to do for us.
You have previously stated you also have trouble feeling empathy yourself, so I would appreciate it if you would not speak for the rest of us.
At least I can say I behave the same way. I feel the pain, just don’t express it emotionally as some people do. It’s the difference between a 747 pilot who has to take information in and act on it dispassionately vs. a rodeo clown who just reacts to which way the bull is running at the second.
On the Affectless to Drama Queen Scale, you are probably around 3, maybe 4.
Some people might think you are callous; others might think your friends are so self-centered that even someone else’s death has to be about them.
(I was very peaceful when dealing with death my entire life, but I can’t attend acquaitances’ funerals anymore since my parents died. I turn into a blubbering mess at the first organ chord; totally inappropriate.)
This is a far more likely scenario than sociopathic tendencies, for sure.
I’m a master of repression and suppression both. The psychological difference is that suppression is consciously directed (think Scarlett O’Hara and, “I can’t think about that today, I’ll think about it tomorrow”) and, as long as you do go back and revisit those feelings when it’s safe to do so, is considered a healthy coping mechanism.
Repression is an unconscious process, where you don’t feel something at all, rather than beginning to feel it and deciding you can’t afford to feel it right now. Repression, because it’s unconscious, can be a problem because you don’t know that you need have any painful emotions that need dealing with, and they can erupt all at once, unexpectedly and out of all proportion to the event that triggers them. That’s when you end up all alone in your kitchen at 2am, sobbing hysterically in grief and rage because you can’t open the peanut butter.
So, if you think you may be suppressing or repressing emotions around the death of loved/liked ones, it may be worth exploring that sometime when you’re not surrounded by grieving people. Meditation or prayer might help.
But it’s also perfectly possible that you’re entirely aware of and feeling all your emotions and there just aren’t a lot of dramatic ones there. That’s okay, too.
Not at all sociopathic. I feel the same way, OP, and I think I’m much healthier in my ability to process death and grief than most people. Generally, I am unusually even-keeled when it comes to my emotions. It’s a natural trait from me, and at the same time I am much more in touch with my emotions than the majority (due to hard work and years of therapy).
I am a caring person. I just feel much more grief for the pain of the living, than I do for anyone who has died. To me dead people are simply over and gone. That idea isn’t scary or horrible, to me.
Nonetheless I drip tears the whole time at almost every funeral I have been to, whether I care much for the person who died or not. My empathy for grieving people is often physical overwhelming. I’m also the type of person who cries when little kids are hurt or frightened.
People can have vastly different reactions to death and grieving.
I found out a few years ago that my best friend from grade school was murdered while delivering pizza. I hadn’t seen her in thirty years. I didn’t cry when I saw the story on the news, but I was quietly shaken up for awhile. I’d never known anybody who was murdered before, and we had been like sisters in my pre-teens.
So, I told a co-worker about it, and she seemed surprised that I felt that way. “For pete’s sake, she was your friend in grade school! It’s not like she was friends with you now or anything!”
This is partly due to being someone who accepts that Death Happens - and it happens to us all eventually. Accepting that Shit Happens makes it easier to accept it has and be the one who remembers where the cleaning tools are stashed, once things start stinking.
Asking “am I wrong inna head since I go through the initial shock of death quite quickly and calmly” is similar to asking “am I a bad mother because I don’t jump on my toddler asking ohmygodareyouhurtohhoneytalktomommy whenever he falls down?” The death of someone is more serious than a possible skinned knee, but both are cases of shit happening and both lead to wildly differring reactions.
I’m the same way, actually. Funerals tend to get me- seeing the other people grieving just makes me feel so awful for them that I tend to tear up as well, even though it’s for them, not because I either miss the deceased or feel sorry for myself.
(I imagine I look weird- how many 6’ / 280 lb men tend to cry at funerals for people they didn’t know well in their wife’s family?)
I’ve been asking myself pretty much the same question as the OP this week.
I know, everyone is telling me that sociopaths don’t worry about if they’re sociopaths, and that everyone grieves differently, and blah blah. But I’m sitting here reading the Dope and my mother’s upstairs sitting shiva and it feels so wrong to not feel wrong.
So was I. I was expecting your co-worker to be reproachful about “how flippantly you were reacting” or something like that. I was not expecting “Why should you care?”
As others said, what you describe doesn’t sound like “sociopath” at all. I remember someone once saying about grief when asked how long it takes, she said “you grieve until you’re done.” In short, it’s all but impossible to know how you’ll react to a certain situation, even if they seem the same.
Speaking personally, I tend to experience it pretty intensely, but I’ve been shocked when things that I would have expected would hit me hard barely phased me or when something that seemed relatively minor hit me harder than expected. It’s not surprising that you might have a less intense experience.
Either way, don’t feel guilty about it. I think some people might feel like they need to grieve, especially in a public setting like a funeral, as if somehow the level of grief directly corresponds to how much you cared about them, but that’s just silly. Grief is entirely a personal thing and it should only be exactly as much as you need, not more, not less.
Same here. I don’t bury stuff, but I am very good at compartmentalizing until such a time as I can either do something about it or grieve and get over it. My sweetie <husband…just can’t get used to that word> isn’t a fan of my smart-assery during difficult times, and I’ve been called ‘flip’ to my face by one boss who wondered why I wasn’t more concerned about something that she apparantly thought I needed to be more concerned about. Pretty sure I’m not a sociopath, though.