The dead are dead.

Post Reply New Topic

It is connected to the bond you feel with the person. They are someone you are used to having around, someone you will never see again, someone you will never spend precious moments with again and you miss them.

Yes, things die, but life itself is precious.

When my brother told me over the phone that my mother had passed away, I squealed so loudly that I nearly deafened him I think. I felt great sadness when she died. I felt lonely without her for quite some years. She could be a nightmare sometimes, but she was my mother...

This is where the application of the infamous definition of "empathy" comes to play from the research corner. The "NT empathy" of intuitively reading or feeling another state of mind ( by 'feeling' body language) via the subconscious mind. This angle or perspective makes this into a passive intellectual awareness of others by routine contact.

Theory of mind is developed from the outside by abstraction, but is incomplete or missing a dimension to it, as from the neurotypical experience.




_________________

Answering as an NT. Please forgive me if I am intruding on this conversation.

Data's description is accurate, but the magnitude is downplayed. Love is a form of inprinting. Like baby geese follow the first moving they see upon hatching, we fall in love with people who meet a certain set of pre-specified criteria. A release if neurotransmitters, associated with a feeling of well-being, accompanies interaction with the loved person. When the interaction ceases (the person dies), the level of those neurotransmitters decreases, leaving the person with a sense of withdrawal. It is similar to the withdrawal that would follow, say, withdrawal from a mood-enhancing drug. This is described as a sense of "loss," or grief. A desire to return to the previous state, but without the means to do so, since the source of those neurotransmitters is gone.

Kind of like, if you're really in the mood for strawberry ice cream, and you think there is some in the freezer, but when you open the freezer you realize your roommate ate all the strawberry ice cream. There is nothing left but bagles. You could have a bagle instead, but it's just not the same.

This is in no way meant to be patronizing.. this is exactly how I would describe grief, on a neurophysiological basis, to anyone. It really is purely neurophysiological. If (as I am just learning in these last couple days), AS is a situation where the brain is wired differently, this might possibly explain the different experience surrounding loss.

I have a spin-off question though. Do you think you also experience love differently?

I really, really hope that is not an offensive quesiton and I apologize if it is.

ETA: now that I've read a few posts above, it appears that maybe people with AS do experience loss the same way as NTs. It's the second-hand grief that appears to be different (empathizing with others who are experiencing direct loss).

I wonder if it reminds people of their own mortality and that one day death will come knocking for them. But I think its bizzaree too. One of my inlaws was crying her eyes out at an uncles funeral once, and she never even knew him! I wasn't sad at all, I just accepted it, and I had known him since childhood.

First, about grief: I was in a weird state of floating shock after my father died, for close to a year. Anything anyone said to comfort me angered me. They'd say "he's in a better place". mh, nope, he's dead. "I bet it was a relief for him" huh no, a few weeks before he died, he said "I don't want to F****ing die", so probably not, asshat.
Even "it's terrible" angered me. Try HORRIBLE.
As a consequence I'm still completely clueless when someone else experiences grief. I can hug them, but I can't say anything. Nothing is the right thing to say, and you can tweak that sentence anyway you please.
ETA: nobody noticed this though, they all thought I was heartless. I didn't cry once and remained mainly mute about the subject...
As for love, I don't think I do. I felt love as a complete pure unreciprocated indestructible way up to my twenties, I guess I just had a "special interest" in those guys, I knew them inside out and they didn't even notice me, so, stalker type lol.
After that, it just vanished , I never felt this way about a man (or woman) again. I have children now so it's different, I think we have the same animal protective nurturing hormones as NTs, and they create attachment, and then after the hormones start going down, around the 18 months mark I'd say, for me, it's too late, you're hooked on the kid
I do love them more than I could love any adult now, and I can safely say it's not because they're a special interest: my son's birth started a special interest in education and children, but there's not much to learn there , and it's so instinctive , it was short lived

I've always thought death was sad. Just thinking about close relatives and friends dying fills my eyes with tears.

It's sad when people die because when it's a person you love or care about, not only do you miss them, but you hate the idea that they are dead. That they can't feel anymore, or hear you anymore, or move around or enjoy themselves etc. Nobody wants someone they care about to be dead.

Also, most people don't like the thought of someone they love suffering as they died.

Also, many people wonder if they could have done something to prevent the death, therefore guilt comes in to play.

I have AS, but I am also devistated when someone I love dies. However, if it's someone I don't know who dies, or someone I know but either don't care about or actively dislike, I feel no emotion about it at all.

I'm pretty sure it's the same for everyone. I've always felt NT displays of grief for complete strangers were at best exaggerated.

I remember when this one little girl drown in Wyoming we once knew, I didn't feel sad and neither did my mother because neither of us knew her and her family well. These were just people that occasionally visited our next door neighbors. I don't know if they were family or just friends who came out to visit.

i am sad when people i care about die. this is partly because i miss them, but i am also sad... for them. i am an atheist, so in my worldview they will never again experience anything new. they'll never laugh or pat a puppy or feel the raindrops on their faces again. their lives are... over. that makes me feel bad for them.

My understanding of/reaction to death is something that makes me wonder if I am actually a heartless person ...

If someone tells me that a person is dead, I have no particular reaction - it happens to everyone, sooner or later. Note: the closest people to me who died were a grandmother and a friend from (former) school, and I had that reaction. However, a funeral, remembrance ceremony, or even some heartbreaking scenes in movies (with slo-mo, music and all that stuff) make me lose control, because I am an "emotional sponge" - after I recover, the emotion is over for good.

The only thing that I find worrying is the burden that the death of others can have to people that are still here, as it might change a lot of "plans" they have, distrupting a future they had foreseen, for example in terms of family and career.
I am also kind of clueless about giving emotional support to people in grief, even though I do want people to know that I care about them and I'm available if they need me.

I started watching TNG recently and was astonished that I was so ignorant of the Data character! I feel I can really relate to him, often. However, it does sadden me when someone I know (and even sometimes I don't know) dies. When people were killed when I was deployed to Iraq, even if I did not know them well, it made me very sad.

I feel the same way. When my grandma died, I wasn't sad at all. It actually disturbed me, because everyone in my family, aside from the really little ones, was bawling, including my male uncles and cousins. Actually my brother didn't cry at the funeral but he's cried a lot at home. I've maybe cried like once or twice since it happened and more just because I wanted to convince myself I grieved her a little bit.

yes that is part of my point.

Also that part at the end there is very rude to me. What it says to me is "you have to have emotions to be human" for a person like me who feels little emotion in situations, and almost no emotions at normal time what you said implies that I am not human. Or more so I'm less human then you.

There were 3 pages of posts and it's hard to pick one to reply to.

On the loss subject of it all, I don't know that I have felt loss before. I have lost objects and people an will never see/have them around again and I don't feel a since of loss. The object/person is gone and nothing will change that so why think about it?

Routine, i don't have one I don't follow one. Someone dies and I addapt to what ever it may have changed. Why should a person waist time and energy over something that can not be fixed?

Love: I believe I have loved, however with nothing to compare it to it could be anger for all I know. I love my mother and girlfriend. To me love is when the person I'm around is easy to be with and has a personality that is not conficting with yours. that's horny feel at least.

My aunt which I talked about before was close to me, I went to the beach with her and stayed with her from time to time. I loved her, she died in her 60s. When she did I was not said, I did not feel cheated by the early death. People die every day so chances are it will be someone I know/love at some point. Death happens. I did not miss my aunt, I simply did something other then see her. I don't miss going to see her, I saw her before and I can't now so I will/do something else.

When I bash my head against the desk, no amount of pain will stop it from having happened. It also does not fix any problem. If I bash my head against the desk, why should I feel pain?

You are approaching the question from a narrow angle, and not taking into account the broader function of grief in human society - in the very broadest sense of the word, so no-one get pissy about I'm-an-aspie-so-I-don't-do-society - which is, y'know, ludicrously complicated. Short version: death bad, reactions to death which reduce the chance of it happening again good. Though of course, humans being what we - and pray also no-one get pissy about I'm-an-aspie-so-I'm-not-some-dumb-human or I'll personally come round and bash your head against a desk, see if I don't - are also creatures of anger, rage, spite and all that s**t and tend to react to death in other ways as well as grief, some of which get people killed.

Or alternatively, as some poet once said:

Cattle die,
Kinsmen die,
It's a f*****g bad thing for f**k's sake.

You shouldn't see it as rude because I wasn't implying anything about you when I wrote that. You're reading way more into that than you should. I too feel little emotion, or do not understand my own emotions clearly, but that doesn't mean I don't have them. I never felt anything for relatives who died either, but the loss of someone did eventually hit me; maybe you haven't yet had that connection with another person yet. Who knows.