When someone you know is seriously ill, or dying...

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How common is it for someone with AS to feel little or nothing when someone is dying (or has just died)?

I was originally going to ask about this in another recent thread but thought better of it, as I was worried it may seem like I was trying to hijack the thread by going Off-Topic. The statement that was made in the other thread was: "And not feeling anything when someone dies also sucks. I have to make myself think of sad things so I will cry with everyone else. Otherwise people think I don't care."

This goes to the heart of one of the main issues that troubles me, in trying to better understand my AS husband. His response to serious illness or death - whether it's someone in my family, or in our friendship circle - often seems to be one of complete indifference. (He usually appears to be more affected if it's someone in his own family, although even that is not always the case). If he's in a belligerent mood when he hears news about a death he's likely to move past indifference, and make a callous and uncaring remark.

What I'm wondering is: do others with AS have this same reaction when someone they know dies? And if so, is it consistent, or does it depend on your frame of mind when you hear the news? My husband often seems to react with more empathy and concern when he reads about someone's injury, illness or death in the newspaper, than when it's someone he knows - and this also puzzles me.

If anyone can throw some light upon this for me, I would really appreciate it. In our new, post-AS Awareness world I am hoping we can resolve some of the communication roadblocks that have so bedevilled our relationship. However, asking my husband directly at this point isn't really possible, as it's too emotionally loaded for me, and if he reacts in a negative or antagonistic way I fear we'll just recycle through our old arguments.

"so it goes.."


Everyone dies, I tend to view it as a normal event. Also I find that getting worked up about something beyond your control is futile and not worth the effort.

It's hard to objectively look at an AS response unless you've been on both sides of the fence (and noone develops it), so i'm afraid i'll just have to use a story:

A couple of years ago, my girlfriend's brother ran away to a hotel and overdosed on drugs. He'd had a hard life, a brutal divorce, and lost majority custody of his young daughter, so it was somewhat expected (that word seems harsh, substitute something softer there when you read it).

Anyway, his family was understandably upset. My girlfriend came running to me and wanted me to make things better somehow, although i had absolutely nothing to say. It's not that i don't understand the tragedy, it's just that i can't fix it. My mind seemingly works exclusively in solving problems, not putting sesame-street bandaids on them.

I can't understand why people get upset with me for offering solutions to their problems when they come to me. Any time i've tried to fake comfort it has not worked and it has made me feel awful.

So anyway, even though i DO feel sad for people's losses, i have been in trouble many times for not offering the right kind of support in those times. In turn, it upsets me that the people i care for turn on me when i try to help as much as i can.

My mind is solutions-based too. I find these situations difficult. But I imagine it's much, much harder for women who find this stuff hard. There are different expectations.

It's frustrating not knowing what to say and it's like walking a minefield. So I try not to say much. I just show I'm trying in other ways. In my family I seem to have adopted a certain role in these situations that everyone accepts, and I'm allowed to be the one that keeps calm, and takes care of the little things. Other than that I just listen.

Thank you for these responses - every little bit of information adds to my understanding. Thank you nomadder, too, for posting the link to the earlier thread - that was particularly helpful.

I can't relate.
Example from real life: A friend lost a parent in a brutal accident. I went there because it was the right thing to do.
20m there, a lot of people crying, I was like: Ok, I think I should go to the store and buy food for all those people.

See, in my mind I was helping in the only way I knew how. Luckly, my friends know me well, so they just let a sigh and off I went for snacks.

I think it depends on who dies or is sick.

If someone is really chronically sick they probably just can't relate (I can because I've been there).

When someone I was very close to died, I was a wreck. I was in a complete shut down for the first week. After that, I just went into zombie mode, for a couple of years, although it slowly got better. Ditto when my cousin died, complete repeat only the recovery time was quicker because I had been through it before.

Right now, my ex guardians mother has cancer and she's probably going to die soon. However I feel absolutely nothing, nothing at all. I have never liked the woman, and her being sick and dying doesn't change that fact. I am just completely neutral about it all and that won't change once she does die.

One of her other family members died about a month ago - I was upset then because I liked the woman. However I also knew there was nothing I could do about it, even thought I didn't like it. So I had the occasional "moments" in my room, but otherwise I was fine.

I put money on the fact that generally - the more he likes the person the more upset he will be about it. However, he may not show much of that to you. I certainly never let people on to the fact that I was upset, because I can't talk about emotional topics and especially if my emotions are running high in a negative way - I just want to be alone.

I understand both sides of the fence. My emotions run hot or cold. When there have been emergencies, I go into complete rational, take-charge mode. When people have died, even close family members, I have been the one to make sure everyone and everything got taken care of, and then I would cry myself to sleep alone for a few months while going through mourning. This actually happened recently (last year) when my last remaining grandmother passed away from cancer - I refused to let my mom see me cry, because I was her emotional support, and when I'm in that mode, I'm perfectly capable of turning my emotions off. I will ask for help when I'm being TOO emotional, but being in mourning was rational for me, so while the pain of loss hurt, I didn't feel that I needed assistance from others to get me through it. I will also cry at just about every sappy movie there is.

The best way I can describe it is that our rational minds take precedence over our emotional. It's easy to cry at a movie, because it's part of the experience, and I've already given over the idea that I'm there to really settle into the movie an allow what experiences it has to offer. It's hard to cry at a funeral, because I want to be able to take care of others who may be in more pain than I am in that moment. I actually cried quite a lot at my grandfather's funeral years ago, but at the time, I didn't feel responsible for the well-being of anyone else, and I was stifling it quite well until someone paid attention to me and came over to give me a hug, and then I just couldn't hold it in anymore.

Most of the world relies on high levels of empathy, otherwise known as emotional sharing. If one person is angry, it's easy to incite anger in another person. If one person is sad, it's easy for the other person to also feel sad. That's not the case for me. I look at someone else and I try to rationalize why they are feeling the way they are feeling, rather than start feeling it alongside them, and it's because I care that I do this. Some people are oblivious, and that doesn't mean they don't care, but that they are simply not noticing that there is something that they might want to care about. That's a big part of the autistic spectrum - being inside one's own head, instead of always being in tune with everyone else's heads.

This video on join attention might better help explain it than I can. I mean, you watch that and might say, wow, the autistic kid is oblivious. I watch it and say, wow, the autistic kid isn't going to to act stupid and irrationally and join the lynch mob when they decide to go burning witches, but he also might not try to break up a lynch mob when they do go hunting. So there's a give and take - it's not right to say that one is any better off than the other. It would seem to me that the best is somewhere in between.

At least, that's my view of it all.

I've been very unemotional when it comes to the deaths of humans in my life (when my cat died I was torn to shreds). The last death was of my great uncle who I used to visit a lot with my grandparents, he had a stroke earlier in life and couldn't speak properly and he was also very sickly and in the end died of cancer and various other things. When I was told I said "Oh god!" then never mentioned it again. I was more confused than anything, but no feelings of usual mourning and I didn't cry at all. When my baby brother died when I was 6 I was unfazed, I didn't really think about him much until quite recently.
During these deaths I was younger and it's probably taken me longer to get death than other people. Nowadays I have a good idea of what deaths will devastate and which ones wouldn't.

I'm struggling with this at the moment. My Nan is very ill, but she's said to me she's content with the life she's lived and has done she wants to, so I'm happy that she's not scared or upset.
I'm just worried that when she passes away, the family will expect me to cry or be sad and I won't seem as upset as they expect. I feel really awkward around people crying and stuff too.

Well, I myself feel terrified about people dying. Especially those who are close to me. I think the biggest issue is I know I'll be very sad, and gosh I don't know how to cope with that. I know normal people will be sad, too but I'm sure they feel it's OK and can cope. They've got friends, families or churches. I only have therapists and they're expensive. I don't know how I'll cope with any of those big deep feelings.

Generally speaking I try to not feel if the people are not too related to me. There's nothing I can do - I'll just get sad and lose some sleep or feel down, for no particular purpose. For people close to me, well I'll try to prepare to be devastated. I refuse to have any more pets because they'd die. I just don't deal with deaths too well when it's personal enough.

I can unfortunately offer a personal anecdote here; my father died in January of this year, and to be honest I'm still devastated.
I rarely can get through 15-20 minute periods without thinking of him still, it's without a doubt the most emotionally painful and draining experience I've ever gone through, especially in conjunction with the seven months that he was very ill/dying.
It is of some note however that I have a very hard time expressing these feelings or even revealing that I'm upset around people that I'm very close with, friends, family, really anyone who I have to interact with on a regular basis. I'm more likely to be open about my pain anonymously than with anyone in the world; the anxiety caused by having to discuss these emotions with people somehow register as frightening enough as to prevent me from trying to alleviate the great pain that it causes. So, long story shorter I guess, people with AS can definitely feel acute emotion over tragedy.