Not Crying At Funerals

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Changes are big for me, and right now I am out of my routine. I had a meltdown yesterday. Yesterday I flew into Chicago from Phoenix for my grandmothers funeral. we went to the visitation of the body yesterday and I noticed I was the only person not crying. My brothers were crying, my uncle was. everybody. I felt like an a**hole, but I just didnt feel like crying. I'm not even sad that she's gone, she was very sick, and I wouldnt wanna see her sick. I'm dont have any feeling about her being dead at all. I cant help it. Hours later yesterday I was thinking about this,this. I also started talking about how people ignore me, because I felt I was being ignored by some people that day. Then I started wondering why I worry about stuff, like aspie stuff, that no one else worries about. But then everyone cries over her dead body, and her soul id not even in there. Then I just went into a meltdown, broke my phone, and ripped my shirt. I didnt understand why i didnt cry at her dead body like everyone else. I felt like a freak. and some people thought I was being insensitive because they didnt know why I was crying.If it were my mom laying dead, I'd probably cry, but then again I may not. I often get a blank stare on my face when I see dead bodies.

Do I have a lack of emotion, or do I just react to sadness differently to everyone else? or is what sadness to everyone else, not sadness to me? idk I need your help.

Well well. As Aspies we show emotion differently and this sadly applies to the emotional reaction of crying wether over an accident or funeral or whatever. At my aunts funeral (age 10) I was cracking jokes while everyone was crying and sad. (She died in a wreck and I haven't learned to drive since so it OBVIOUSLY affected me) My sister fell and could of injured her already bad back. I stood around with a blank look sister/mom were crying/upset. and yet a couple months ago she almost got in a wreck and I was burst into tears OMG I almost lost my sister this morning (was what I thought) Another is when one of mylittle sister falls and gets injured (not seriously) I laugh/snicker (you shouldn't have been running IMO) BUT of course if it's serious bleeding I'm panicky OMG are you ok?! !! !! So it depends on the scale of the injury. Did all this make since? Don't be upset over not being upset at a funeral basically it's an emotional response as Aspies it's what we do. Hope that helped.

When someone is sick, you might feel sadness for some time, but when the person dies you will not feel sad. This is because you went through the process while they were sick and facing death. Perhaps this was the case with your grandmother?

This is a true Aspie trait. We are not known for crying when deaths occur. When my maternal grandmother died, I cried when my mom first broke the news to me, but when I found out that my dad of all people died, I didn't shed a tear when I heard the news and I only briefly cried a couple months afterward. (This might have to do that I was sort of estranged from him in the year before his death, and I was living with my mom and stepdad, who wanted me to have a healthy relationship with my dad but knew it was nearly impossible).

To this day my mom says that continuing my normal routine was in her opinion my way of mourning his death. I mourn best by keeping a normal routine of things.

I appreciate your comments and questions about your emotional state while viewing a dead body. I respond the same way you do if its a person. But I cry a lot if it is my dog. I also cry from frustration, especially when examining and trying to understand some frustration from the 'deep past'. (Deep Past foro me is stuff that happened before I knew what the cause was). I saved a persons life once with CPR and it didn't affect my feelings until every lasst little detail connected with the experience was finished and they had her in the ambulance. Then I went to the basement and cried over her. When I get hurt I just fix it. When the top of our house burned off I very quietly went around getting my little children downstairs and to safety outside. It didn't bother me at all. I always thought I have a talent for remaining calm in emergencies, and I've always thought my response to dead people and the social stuff around that was a little odd. kBut thanks to your post I now know it ain't special, its just that damned Aspesrgers again.

I didn't cry when my father died but I did after he told me a few years earlier that he had terminal cancer. Not when he called me, but after. I can't process things that quickly. I totally understand that detachment but I also know it doesn't mean I don't care. I was thinking that if something were to happen to my son and I was a suspect (because a parent always is) I would probably seem cold and unemotional to the authorities even though I would be in the deepest pain imaginable on the inside.

I can recall being at my brother's funeral and not crying though, I did have emotional content just that I happened to react to such later in life you could say..

I'm not comfortable sharing my emotional life with everyone in the room, and once the Traveler is gone, the vehicle doesn't evoke any particular emotion in me. I find it a little difficult to even access personal feelings while others around me are upset and engaged in public social ritual - it just makes me anxious and ready to get the hell out of there.

Its usually much later (sometimes months) for me when I'm alone and reminiscing about the person I loved that the emotions will surface.

I've always been confused as to why people cry at funerals and weddings and stuff and realized I'm the odd one out. I feel nothing. It's just a thing everyone's doing. I feel sort of mechanical about those kinds of things. It's not like I don't have emotions - when my grandfather died it took about a year to feel anything. It just hit me and I cried.

I'm actually one who cries at a funeral if I was close to the person, whether they were a friend or a close family member. In fact, I've gotten nasty looks for crying because in my dad's side of the family, showing emotion like that is seen as bad somehow. Now, I tend to cry away from that side of the family because of the comments they make.

I am exactly the same, never cried in grandpa's funeral.

I cried, when I found out that someone that I looked up to, passed away, a couple of Sundays, ago.

I've had family members pass away, and I haven't cried, any of those times.

I'll stop rambling on.

I cried very easily when I was younger. Especially at funerals.

Now I do cry a lot when I lose someone close to me but way less in other situations.

At the few funerals I've been to, I found it wasn't my own grief but everyone else crying that set me off too.

On my grandpa's funeral, I didn't cry but felt very sad while the priest was reminiscing what my grandpa used to do and such. However, I felt even worse seeing my grandma in a wheelchair at the funeral and she was so helpless; like she didn't know what was going on. Don't really remember if tears leaked from my eyes but I was really sad to see her like this. She died a few years later and I got the same feeling when I looked back at that same event at my grandpa's funeral.

Looking back, I don't think I'm *that* sad about when people die but it does make me more vulnerable for sad emotions for other reasons than the death itself. If somebody dies I got no ties to, I don't feel so sorry for them. I even made jokes along with my friend while watching the 9/11 events on the TV to pass the time. My feelings are like a bliss to me and I'm still trying to figure out how they work for me.