Does hearing/seeing people die bother you?

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And by bother, I don't mean in a moral sense. Obviously people dying is bad. What I am talking about, however, is when you see someone or hear someone die do you feel sadness? Do you feel real bad?

For me, it just doesn't really effect me unless of course it were a close friend or relative, but seeing stuff on TV/News etc. doesn't really bother me in the sense I feel deep sadness.

Reason I bring it up is I wonder if aspies in the military - in particular front-line combat are more easily able to just kill when needed and be not as much as NT people. Granted, war is horrible to go through regardless, but as far as the just killing and enemy and moving on I wonder if aspies would have an easier time of it.

Any aspies that are or were in the military want to share their thoughts?

if I had to shoot someone, I would feel terrible. I don't even step on bugs in my house. I catch them and release them outside. exception: mosquitoes. if I can swat one in my house, I will because they carry west nile virus and I might not get a second chance to catch them.

Yes, it gives me a very bad feeling watching it, zillions of emotions going on the loose, my mind spinning like madness...

I def can't cope with it.

Personally I do not feel that you can compare TV showing death anywhere close to the real thing.

The over saturation of these kind of images is likely to dilute any emotional effect.

Yes, I hate it.

I also hate it when people are treated injustfully. It makes me angry and sad at the same time.

Like this boy
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBsHQjtx2KE[/youtube]

This boy was on a Dutch show earlier. When he was 15, he got hit by a DRUNK car driver which caused him to be paralysed all over his body.
He is a very intelligent person, his intellectual functions are completely intact but he has trouble talking.

This makes me furious, really.

I get terribly overwhelmed if it's someone I know closely. But if it's a casual acquaintence or a friend-of-a-friend, I couldn't be bothered.
If it's on the news, it doesn't bother me at ALL. My sister (who is very NT) and I used to watch Fox News for the simple reason that I found all the tragedy humorous. Like, not the situations themselves... just the sheer volume of it all.

I suppose it would depend on the manner of death. I held my mother's hand when she died and was surprised that it didn't bother me that much. She died kind of peacefully after struggling with COPD and heart disease for many years.

But if I saw someone killed horribly, whether by accident or violence, I think it would haunt me greatly. I'm still haunted by the memory of seeing a squirrel run over longways by a city bus. I have never intentionally killed another living creature except for a few bugs, and I'd like to keep it that way.

In my line of work, nursing, I see people die all the time. It's usually best not to "connect" with it.

In a hospital as newly operated patient with a near-death- experience behind me a few days before, I witnessed the death struggle of an old man, who couldn´t breathe. He didn´t want help, so they let the door open and saw to him often.
It was frightening!
Othewise I do feel a bit sad, when people die of old age in real life (not on TV) but I see it as a natural thing. It was very strange saying goodbye to my dead parents, but they were 86 and 90.
When my brother died of kidney failure, I was there. Had he gone on living, he would have had to go through a nasty cancer death later, so I was ok. with his death, even though it felt empty.
I think, I have accepted death as a natural exit, in theory. It does not keep me from fear of my own death. I won´t go gracfully, I fear.
If I had killed someone or harmed them for life, i don´t think, I could live with it.

If it were someone I knew personally, yes I would be overwhelmed

I don't like to hear of that happening to anybody. Through some people, I feel worse about then others.

Yes, it bothers me, but I can disconnect from that and continue functioning. If I couldn't, I would be constantly overwhelmed by the reality of death... death of the innocent, people losing parents and children; famine and war and all the terrible things that are so, so wrong about the world. It hasn't always been that way. I have a tendency toward existential crisis, and the reality of death--even the death of anonymous people I've never met--can become very oppressive to me in those times.

Most people are not overwhelmed by seeing a stranger die on a TV screen. That is far enough away that anyone, NT or Aspie, will dislike it and may feel fear or sympathy, but not have a strong emotional response to it. They'll be fine in a minute or two because it won't affect them long-term.

Now, if it's someone you know, or if someone is dying in front of you, all bets are off. Most people will be affected by that to some degree. Medical personnel, notably, have to get used to it so that they can do their jobs properly, and that's a good thing, and an adaptive trait. I don't think any (non-sociopathic) doctor ever enjoys losing a patient, but if they had to grieve every single patient as though they were family, they would burn out in a month.

I'm in the medical field, I've lost track of how many people I've seen die, and it's never bothered me. I've been the one holding a friend of mine while he looked into my eyes and then died (cancer), and I didn't cry, or anything. I was glad he was out of pain, and I remember people thought my non-reaction was disturbing.

I think I could kill in a military context if I thought it was the right thing to do, but the problem for me is that I won't take someone's word on it. I would have to decide that it was right, not just follow orders.

Not to sound messed up but I have zero feeling when I see people die. I basically have to fake emotions so I can half way fit in. Even if the person was family, I feel nothing. I want to feel and show emotion but it just isnt there. I get a little bent out of shape though with my pets for some reason.

when I watched my late mother die, it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks.

I don't think that's disturbing, myself, nor is it a lack of reaction. When somebody dies of cancer, you know they're going to die. You're prepared for it, so there's no shock; you've already processed a lot of what it will mean when the person is gone. If you're not the sort to cry easily, your reaction that you were glad he was no longer in pain seems like a rational and rather compassionate one.

I have seen a lot of people grieve. Death seems to be a constant in my family... I've lost a father, two stepfathers, an aunt, great-aunt, grandmother, grandfather, and even a twin sister who died and was stillborn when we were born; and I've lost two well-loved cats as well. Not everybody breaks down and cries, especially if the death was expected. Some people become thoughtful. Some people busy themselves with work. The "I'm glad s/he is no longer suffering" response is actually rather common when someone has gone through a long illness. Some people have a need to celebrate their loved one's life, and may even laugh rather than crying.

You are in the medical field--you have probably seen a lot of people grieving, yourself, at least the very first parts of it when they are still saying goodbye at the hospital; so you have probably seen this great variety. If you're familiar with death, maybe you didn't react strongly because you simply cared more about whether your friend was hurting than about your own desire to hang onto him; and maybe, when someone dies, it's just obvious that they're no longer there to suffer. I don't know. But I don't think it is a non-reaction; it's just a subtler one. A person doesn't have to feel and show extreme emotion for it to be real. Intellectually-oriented people may express emotion in words and thoughts, thinking about things rather than being swept away by feelings. It seems as legit an emotional style as any.