Reactions.

 Telling people about the death of someone close to you seems to elicit some strange reactions. At least they’re strange to me, and I’ll explain why. Bear with me here because there’s a little bit of context…

I have Conplex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As a side note, I always think it’s odd to call it a ‘disorder’. A stress response to traumatic events is a normal thing I imagine most people face, and just because everyone copes with it in different ways surely doesn’t make some of them ‘disordered’? Anyways, I digress… One of the characteristics of people with CPTSD is that in an attempt to be sociable, they will often over-empathise. By that, I mean if I’m with people and someone is telling a story about something that happened to them, my initial response is to impart a similar experience of my own, to show I’m listening and I can relate. However, according to the ‘societal norms’, this can apparently be interpreted by others as an attempt to ‘one-up’ their story or make the situation about me. For years this confused the heck out of me. I have had some pretty horrible comments when I tried to join in conversations, and it made me quite nervous about involving myself in such situations. So of course, then I just came off as quiet, shy or even cold. I’ve had to learn how to negotiate conversations and (I think) I’m somewhat better at it now. 

So it was really quite strange for me to experience that exact thing from other people when I told them about my dad. Instantly, folks will launch into a recollection of the time someone they loved passed away. And I don’t mean a mention in passing, I mean ALL of the details. I can’t work out if this is because they find it an awkward situation and want to fill the gap, or if it’s genuine empathising, but it has made me see how my previous attempts to relate to people could be annoying to them. Because if they ask me about my dad, I want to talk about my dad. A two way conversation is fine, but it’s like I can’t even get beyond the words “oh, he’s passed away…” before I’m having to deal with someone else unloading their grief from X amount of years ago on me, when everything is still so raw and fresh to me.

I guess what I’m saying is, if I tell you someone close has passed away, it’s perfectly fine to just say “I’m sorry to hear that, I hope you’re holding up O.K”.