I had a brain tumor growing up, so I made friends with a lot of kids who have since died. My dad and grandfather died a week apart, shortly followed by my grandma. Left and right they drop like flies. It used to get me really upset and I would cry and scream.
Now, another of my friends has died, and one more is in a coma he might never wake up from. And I don’t even care a little bit. I feel like maybe I lost part of my humanity. Everyone is so sad and worried, and it just doesn’t matter to me. I mean, I hope he wakes up, but I’m not emotionally invested in it. What is wrong with me?
In my experience, people who have seen a lot of trauma (you seemingly, and myself, personally) grow a hard shelled exterior, trying to insulate to prevent further wreckage of the psyche. You learn to let stuff roll off your back. It’s a coping mechanism. If you’re anything like me, big things make no difference, but petty things are highly aggravating…things the average person wouldn’t let bother them.
Do you feel you definitely don’t care, or is this the kind of thing that might catch up with you later? I often feel like I have delayed processing of stressful, traumatic events. Books or movies or sad newspaper articles, though, and I’m a sobbing wreck.
I’m so sorry about your friends. I hope for the best outcome for the one currently ill.
I’m sorry you’ve seen so much death. Maybe your lack of care is a defense mechanism to prevent a mental break down. Death has hit me hard in the past year, but I don’t know how I’d react in the future after this serious blow of death I recieved. I tend to become hardened by things after awhile and I’m positive it’s my mind protecting itself.
Yeah, it’s probably a thing that Freud called ego defense mechanisms, a subconscious protection from anxiety and harmful events.
It’s very rare for me to cry now as well.
I was on my father’s and grandfather’s funeral and I cried my eyes out…but that was few years ago.
It’s not that you don’t have emotions, they are just suppressed or frozen. Don’t forget that medications have their part too.