The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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One of my Wife's best friends passed away this last weekend, she was 8 months pregnant, her baby boy was lost as well. She had a 3 year old daughter and husband that survived her. It originally sounded like it might have been a pregnancy complication, but some news stories I found through sleuthing suggest it was a fatal car crash.
It has been rough on my Wife processing it all. She cried the whole night when she found out. And since then I've found her sobbing in the middle of the day as some errant thought or piece of news reminds her of it all.
I knew the woman that passed away. Hung out with her a dozen times. She was in our wedding party. We went to her wedding. She was nice, a bit of a boring conversation partner, but a good friend to my wife.
I feel ... almost nothing. The only time I shed tears was when I had some particularly vivid imagery of this scenario occurring to me. Selfish tears. I do feel a little sad for my wife going through this all, but that is the extent of my emotion.
When my grandfather passed away a month or two ago, I also felt very little, I thought it was cuz his death wasn't very tragic (he was 90 and lived a very long happy life).
Is this normal? I've noticed plenty of guys around me can also be a bit unbothered by death, while most women seem to be physically pained when hearing the circumstances.
I've always been somewhat stoic (I've been called a soulless automaton and an emotionless sociopath at different times by different people), but I think this would be normal for me as well. The only times I have ever cried as an adult that I can recall was losing my infant son, and losing my wife (at different times, just to be clear). One was sudden and unexpected, the other was after a long slow battle with cancer. An acquaintance is unlikely to get more than a passing feeling of sadness. Though of course my wife's feelings would be more of what I would focus on helping with in your case.
Having said that, while both of those losses made me heartbroken, it didn't particularly last, I never fell into a depression. I don't think I have ever been depressed, no matter how bad things get. You have to move on, no matter how bad things were, things will get better. And I did find my (innate?) optimism did get some odd reactions from people who expected me to be depressed for months or more perhaps. I cried on and off for maybe a day or two, then very sporadically when something reminded me of the loss for another few weeks. In both cases though I was supporting other people, my wife or my other kids as well as dealing with all the practicalities, so there was a limit to how much falling apart I could allow myself.
I do have very distinct memories, of thinking to myself, ok, time to put a lid on this, it hurts, but there is nothing to be done except to deal with what needs to be dealt with and get through it.
Friends don't understand how man not depressed
I'm kind of the same though. I don't I'm think I'm really capable of depression, at least not in the way some people around me are.
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