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Smiling at sad news?

Catlady31

Hello, can anyone tell me if this is experienced by people with autism? Both my son and I have a problem with smiling if being told bad news, like when being told someone has passed away.  It also happens when I'm telling someone sad news.

I will describe it as a smirk or smile and can't quire describe what I'm feeling. I feel bad for doing this, but can't seem to help it.

Has anyone here came across this reaction before?  Maybe it's due to anxiety or because we are not able to deal with the sadness?

Thank you.

  • in reply to James

    I thought of this thread earlier when I watched The Behaviour Panel’s analysis of an OJ Simpson video where he laughs uncontrollably while detailing how he (hypothetically) ‘would have’ murdered Nicole. Even though it looks crazy, I can’t pretend I haven’t been similarly socially mismatched in pressured moments. Thankfully nothing murder related 

  • Not sure if it's an autistic trait. In moments of extreme tension and/or anxiety, I sometimes laugh unexpectedly.

    Feeling bad for doing this indicates that it is a reflex rather than anything untoward.

    Hope that helps.

  • When I was 15 I laughed when telling someone my music teacher had died

    I was as surprised as them at my reaction 

  • Yes this happens to me. Very awkward because it always happens at the most inconvenient times. The worst one was after Gran died, mum said about it and apparently I smiled and then picked up a book and started reading. I've never been great at processing bad news like death and try to carry on like normal so I think that's why.

  • Yep I'm exactly the same. It can be very inconvenient a lot of the time. 

  • I have a similar thing and it gets me into trouble with the wife. I make a noise that sounds like the start of a laugh, its actually me acknowledgeing the news and processing it. I am a pretty unemotional person anyway.

  • in reply to __Pathfinder__

    I envy that. I have the opposite, where I feel stuff way too deeply - both empathically and when I’ve been emotionally hurt, to the point where it creates huge internal pain at times. But the smiling thing: I think it’s partly emotional disregulation, and partly the ‘laughing in church’ factor - worrying ‘what’s the most socially inappropriate thing I could do right now?’ And then it’s suddenly a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve just come from a session with my therapist where, not for the first time, in explaining an aspect of something deeply painful (and I mean extremely painful, that I’ve been trying to process for many months and will be for the rest of my life) I started to laugh intensely, an almost soundless, half-demonic, half-Mutley-like laugh. Seconds later, I was in tears. I’m not as extreme in the ‘real world’ where I think that I find the right combination of social appropriateness and muted authentic concern for bad news situations on nearly every occasion. How much of that is practiced masking and how much an entirely instinctive behaviour I don’t know. The earliest instance I can recall of something  like that in my life was in 1986, when I was 8 years old. My father, very upset but stoic and grave, disclosing the news to my sister and brother and me that my mother was going to lose the baby she was expecting (he would live just a few hours after being born) and I reacted to the strangeness with what I knew was a very inappropriate smile, suppressed it partially, and scuttled off to the side of the room to play with Lego or something. It was like the awful pressure of something so unprecedented and terrible just flipped my emotional compass to the wrong setting. I felt so weird and awful and it’s not that I was happy - the opposite, I was invested in the idea of a baby brother and found it sad, but I also didn’t quite know how to feel completely  - and maybe had a certain amount of surprise at my own detachment. I have no idea what my dad must have made of me in that moment, it must have seemed incredibly odd to him. 

  • I don't smile, but I did once say "and?" upon hearing a relative had died.  I only did it once.  Now I admittedly show a little more compassion, but I don't attach any emotional response to things like that.  You are born, you live, you die.  It's a fact and is just how it is.

    I think people see me as being completely detached from everything and on some levels I am.  Not 100%, but I don't allow my emotions to control me.

  • Hi, I don’t know if it’s common but I do it. In my teen years I was told that my sister was in a coma after a fall. I apparently smiled and carried on washing my car. I’ve had similar experiences with death as well. I also don’t get comedy sometimes .I think it’s an issue for me to process emotions.