How do you experience grief of a loved one as an autistic person?

I’m in broad agreement with Stuart333 on this – I don’t really feel grief. My main emotions following the death of a friend or relation tend to be (I think) embarrassment and guilt because I can’t seem to feel what others around me are apparently feeling.

For me, grief also feels like it amps up all the autistic stuff: sensory overload gets worse, and it’s way harder to explain what I’m feeling. Sometimes I shut down or just want to be alone because talking feels impossible. I get the safe foods thing too; when everything’s overwhelming, I just stick to what I know won’t upset me.

It's OK Prof, I dont' think I'm that unusual in getting what you feel, maybe it's a cultural difference, us Brits are quite uptight about death and memorials, whereas you Americans seem to make much more of it.

Thank you! It really sounds like you get what I’m feeling. Wow.

Prof, that must be really really difficult, I guess that it's not about wanting to forget, but about wishing to remember him as he was to you and not how he was seen by others? It's good that your parents take comfort from all the memorials, but if it were me then I think I'd feel pushed aside and that others were being invasive. I'd be really really upset and angry by merchandising, to me it would seem disrespectful. I'd be feeling like I was stuck in a time warp, where I couldn't move on, couldn't heal, whatever that means in your circumstance.

I'm not going to come out with platitudes, like I'm sorry for your loss, but I am trying to hear you and respect your feelings.

I can relate to some of what you say about your grief.

AlpineS said:

On days like yesterday I don’t just feel sad I feel 'more' autistic. I can’t talk to people. Everything irritates me and my anger becomes harder to control. I can only manage safe foods if anything at all and things like showering or cleaning just stop happening. 

I feel similar to you in that cleaning, cooking, gardening and engaging with people just stops, and people can irritate me when grief is taking over. I suspect many of us might feel the same way.

I don’t know how to compare how autistic people and non autistic people experience grief. When my mother and my friend died, it was as if I couldn’t process the grief and I didn’t feel much emotion until days later, and then I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t talk to anybody about how I was feeling. I think some non autistic people can feel grief in a similar way.

I tend to feel more grief at the time when a dog dies than when a human dies. Perhaps it’s because when a dog might be ill or in pain prior to death, it is hard to make a decision over their quality of life, then guilt gets mixed in with grief. Unfortunately that is what is happening right now because my beloved dog isn’t having a good quality of life the whole day, every day and the time has come to have a conversation with the vet.

AlpineS said:

Grief just feels like such a lonely thing for me and I don't really talk about it with most people.

I think that even if people are around, the very nature of grief can make it a lonely thing, because it is your grief or my grief or somebody else’s grief; all different types of grief that have come about through different relationships and dynamics. There is no right way to grieve and society can put pressure on us to act and to grieve in a particular way. Thankfully these days it is acceptable to grieve in many different ways and that includes being alone and/or having deep conversations about how you feel.

My brother was a police officer who passed on the job back in 2013. It was a rough time for my family. I wasn’t super close to my brother, but I was still a little overwhelmed to begin with. Oh but then things went crazy. Because he was a police officer it was a huge hoopla; We had K9 officers from all over the state show up for his funeral, there were tons of memorial services, and I was overburdened with merchandise that have his badge number (Still do! This year I got ANOTHER sweater with his badge number for Christmas. Oh joy). I’ve even got a wine bottle with his face on it.

Maybe it’s because of my Autism - or maybe it isn’t extraordinary considering the circumstances - but I’ve been so burnt out over mourning him for years. My parents still adore all the attention they get, but I want nothing to do with it. I try to pretend it never happened most days.

How does anyone deal with grief, we all do it differently, I don't think that NT's experience it any differently to anyone else. There's no right or wrong way to grieve. 

I agree that some societies deal with it differently, much more openly grieving, wailing etc, rather than the buttoned up WASPI way of doing it.

One of the things I've noticed over the years is how faith plays a role in how we grieve, for those of us with faith in an afterlife, death feels less of an end and more of a door to pass through, although the pain of not being able to go through that door yet is just as bad.

To me a dead person is just that, dead, they've become and ancestor, still around, still there, in a parrallell world.

I feel nothing or I feel a bit overwhelmed at loss, and kind of flip flop depending on distraction level 

I expect it is the overwhelm and stress that is making your traits stand out.

Something that can help is not to think of good times and wish you could still have them, which gives you a sense of loss, but to be grateful for the good times you had. To reframe it and think of it as something gained, not something lost.

But as a general thing, I believe autism makes emotions more difficult, so loss, grief, longing, etc. likely feel different.

I suspect love does too. 

Emotions and feelings are hard to describe though, so you are never sure if you feel the same as someone else. It is not always that easy to know or notice feelings, alexithymia in action. But if they are strong enough you can't miss them, and negative ones are stronger than positive ones.

I also saw something online, attributed to Jung, saying you really miss the person you were, not the other person. Not sure about that. You do imagine yourself as you were at the the same time and remember how you felt.