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Comment on Ask HN: How to Grieve?

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I don't think it's sociopathic in any way. There is no 'normal' way to feel about a calamity because it is so out-of-place from everything else, and everybody copes differently and expresses it differently, at different times. Each person close to the person who passed away is experiencing a range of sentiments and complex feelings that are so different from one another, which can include an absence of feeling, so it's perfectly normal to feel abnormal because everyone is going to be feeling abnormal in an unexpected situation. Sometimes, they might just be asking how you're feeling or coping because they are not sure how they are feeling about it and trying to experience it with someone else to recover, because they are concerned for every other person close to that person who passed, or because they don't know how to process what they are experiencing and just looking for ideas.

It might help to hear others express the grief they experience because hearing what they are feeling or doing afterwards might help give you some ideas of what to do next or think about this person who passed differently. I don't think they would feel that you have an obligation to express grief to them when you talk to them because not everyone grieves by expressing it or has a way to express it. At the very least, you know how much you loved this person who is now gone, and that much can always be conveyed, not just by how bad a feeling it is to have lost that person, but also by how positively and greatly you felt when you were around that person when he or she was with you.

Also, very sorry to hear about your loss.

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