Comment by conductr
2 years ago
> they feel themselves on a kind of righteous moral crusade
They see a lot of bad stuff which causes them to have a difficult time admitting that sometimes bad stuff just happens on it's own
Reminds me of the police/detectives that "just know he did it" because they don't understand that people grieve differently. I really empathize with the people that don't have a meltdown and cry when they hear some horrific news. I don't think I would either in many cases. I'd want the cops to do their job and go find the perp so I'd talk to them in a calm and concise manner telling them what I knew; even though that's likely highly suspicious behavior.
That actually happened to me, not with the police though, but with social workers. I explained the situation in a very calm, concise, and perhaps emotionally detached manner because this is just my personality. They wrote in their report that they found it strange that "I almost did not cry during the interview", which they said was the main reason they would recommend to put David in foster care. The guilt of knowing that I, with my personality, was responsible for losing his care, was devastating.
I also found this argument absurd: I was suspected of losing my temper on my child, and it's my calmness that was interpreted as a sign of danger!
It reminds me the Robert Roberson Texas death penalty case that John Grisham recently wrote about [1]: "He told hospital staff that she had fallen out of bed, but they didn’t believe him. They didn’t know he was autistic and decided he didn’t show the proper emotions given the dire situation."
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-o...
It's especially bizarre because even apart from things like autism, even for more neurotypical people disassociation (which as I understand in mild forms can appear as emotional detachment which could come off as being calm) is a well known symptom of acute stress responses (i.e. psychological shock). As unreproducible as a lot of psychology is, putting any merit in 'they didn't respond how I think they "should" have' seems like just utterly extraordinary nonsense...
I’m rather neurotypical but I worked in high trauma environments during my college years; ER, OR, ICU, various life and death situations on daily basis in a healthcare environment. I pretty much saw it all.
That was 20+ years ago, my career was not there so I left clinical work but the ability to function during high stress and deal with the present mentally stuck with me. I also could mostly leave it at the door and it didn’t weigh on me outside work (I think most healthcare workers can do this, it all just becomes normal.
Since then, I’m the one that springs into action instead of paralyzed by shock/surprise. Saved someone choking in a restaurant, pulled a pregnant woman from a burning car after an accident, just a few weeks ago someone had a stroke at a park and I had to figure out best way to help - all these had many other bystanders just watching it happen and they all just were frozen until I came over and took charge barking order about call an ambulance or telling them exactly how to help. I’ve also learned that when something really bad happens in my life, like bad diagnoses/death of loved ones, my immediate response is to help and support what ever immediate actions are needed, talk about what needs to be done, help others experiencing immediate and usually uncontrollable grief. My grief usually starts a day or two later once all the immediate concerns are addressed.
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Sounds a lot like the terrible case of Lindy Chamberlain "A Dingo Ate My Baby" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quC4cbpJeaU
It gets really obvious when this becomes not just a matter of personal experience but culture. Had the fortune to watch the news about an airplane crash without survivors on a TV channel in Asia. They had a video of grieving relatives from Western Europe who looked utterly gutted and in pain. But since they werent crying and screaming the news anchor had to explain that this was cultural differences.