Why do deaths of people in ones social sphere hurt more than strangers?

Because you had a form of connection with these people, unlike a stranger that you had no connection with.

@SQUEEKY2 Sorry, but your answer sounds like my question just paraphrased.

You know their voice

You know their smell

You know their touch

Ummm…because you give a shit about them. smh

It’s the severed connection that hurts. Since you had a kind of friendship with them, that is gone. It hurts.

Because nobody has the time or energy to mourn the death of strangers. There is no frame to reference someone you don’t know. Mourning the death of a stranger would be like mourning the death of a historical figure like Abraham Lincoln. It’s an event and factual. Losing a close friend or loved one is emotional.

When you’ve met someone, you develop a form of personal, intimate connection. When they die, you begin to feel a form of grief & your brain does a quick pass over what grief you need to experience. The closer you were to them, the deeper the grief. If you didn’t know them at all, there is NO connection so NO grief.

I don’t know about you but grief is one emotion I block at all cost. Once my brain passes on the idea that NO grief is required, I can block it really fast. I might feel a brief sadness that somebody lost a loved one, but it doesn’t require grief from me…hence I skip it out of self preservation. If I knew them then my brain turns it over to me as to how much grief is required & I process from there.

I have no connection with you except for your posts on Fluther. If your mother posted that you had died I would think, “oh, that’s too bad” and then read the next post.

If any of the half dozen jellies I have met in person were to pass, I would feel very sad, and possibly attend services for them, and regret I had not communicated more.

Strangers are just that- strange.

You’ve invested time and emotion into the people in your social sphere. Some Joe Schmoe in some other state dies and it doesn’t trigger the emotional reaction the same way.