Ok so when my family's dog died it was an event that sadden everyone but me, don't get my wrong i loved the dog it is just i didn't seem to get hit with the depression even though i knew the dog longer than my younger brother and i expect our cats death won't phase me either. Those who know me personally know i am kind and caring and despise the idea of suicide and i know that should any of my friend kill themselves i would fall down a deep dark hole. As for my family well i can only see my self being hit hard if my little sister died and i could have prevented it. But i do feel horrible that i don't feel sad about our dogs death.
Death is an illusion. Maybe you did not feel sad because you're subconsciously aware of that. Regardless, not being grieved by death is a good thing. That you feel guilty over this tells me that you're conscientious. You already know that you can be kind and caring, so you are definitely not "heartless"
Death happens, but it's not a big deal if you don't feel bad about it. Not everyone reacts the same way to death, but everyone expects you to be hit hard by it. You just process it differently, nothing wrong with that.
I am the same and I also though for a while that I am heartless. However as the time passed I realized that I'm just not good at showing my feelings. When a close family member dies I wasn't able to bring myself to cry. I felt really sad and really broken but I just couldn't cry. People have different reactions towards death. Just because more people react in a certain way it doesn't mean you have to do the same. Hope this helped.
People deal with death in strange ways. My grandmother passed away a few weeks ago. When I heard the news, I couldn't cry. I just told my sister it was okay to stop doing her math homework. Many years ago, one of my friends had cancer, and it was late at night when my mom woke me up to tell me he was gone. It didn't even register; I fell asleep immediately. I cried over both deaths, but at all the wrong times. I would be on my way home from the barber shop and it would hit me. I guess what I'm saying is, it's okay to handle death in your own way. You loved the dog, so you're not heartless, regardless of how you felt about the death.
Some people are more sensitive, others aren't. When my guinea pig died in agony right in front of me I was crying my brains out (I was 14). Since then (but not because of it) I kinda repress my emotions, I cannot express my feelings easily (it feels uncomfortable), so anytime a family pet died since then (turtles, chickens), I remained as cold as I could. In the past few years I've become "used to" witnessing death and suffering and maybe this is how I survive it emotionally.
I think that i am similar to hunguy in the sense that i basically got rid of my emotions but not over a death i think it was because i was raised male but i now realise i am not male and so i am trying to reverse it although i can only cry around people i have completely opened up to.
There is an old saying - one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Empathy is a choice. You aren't feeling it because you don't want to.
