Is there a word or phrase for this? the feeling when something bad happens, but the rest of the world is 'business as usual'

[katilac]

Is there a specific word or phrase that would make searching for articles/books easier? I'm talking about how it's hard for people who have a major life event, like fighting a severe illness, a death in the family, etc. to see that life just goes on for the rest of the world. 

 

Even if they are getting help and support, the event is their whole life but it is business as usual for everyone else. 

 

Hopefully I'm expressing it well enough to get an answer! 

 

 

[EmilyGF]

I don't know whether there is a word for that, but I can relate. :grouphug:

 

[ksr5377]

I don't know that there's a word for it, but I know exactly what you mean.  I remember looking out the car window as we drove to my uncle's funeral.  His death was very unexpected.  At a red light the car next to us had people laughing and singing to the radio.  It was so surreal to me that they could be so happy while my family sat there devastated.

[Heatherwith4]

I'm not sure what it is called, but I remember those feelings very well from after my FIL died.

[5of5]

This doesn’t fully capture it, but “cognitive dissonance†comes to mind because I see it as trying to hold two contradictory ideas / feelings at the same time: the desolation you are feeling versus the ‘life as usual’ that the rest of world is feeling.

[Anne in CA]

I had a hard time a few years ago and when a grocery checker would be cheerful I would think of them as being alien. It was amazing to me how easy it is for people to be happy.

[GinaPagnato]

I've heard, "the sun is still shining."

 

The idea that your world has been knocked upside down, and yet the routine things, like the sun shining, continue.

 

 

[Catwoman]

I know the feeling very well, but I don't have a name for it. It's awful, whatever it is. :(

[Garga]

I don't think it has a word, but when going through it everything feels surreal. You feel disconnected.

[redsquirrel]

I think the word and the process is grieving. Grieving for what is and for what was. Grieving over having to accept the new normal.

[Acorn Island]

In literary analysis, it is known as "cosmic indifference"

 

[katilac]

Thanks for the replies so far! 

 

I thought of cognitive dissonance, but I knew it wasn't quite what I was thinking of (and I swear I think there's a term floating around in my brain somewhere). I'll have to check cosmic indifference, but it's definitely a wonderful term even if it's not the one I'm trying to pinpoint. Definitely hadn't heard of weltschmerz, so it's not what I'm thinking of, but glad to add it to my vocabulary of hard-to-spell German words that convey a lot of meaning (it can keep schadenfreude company). 

 

 

[FloridaLisa]

I've not heard of a term but there should be one because it's definitely a phenomenom. I can remember being in the grocery store and the clerk making the usual nice small talk and I just wanted to wear a big sandwich sign that said Do you not see that my life has fallen apart?  It's not that I didn't want to make small talk, it just felt exactly as you describe -- completely disconnected.  And then overhearing other women fuss about the trivial? Such disconnect.  [And I'm not getting on my friends. I have/had amazing friends. It's something the rest of us don't even realize and I didn't expect their world to stop because mine did.]

 

Lisa

[.Michelle.]

One of the symptoms of PTSD is perceived isolation.  Service members returning from combat often feel isolated within communities because normal life is very superficial compared to what they've been through.  I know someone who had intense anger from just overhearing people chatting with each other while waiting in line at the bank or grocery store.  It was very hard to hear the inanity of regular life after seeing so much suffering.

[LostSurprise]

For myself, I use 'emotional disconnect' to express when I feel an intense emotion so out of sync with the rest of the world that the rest of the world seems strange, foreign or wrong. However, it's not specific enough for a search term. I think both 'cognitive dissonance' and 'perceived isolation' are close. 

 

I think it's interesting that English has so many shared slang/created terms which come out of humor, but so few describing serious or unhappy feelings. 

[5of5]

Even before Michelle posted, it occurred to me that there was an aspect of being alienated involved.  I think it is more complex than that any one emotion or condition.  It probably needs its own term.

[Guest]

The best I've ever been able to come up with is "Things are."

[DawnM]

No, but I have been there

[Miss Peregrine]

I remember after my dh's best friend was killed. We had been involved in a small group. After his death we were so busy doing things for his family making arrangements. I was so taken a back when I heard someone say that they had just finished the book in our group.

 

They just kept doing the study? It was so unfathomable to me. Not that they shouldn't have done it, of course, but it was a jolt back to reality. There should be a word for it.

[Corraleno]

Dissociation?
 

People who experience a traumatic event will often have some degree of dissociation during the event itself or in the following hours, days, or weeks. For example, the event seems "unreal" or the person feels detached from what's going on around them as if watching the events on television. In most cases the dissociation resolves without need for treatment.

 

I definitely know the feeling you're talking about. When my son was 8 weeks old, I was misdiagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, and when I walked out of the doctor's office, I literally felt like I'd stepped out onto a different planet from the one I lived on when I went into the office. Everything seemed different — colors, smells, textures, people, everything. I felt like I was in an alien world.  

[Aiden]

I don't know the word for it, but I'd love to know it if you figure it out.

 

I remember, after being evacuated from Egypt during the first of their recent revolutions, yelling at the TV because the talking heads were talking about what some celebrity wore or something. Didn't they know that my husband was still in Egypt, that many of my friends were still in Egypt, that my daughter and I were stuck in my mom's house in a small town where no one understood anything about what was happening, and what I really wanted was just to go home but since I couldn't do that, the very least the news could do was talk about it? Didn't they understand that nothing else mattered, that this was big enough and would affect the world enough that they should be obsessing over it just like I was? I forgave them a little when the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear-reactor-meltdown issue happened in Japan and then at least even if they weren't talking about Egypt, they were talking about something that mattered ... but I still couldn't shake the feeling that they should be talking about Egypt, too. Egypt and Japan--nothing else mattered.

 

And I could barely tolerate the well-meaning folks in my hometown who said how glad I must be to be home and then believed my "must be strong and brave" persona when I told them that I wasn't worried about my husband, because he was in the embassy with a bunch of Marines. Yeah, I'd say alienation is a large part of it.

[unsinkable]

I know the feeling all too well but I don't know the name.

 

I've felt it after my parents died. I also feel it when I've been in the hospital for days with DD. I come out and the world seems so loud and strange, and it's like I've forgotten how to BE.