askchapo

Context might matter.

For an event that just happened, maybe the person is looking more to be the center of attention than looking for a person with a shared experience. Same might be applicable if a person is acting upset.

When the even has happened farther in the past it is probably more likely (and more appropriate) to share your story/experiences as an act of comiseration.

Even among n'typicals we don't really know how to handle things.

One of my parents died years ago while I had a full time job, so I gave HR a heads up that I might need to do some short warning "I'm not going to make it to work today to go deal with beauracracy" call-ins. HR let one of my bosses know and they tried to talk to me about it but just kept awkwardly repeating how much it would devastate them if their parent died. While understandable it put me in a situation where I didn't really know how to comfort them being upset that my parent's death got them thinking about their parent hypothetically dying. I just politely nodded until they decided to go away. It was a... very... long five minute interaction.