When someone dies

The death of someone you love is one of the most difficult situations you will ever have to deal with, however old you are, but especially when you are a young person.

For young people, it can be difficult to understand what are often quite unexpected, and largely uncontrollable emotional reactions to death.

Although it is very common, it can be very hard to comprehend why you are feeling guilty, angry or fearful when you are already experiencing so much pain and sadness.

While it may be unexpected it certainly isn’t unusual to feel guilty when you are still alive and someone you love is not, infact it’s a very natural reaction. This feeling often leads people to think that they were in some way responsible; it’s the ‘if only I had done this or hadn’t done that’ thought that makes them think they were to blame even though it’s not true.

Feeling angry is also a very common reaction. Sometimes it is towards the dead person, who by dying has left you alone to do all the things you used to do together; or it may be directed towards other people who still have their parents, brothers, sisters or grandparents.

Sometimes the death of a loved one can lead to an exaggerated or unnatural fear of death. It might be fear for your own life or someone you love, and it can result in the formation of very close ties to a surviving parent or friend, but so close that it can be suffocating for them.

Many people also experience denial, that’s when it is difficult to accept that someone has died. People in denial often talk constantly about a person, and refer to them as if they were still alive. Very young children often experience a form of denial by thinking of death as something temporary and that a person or a pet will come back at some time.