http://www.recover-from-grief.com/7-sta ... grief.html
Here is a link explaining the 7 stages of grief that most people go through when faced with a trauma of any kind. That could be bereavement, loss of a job, or diagnosis of an illness ... the stages are all the same from initial
denial to
acceptance.
People are different. They take various lengths of time to take certain things in and to process them. The whole 7 stages of grief can take days, weeks or years in some people, and they can also slip in and out of each stage and back and forwards, depending on how much their nervous system can handle.
Some people actually do become numb from shock and there's a reason for that. The numbness occurs because the bad news (shock) whatever it was has an effect on the nervous system, and in some people if that message is relayed to the brain too quickly, they can actually suffer neurological damage and even stroke. It's not a matter of needing to be
mollycoddled or of
needing to be pandered to it's just a matter of being the way some people's sympathetic and central nervous systems operate.
There has been much research into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder not just in servicemen but in ordinary civilians who've had traumatic experiences and believe me you'd have to experience it to really understand it in all it's entirety. Some people can handle going from shock and denial straight to acceptance in a matter of minutes or hours. Others, quite simply can't.
And not taking that into consideration here is a bit like not taking into consideration a person's blindness and saying
Well if they can't see to read the forum, tough! They can go elsewhere.
Sensitivity is a
physical state not an emotional tantrum. And anyone who has experienced the loss of someone very close will tell you that they feel that loss
physically their body aches, their muscles ache, their bones ache with the shock and grief and with Prolonged Grief Reaction that can go on for a long time - and it can also affect blood sugar levels as the body tries to cope.
Human physiology is very complex and there is a tendency to box sensitive people off as something akin to being weak of mind, and trying to toughen up someone in a state of shock can be a very dangerous thing to do. Also, there are people who have one shock after another as life changing events tend to happen in clusters sometimes, so the mind and nervous system becomes overloaded - a bit like the electricity in your house if you plug too many electrical items in. So it goes with the human body and mind.