Hearing that someone in your family has a very serious illness and is going to die is shattering for everyone in the family, however young or old. Or suddenly finding out that someone important in your life has died in an accident is dreadfully sad and can leave you feeling very upset and anxious.

It is made harder if, because you are young, you are not told clearly what has happened. Explaining bad news to children is difficult for adults. They is because they are shocked and upset themselves and don’t want you to also feel such sadness. (If you are angry about the way you found out, that's natural even when you realise that most people try to do the best they can at the time.)

When we hear dreadfully sad news, we can have lots of different feelings. Sometimes we are very upset and cry and cry, other times we just feel numb, or angry. Some of the most usual feelings young people tell us about are just not believing it's true, being really angry or really sad, blaming other people, blaming yourself, and feeling that it was somehow your fault and feeling guilty. Of course we may feel lots of other things too - confused, worried, anxious, scared, tired. We may feel hurt in our bodies, we may feel really restless and keep searching for the person who has died. Because we are all different and also at different stages of growing up, it makes sense that these feelings will be different depending on who we are and the age we are.