Randomly over here from lurking on supernatural_tv and hoping you don't mind, but your reaction post is one of the saner ones addressing this point that I've seen, so I'm reaching out. Sorry if it's intrusive.
We're pretty much agreed on all points; while I love my men stoic and tough but brittle, I'd like to see just a tiny bit more evolution in Dean where he's able to admit things to Sam. The one line I kept waiting (with bated breath) for Dean to say was "I don't WANT you to understand" - not because Dean doesn't need to be understood, which Sam does with alacrity and an admirable degree of patience, but because the things you see in Hell are not something you want someone you love seeing with you. Not only can Sam not do anything to actively remove or really even soften the effect of the memories (which, for the record - really? 40 years of torturous memories and Dean still snaps back to basically how he was when he went into the ground? C'mon, Kripke, that's more years than he's even been alive) but Dean doesn't want him to know what Hell is like. Ever.
But I, too, think it's a process. Dean tends to skip around the normal processes until he's pounded out his own - first he denies, then realizes he's slipping up too much to refuse being affected at all. Then he tries to say that yes, he's hurting, but he'll handle it. Eventually he'll hit that wall where trying and failing to handle it on his own will endanger Sam or them both or someone else when he freezes up under the pressure, and he'll be forced to either drop it, let Sam help, or just sit down and give up.
Here's to Dean Winchester (and Sam Winchester) never sitting down and giving up.
...That got a bit long. Apologies, and feel free to delete if I'm an annoyance.
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We're pretty much agreed on all points; while I love my men stoic and tough but brittle, I'd like to see just a tiny bit more evolution in Dean where he's able to admit things to Sam. The one line I kept waiting (with bated breath) for Dean to say was "I don't WANT you to understand" - not because Dean doesn't need to be understood, which Sam does with alacrity and an admirable degree of patience, but because the things you see in Hell are not something you want someone you love seeing with you. Not only can Sam not do anything to actively remove or really even soften the effect of the memories (which, for the record - really? 40 years of torturous memories and Dean still snaps back to basically how he was when he went into the ground? C'mon, Kripke, that's more years than he's even been alive) but Dean doesn't want him to know what Hell is like. Ever.
But I, too, think it's a process. Dean tends to skip around the normal processes until he's pounded out his own - first he denies, then realizes he's slipping up too much to refuse being affected at all. Then he tries to say that yes, he's hurting, but he'll handle it. Eventually he'll hit that wall where trying and failing to handle it on his own will endanger Sam or them both or someone else when he freezes up under the pressure, and he'll be forced to either drop it, let Sam help, or just sit down and give up.
Here's to Dean Winchester (and Sam Winchester) never sitting down and giving up.
...That got a bit long. Apologies, and feel free to delete if I'm an annoyance.