The ability to process it is important, but I believe that my method of processing may not be yours. Example: Several years ago while I was still in the Navy, a civilian plane crashed into the side of Nimitz hill in Guam. As a hospital corpsman, I was among the first to respond. It was still dark when we got to the site but day was just coming on. It was a grueling day to say the least, but worse for the passengers, most of whom did not survive. A lot of what I saw was horrifying, and I will not repeat any of that here. For the next several days we were taken in groups for “de-briefing’ to “help us deal with what we had seen. Most of the corpsmen, myself included, resented this. We felt no need to verbalize about it. Many of us were also EMT’s or had some trauma experience, albeit not on this particular scale. The civilian females in my particular group cried and carried on as if it were a drama and as far as I was concerned, completely disregarded the larger picture of 300 dead civilians, and a handful of survivors, many of whom were badly burned. I was ordered to keep my mouth shut and let them vent, even though they had not been at the crash site. Blabbing on and on was their way of processing the shock of what had happened. Whatever.
My way of processing was more internal. I can tell you to this day the first thing I saw when I arrived on scene, but I cannot REMEMBER what it looked like. My mind, very thoughtfully, blocked it out for me.
So give yourself time to process and integrate it into your experience. If you need to talk about it, do so. It’s ok. If you don’t feel the need, don’t force yourself.