To let my death get in the way of life....

[feedmegin]

I cannot enjoy my life because I’m too afraid of death.

I don’t think there is a day that goes by when I don’t think about death.

I wake in the middle of the night and suddenly become aware that one day, I just won’t be here.
I struggle to accept that my non existence is going to be eternal.
It literally petrifies me.

I try to imagine what it’s going to feel like but it just sends me into panic when I try.

It’s making me feel really miserable and I’m struggling to find enjoyment in life because, well what’s the point if we’re just going to die.

I feel like I’m just waiting for the day that darkness will be my forever. 😭

I’ve felt like this for years now and it’s not going away.

I lost my friend vert suddenly 12 years ago, and I think this triggered my fear.

I have panic attacks if I have to go to funerals and I couldn’t ever imagine seeing someone dead.

I don’t know how I’m ever going to enjoy life because what is there to enjoy when death is just there waiting to take us.

I have this. It started a couple of years after my dc was born, I'm constantly wishing I was older, that my dc were older and I'd seen them grow up. It terrifies me the thought of dying and never seeing them again. I'm crying writing this as I think about it. I know I need help, I've known it for years but don't know where to start

OP - YANBU I have had very similar feelings ever since I realised as a child.

I utterly relate to this (the paracetamol comment made me snort laugh, that’s ME!). I’ve just had the vaccine which has sent me into a spiral of fear that I’m processing and sitting with. I live with the existential dread of death every day. I can be enjoying something and that feeling will be tempered with knowledge of my impending demise. Will it be in the next 5 minutes? A year? A decade? I have had extensive therapy and whilst it helped, it is no cure. I hate to go all cliche but the answers are all within. The centre to all seems to be: treat yourself with kindness and compassion, there’s an inner part in you that’s frightened, you need to let her know she’s safe and that all will essentially be well. We are designed to die and I believe that when it comes we will be accepting of it. I have no belief in god at all, but I do take comfort in nature and the cycle of life, the universe. I know how overwhelming it all is, but concentrate on the here and now. Do look into getting help with sitting with these feelings, and know you’re not alone.

Be in the day, OP.

Be relentless about forcing your mind to dwell on a positive, peaceful, hopeful or happy thought.

Be actively involved in life - the people you love and who love you, your work, your home, whatever you enjoy doing.

How truly sad it would be to use up thousands of days existing in dread of the day that can happen only once.

@justgivejack
I think having children can really bring these sorts of fears to the surface. It did with me.

I would look at CBT, you can speak to your GP and the NHS has online resources.
This page is a good place to start

www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/

The other thing you might find helpful is mindfulness. Focus on enjoying your time with your DC now. Focus on the situation in front of you not the past or the future. The only thing we have any control over is the present so that is where your focus should be. (Easier said than done I know- I certainly don’t get it right all the time!).

Therapy.
You say you don’t see how this will help.. that’s because you’re not a qualified therapist. I know it’s hard but you need to take responsibility for this and take steps to help yourself.

@justgivejack

I have this. It started a couple of years after my dc was born, I'm constantly wishing I was older, that my dc were older and I'd seen them grow up. It terrifies me the thought of dying and never seeing them again. I'm crying writing this as I think about it. I know I need help, I've known it for years but don't know where to start

I dont know how many years you are talking about but this is very normal when you first have children and they are young . The OP is talking about something very different .

This is very much on my mind at the moment, I can sympathise with the OP.
I have a terminal diagnosis and also cant imagine what it will be like to be dead. I dont believe in ghosts but actually can sort of reason them out as I feel as if I will somehow be hanging around after death looking at the world going on without me ! Everyone is going to die but its having prior notice about it that I dont like gives you too much time to think.

Some counselling may help to manage these feelings, one thing that struck me though, yes it’s eternal but you don’t remember before you ‘existed’ ’ some we shall just return to that state iyswim

Sympathies OP. It's very hard to explain a fear of death to people who don't get. Philip Larkin wrote about it in Aubade:

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says "No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel", not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

But! Whilst I strongly identify with every word of that poem, I also have managed to mostly put the dread to the back of my mind, which is all you really can do, day to day. As I've got older I've also got more interested in writings about neuroscience, consciousness and the self. I've begun to realise how vanishingly little we know about our minds, and the wider universe, and somehow this comforts me.

I feel so sorry for you @feedmegin. It is a good start that you recognise the trigger and I think some EMRD therapy could work well for you.

We are born with just two fears, fear of falling, and fear of death. The rest are acquired.

In your case the fear of death has transformed into a phobia, and that’s where the therapy comes in.

We don’t fear death because we want to prevent it, we fear it because we can’t prevent it, and that’s why we need to accept that death is a part of life.

When we die it isn’t something which is unique to any of us. Every single person who has ever lived either has Died or will die. There are no exceptions.

But most people don’t allow the realisation that they are going to die prevent them from living, and that’s where you need to be at.

Not living isn’t going to prevent you from dying, but fear of dying is preventing you from living. In which case you might as well be dead, except you’re not, and you don’t want to be, so you need to find a way to put your need to live now ahead of your fear of dying later.

I had a cardiac arrest in 2019 so to all intents and purposes I have been dead. Obviously I’m not and I’m here now, but the going from being conscious to complete oblivion made me realise that when you’re dead, you just don’t know. Because there’s nothing. I don’t believe in hell or any of that kind of thing so for me the idea of oblivion is perfectly ok. I don’t need to fear it, because it’s not there. Iyswim.

I’m well aware that my condition will likely kill me one day. I’m not afraid of dying. In fact I’m more afraid of being kept alive in certain circumstances e.g. in a vegetative state than just being allowed to die.

OP, your post has resonance for me. I'm afflicted by intrusive thoughts, & something my father - who suffers like you - once said to me about this has stayed with me. He said that whilst he's terribly worried about death, he stopped worrying about the eternity when he won't be around when he had the realisation that from the dawn of time until 1954 he didn't exist either. So the time after he's gone will be no different to time before he was created. His words have afforded me some comfort at times.

I agree with everyone else on the therapy & possibly medication. Try not to see these as pointless on the basis that they can't take away the inevitable thing you fear. The point is that they can help the fear to reduce, which moves you closer to acceptance, & which in turn reduces the fear further. Good luck.

@feedmegin I just wanted to respond to something you said "I just struggle to understand that something can help me with this fear especially as they can’t take death away".

When we address our fears and get help with them through therapy, the goal is not to take the thing away.

To give a simple example, when we work with a fear of dogs, the goal is not to remove all dogs. The goal is to help people learn about their fear of dogs, learn to cope with it, and enjoy their life not impacted by the fear of dogs. These three things (particularly the coping skills) then tend to reduce the fear of dogs over time.

So for you, with a strong fear of death, the goal isn't to whisk death away (not possible). Its to learn about it, develop ways to cope, and live a life not totally marked by a fear of death. Over time, this will reduce that fear.

@thereisonlyoneofme

This is very much on my mind at the moment, I can sympathise with the OP. I have a terminal diagnosis and also cant imagine what it will be like to be dead. I dont believe in ghosts but actually can sort of reason them out as I feel as if I will somehow be hanging around after death looking at the world going on without me ! Everyone is going to die but its having prior notice about it that I dont like gives you too much time to think.

💚💚💚

I had to be sedated and have my heart shocked. I was terrified that it wouldn't actually restart (I'm told it's a very routine procedure -"bread and butter" to cardiologists) - when I was actually in theatre I had a feeling of calm, a sort of acceptance. There was nothing I could do to change the outcome and it's not like I would know. Still suffer anxiety now, but when faced with (what I at least perceived with potential death) I was actually completely accepting. I imagine and hope that is what it is like.

I mean you’re right... they can’t take death away. You’re going to die one day, we all are. That’s a fact.
What they can do is help you deal with your feelings around it.
So in the absence of them being able to take away death, would you rather be able to deal with your feelings about it, or carry on feeling the way you do now?

For anyone dealing with fear of death, I’d highly recommend a book called Staring at the Sun by Irvin Yalom. It’s all about confronting death-terror and ultimately making peace with our own mortality. I used to suffer from horrible health anxiety, rooted in a death-terror, and this book really helped me (along with many other things!).

Recognizing death as a certainty I make sure I dont waste any time and try to extract as much happiness and pleasure as I can in the time I have got , so when the death finally arrives I have no regrets and I can go with a smile on my face.
Death doesnt really bother me, I worry more about any pain and suffering and loss of independence before I die.

Philosophy might help. Seneca & Marcus Aurelius for the stoic view of death. Here: howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/seneca-to-lucilius-on-the-terrors-of-death/

Or there’s the Buddhist/Derek Parfitt line that we are a jumble of different and ever-changing memories and thoughts, many shared with others, so that there is no clean ‘us’ that is born with us and dies with us.

Someone will probably come along in a minute to say that I’m talking nonsense about Stoics and Buddhists...

This, from the Venerable Bede, is bleak but can help too:

"O king, it seems to me that this present life of man on earth, in comparison to that time which is unknown to us, is as if you were sitting at table in the winter with your ealdormen and thegns, and a fire was kindled and the hall warmed, while it rained and snowed and stormed outside. A sparrow came in, and swiftly flew through the hall; it came in at one door, and went out at the other. Now during the time when he is inside, he is not touched by the winter's storms; but that is the twinkling of an eye and the briefest of moments, and at once he comes again from winter into winter. In such a way the life of man appears for a brief moment; what comes before, and what will follow after, we do not know.’

You've already had some good advice OP, but I just wanted to say that you're not alone. I've felt this way since childhood, there was no trigger, just a realisation. I find it bewildering that other people aren't utterly terrified in the same way I am. In a way it's the most rational of all fears, because it is real. The hope I cling to is that absolutely nobody knows what happens next - it might be ok.

I'd never spoken to anyone about it until my mid-20s. I had CBT for anxiety (ironically, completely unrelated to my fear of death) but it came up during discussion. I find it very upsetting to speak about it and articulate my fears, but it does help to lessen the hold it has over me.

It is a difficult phobia to overcome because you can't face up to it like a fear of snakes for example. The main thing I took from CBT is that it's ok to push away intrusive thoughts and to organise your life so they simply can't get in. For me, it helps to be surrounded by something that distracts my mind so it can't wander freely. I can't do mindfulness exercises or meditation, for example.

Instead, I keep the radio on in the background all day. I listen to podcasts whilst cooking or gardening or sewing, watch TV whilst knitting, and I read a book lying in bed until I fall asleep. When I feel the thoughts intruding I distract myself with something else until the feeling passes. It gets easier to push them away over time.

Please don't be afraid to ask for help, talking therapy really is worthwhile. It can't take away the source of your fear but it can help you to live your life and make the best of it. That's all any of us can do, really.

Repeating what many pp have said, really- no, death can't be taken away, it is an inevitability for all of us. But how you think and feel about it, and what impact those thoughts and feelings have on your life, definitely can be changed.

That we all die one day is not a frightening thought for me, it brings peace. The knowledge that we are all part of this almost endless cycle, that one day every bit of matter that is currently part of "me" will have become something, many things, else... I like it very much. It puts my brief life in perspective for me. The way other people find comfort and reassurance in religious belief, I suppose. Just like the thought of how incredibly, indescribably tiny I am in terms of the size of the universe brings me peace.

It's alright to be afraid, op, but you deserve better. I hope you do try therapy and/ or meds.

@feedmegin

I would highly recommend watching "Surviving Death" on Netflix - it helped me enormously with my fear of death. Like you, I constantly think about death.

I agree CBT to help change your way of thinking, but also what about meditation that teaches mindfullness to learn to stay in the moment rather than worrying about the future? Headspace app is brilliant.
At the end of the day there is no point worrying about it, but i know its easier said than done. I think about it more since having my daughter because i can't bare the thought of not being with her anymore.