how do others manage symptoms around death?

hi friends. i received my diagnosis about a month ago. i didn’t expect it, as i was seeking treatment for what i believed was strictly severe anxiety. i’ve been doing research to try to understand what exactly my specific symptoms are and what this means for myself. i’ve always feared death an unhealthy and not normal amount. myself, friends, family, my pets, even seeing roadkill destroys me and i feel like i will vomit out of sadness. the earliest time i recall having a compulsion around it, i was a child. my grandfather had passed and i wouldn’t let my grandmother go to sleep because i was convinced she would die if she did. oftentimes i feel i cannot let myself sleep now for the same reasons. i’m not quite sure if it’s always an OCD symptom, because sometimes there ISNT a compulsion. just paralyzing fear where im stuck. i can’t move, think, get up, cope, im frozen. any advice for how to manage these thoughts?

sadiez

Date posted: Yesterday

First off, I’m very sorry you’re struggling with this, I have similar obsessions myself and it’s very hard, particularly because death is a very hard thing to get our heads around as humans in general! I often find it helpful to find the humour in the madness of the human condition because there are many things about being human that are simply quite mad! In terms of advice, I would advise as I’m sure you may already be doing looking for or getting professional help from a therapist, but in the meantime I find distraction helpful, (tho that can be hard when things feel so consuming) but I love to watch a light tv show a sitcom or something that is likely to not have much in it that is triggering just to give yourself some headspace. I often find that worrying about it won’t give me more control over it, so when I find myself ruminating I try to pull myself out of it that way, I know they get a bit over stated but I find grounding techniques like naming the things around me that I can see and touch can help bring me out of it even just a little bit. Struggling to sleep because of this fear can be hard, I get this sometimes to I like listing to things before bed like a podcast or audiobook that way I’m not thinking about going to bed but I will naturally fall asleep. And really overall I’d say be kind to yourself and that even when it feels awful sometimes those feeling of anxiety will eventually pass and it does better.

p0isnrain

Date posted: Yesterday

believe it or not, i’m going through something so similar. i was just recently diagnosed with ocd and have had anxiety around death since i first experienced it at a young age, so i would do everything in my power to try and stop it from happening again and the anxiety of that turned into the compulsions of constantly feeling like i need to be a “safety net” for my loved ones. of course i’m no doctor but my psychiatrist did mention to me that i have ptsd from it, and when i would have panic attacks and just freeze and have these existential crises it was just my brain trying to make sense of it all, have comfort in the fact that even if you are sleeping your body has natural survival instincts to keep yourself alive and they’re not just going to turn off. while you’re sleeping your brain is focused on resting your body and healing it. not shutting down completely. have you talked to a therapist or anyone about ptsd?

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