Death anxiety is so draining

How did you manage?

@xandi Well, I definitly benefited from seeking professional help. And I am not a professional so I’m hesitant to speak on it. Getting though this subtype was really complicated and took time but this is a very short version of how I got through it. To put it in therapy terms, it was a combination of acceptance and commitment therapy, ERP, meta-cognitive work and mindfulness. Which really just means I that I had to examine the way I was thinking about death, accept the uncertainties around it, and expose myself to triggers while avoiding compulsions. I also worked on being present in my day to day life by practicing mindfulness (which I’m still working on) I think one of the most significant breakthroughs came when I realized that the cost of the fear was too high. The fear and depression had me paralyzed and they were keeping me from living life. I was terrified of dying, and that was because I loved life so much, but that lead me to quit living life for fear of it coming to an end. Coming to terms with that uncomfortable reality movtivated me to go start challenging my compulsions so I could get my life back. It took me months and the thoughts still come back somtimes, but I know how to deal with them so they rarely make me spiral like they used too. Have you ever spoken to a professional about this stuff?

@ClearMind20 Thanks a lot for your thorough, elaborate answer! It makes a lot of sense. I've shared my fear with a psychiatrist once, but she just dismissed it as trivial and silly then (which really felt offensive) and prescribed some meds that made me feel horrible... It's probably the second biggest fear for me now. Worse than that? The fear that death IS NOT the end and some of us (maybe me) will suffer eternally in hell after death. That... I found even scarier

@xandi It’s crazy how one fear can feel like the scariest thing you will ever face, but then the mind manages to latch on to somthing that is “even scarier”. The afterlife stuff bothered me too, I eventually came to the conclusion that I don’t know and I can’t know what happens so I just accepted it as a 50/50 if it exists and I just try to live as best I can. Although that took time to be able to accept.