TW DEATH: I’ve figured out my core fear is death. I was curious what others had done for their exposures when this was the case? I’m scared of if heaven if real or not, the idea of being buried since I’m claustrophobic, the idea of being separated from the ones i love,. I literally shutter just at writing some of these words. Someone very close to me just lost their husband in a tragic accident and it’s been very triggering.

At first, it just started as harmless questions, curiously exploring the universe and what life and death mean as a human. Then it became an obsession about death and the afterlife. I’m a Catholic-turned-agnostic who recently took an interest in religion again, trying to redevelop a relationship with God without letting the fear of not being good enough and possibly going to Hell taking over me. Instead, my brain latched onto the possibility that there is no God, that there’s eternal nothingness after the short time we have here on earth and that everything means nothing. My love for my friends and family. My desire to achieve my goals, and to be happy for the people I love achieving theirs. I’m haunted by the feeling that it will all be for nothing, that I will never be reunited with those that I love, that the people I love who have passed on have ceased to exist and one day, so will I and everyone else. I can’t function now. I’ve made myself physically ill over this. I’ve lost my appetite. As someone who once took pride in how much love I have for my job as a daycare teacher, I come into work and feel numb. I go home and feel numb. I’ve obsessively started telling the people in my life how much I love and appreciate them because for the past three days, I’ve been sick thinking about how one day, either I’ll leave them or they’ll leave me. It feels like nothing matters. It feels like everything is in vain. I’ve tried so hard to reframe my mindset, to rewire my brain to not think that way. I’ve tried ERP techniques of allowing myself to sit with the discomfort that the fear brings. To try and desensitize myself to this fear. Nothing seems to work. I’m so lost. I’ve been this way for three days, with yesterday and today being worse than the day it started. It’s like the obsession is morphing into depression in a way. I’m scared I’ll never feel enjoyment in any form again. I don’t know what to do anymore.

I’ve been perturbed for a couple of months now with incessant thoughts about aging and dying. I really am not sure what to do. This feels like other OCD themes, but also really different, because this time, what I’m afraid of is sure to happen. I will either die, or age and then die. It’s been so difficult to enjoy anything lately. I just want to pull a blanket over my head and wait until death comes. Has anyone else felt this way? I feel quite alone. I am trying to enjoy life, but I just remember that it will all be gone in a flash. Nothing really seems to help me feel better. The only escape I have is in my dreams where I can fantasize about never aging or dying. Or at least being able to rewind the clock to have more time.

Okay so for context to assist anyone who wants to give advice to me, I am religious (catholic) but I also believe in science, the reason I believe in both in simple terms is the math don’t math for me. Yes we know the big bang theory happened, but the theory is it started from a singularity kind of like what you would find in the center of a black hole, no one knows what happens if you go through it. So out of this point and singularity, there sprung an explosion that created the universe and in that universe out of all odds a planet was created (the only one we know of right now, though I think it’s highly likely there are other life forms out there) that just so happened to have to develop the exact right conditions for life to develop. And how did that life even develop, primordial soup, the earth’s bodies of waters just so happened to get the exact chemical compounds in the exact amount needed to create organic compounds such as amino acids. So my point in this science brief is that everything we experience and exist in is a statistical anomaly, to many anomalies to make sense for me. Maybe the way I understand religion ends up being correct or not, I hopefully won’t know for a really really really long while, I go with what makes sense to me, but I do know that there has to be some sort of higher power that I don’t understand that in my opinion must be at work within the universe. Despite all I know about science and all I know about religion (my own and others) I cannot shake my existential dread, I can’t shake the awful fear of death. I can’t even enjoy basic milestones in life like birthdays or weddings for people because it always creeps in. It even doesn’t help if I try to think about the concept of heaven and just radically accept that as my answer for what happens after, because then I feel so much fear and dread of seeing the people who traumatized me when I get there. My adopted mom once asked me when I would stop being scared of my abuser ever finding me or interacting me and I told her when the woman is dead, now that’s not even true. I can’t even feel of safety in religion because then I become terrified I’ll be in eternity with that woman, and I’m not even going to start on my religious OCD themes right now. It’s affecting my OCD horribly and I’ve had multiple panic attacks at this point and so so many compulsions, it’s like they never end. For those with death anxiety, what are things you’ve tried that I could try to help? Are there any specific therapies for death anxiety that I could try? I want to be able to take control of my life and be able to enjoy things without always having this creep up in the back of my mind, so I’ll gladly hear any suggestions or things others have tried that could help. Thank you!