Do you have death anxiety?
Here are my therapeutic musings…
🧠 I've been reflecting on how quickly time is passing. As we get older, life seems to accelerate. It can feel like we’re running out of time. And that’s scary. It can even bring about death anxiety.
I’ve seen death anxiety manifest in very different (and sometimes non-obvious!) ways. Here are some common ones:
An insatiable drive to gobble life up and live in the fast lane. I once had a client, who was so terrified of death that he was inadvertently bringing it on. It took several months of therapy to work out that this was the root cause of his self-destructive behaviour.
“Decidophobia”, which is the fear of making the wrong decision resulting in analysis paralysis. After all, if our time on earth is limited, we better make the ‘right’ choice. Right?
Extreme worrying about losing those you love - this is often more common in new parents and individuals who’ve already experienced significant loss.
📢 Ask yourself:
"Do any of the above scenarios resonate?”
“What fears do I have about death or aging?"
"How might these fears impact my daily life?
💡The revelation: “Existential therapy” suggests that death anxiety is actually at the heart of all anxiety! It focuses on helping us explore our values and beliefs, and to learn to find meaning and purpose in our lives, despite the inevitability of death.
The incomparable Existential therapist Irvin Yalom teaches us that in order to overcome our fear of death we must first stop avoiding it. He also mentions that to live more fully in the present moment and make the most of our time here, we need to get comfortable making decisions and avoid Decidophobia.
This may feel hard, because making decisions entails accepting limitations and sacrifices. After all, inactivity or not making a choice is a decision itself so we can’t just avoid it! All decisions have trade-offs/ limitations and we need to get comfortable accepting that..
After all, death is the ultimate limitation. The purpose of existential therapy is, therefore, to examine the ways in which we creatively engage with life in the face of certain death. Since nothing is fixed (except death) we have to question our assumed truths and values endlessly, recognising that at any moment we can choose a different course. Therefore, an existential approach requires a very conscious and open approach to living.
By acknowledging and addressing our fears of aging and death, we can learn to live more fully and authentically. In turn, we can also model healthy coping mechanisms for those around us, who may be experiencing their own anxieties about death and loss.
In summary, death anxiety can impact our mental and physical health, as well as our ability to live fully in the present moment. But by acknowledging and addressing our fears, we can learn to manage our anxiety in a healthy and positive way and make the most of our time here on earth.
💛 Product I’m loving: This time not a product but a book!
Irvin Yalom wrote an entire book on death anxiety which I highly recommend. He dives into plenty of his client’s stories as well as his personal experience. The book really shows how confronting our own mortality enables us to change our priorities to be more aligned with the life we want to live.
The book is called Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death, you can find it here.
Thanks for being here,
