how do you deal with d-e-a-t-h?

No I haven't lost someone recently, I just have this, I don't know, obsession, with it. What I mean is I think about how one day the people I know, and myself, are going to die. This is a daily occurrence, more than just once a day! I just have a hard time wrapping my head around it, and sometimes I get really upset that this is something that WILL happen, it's not like something I'm supposed to do and can make the choice to just don't do it because it's unpleasant.

May sound weird but for awhile I would sit here and think, I wonder if I will have these thoughts 'next time'. Then I realized that was basically believing in reincarnation with that idea, but I don't believe in it really so that was upsetting, there won't be a 'next time'. Maybe I was having trouble accepting that like animals, we just go away when we die.

Sometimes I wish I still followed my Christian upbringing (I consider myself Agnostic now), I think of my Grandma who has cancer, and while I'm sure she's upset and probably scared, at least she believes there is something more after death. I wish I had that comfort.

I tend to think of this the most when I see evidence of just how fast time flies by. Even at 22 I feel like my time is ticking away! I guess I feel like I'm not living to the fullest too. Who knows, I might not be lucky enough to make it to old age, I could get a disease or have an accident. If I feel random pains, I start thinking maybe its cancer (but too afraid to get things checked out). I'll ride in the middle car of the subway thinking it's safest incase it crashes or gets crashed into. I was afraid to fly when I went to Europe this summer (took off/landed 11 times total I think...I nearly started crying on one flight because the plane didn't feel safe, and infact that airline had a crash that day [SAS], but it was just landing gear malfunction, it didn't really 'crash' and no one was hurt, but still, yikes!). If I don't hear from someone, or if they go somewhere and come back late, I start thinking the worst.

I really don't know why I'm like this, and I wish I could get it off my mind. I tried getting some info on google, found a couple forum posts similar to how I felt...I think they called it death anxiety or something like that. I found this described me well link Do you think that this is something beyond my control like a disorder? As in more to it than just worrying a lot?

 

Anyway feel free to reply to that if you like, I kind of rambled a bit, my original intent of this post was just to see how other people deal with/accept death.

This is exactly how I started thinking, when I had my baby, it turned out I had developed postnatal depression. Its a terrible feeling to go through what you are going through, and plz do try to speak to someone!

 

PM me if you need to talk 

I'm a lot like you - agnostic and not happy with the inevitability of death.  I do say a prayer each night before - to whomever might be listening - that at leasts tends to calm it a bit, but it's always there in the back of my mind.  I'm sorry for you that it's already hit you so young.  It never hit me until my mid 30's so my 20s were pretty happy-go-lucky and enjoyable.

The one thing I'm sure of is this- obsessing about death will not make it any less inevitable - if anything, the stress will only bring it on sooner.  It's better to keep yourself distracted with the things you enjoy, and keep doing so for the rest of your life, and if you're lucky, when it does take you, you won't know what hit you, and you'll have spent a lifetime doing what you loved to do and being around the people you loved.  Nobody can ask for more than that.

Even the greatest minds and talents of the world are eventually taken by death.  Isn't it funny how ordinary nothing people like ourselves want to think of ourselves as somehow exempt?

On the great TV program "Six Feet Under", a grieving character asks the funeral director "Why do people have to die?", and he said "To make life more important".  I thought that was a pretty good answer.  What a treasure our lives are once we are fully aware of how finite they really are. 

 

I have no control over it, therefore I do not put much thought into it. I'll die when it's time, and so will my family/friends.

I've already lost 3 people I went to high school with, and I'm only 23. 

Im not afraid of death, but of dying.  If youve ever had a time where you couldnt catch you breath or even holding your breath under water until you can bear it, the idea of going through that without ever actually getting the oxygen your bodys screaming for is what Im afraid of.

Not existing though doesnt phase me.  Death of my daughter though has been a terrorizing thought at times.  Occurances where I there seems to be no explanation why I cant get hold of her.  Many examples but one being calling from the night shift and no answer on the house phone.  One of the only reliefs until finding her would be the delusion that I could prevent her from dying by mentally offering up my own life.  I would make this deal in my head that (usually when I was driving home or trying to find her) for fate to take me (heartattack, carwreck, etc) so that she would be fine and I wouldnt have to try to go on without her.  I can see how ridiculous it sounds but in that fear, it was the only thing to help me think everything will turn out find because I could save her when I fear I cant.

The reality that I someday wont exist though is actually surreal to me.  Very hard for me to grasp, not in a sad way except of course not being able to be around those I want to.  Since I only know what its like to exist, I cant imagine the alternative. 

I think I went thru a phase like that when I was about 12 years old.

I personally don't think that my energy will just stop when my body peters out.  I'm not sure exactly what will happen to it, but I have my beliefs.

I tend to feel more awkward about death, in terms of other peoples' deaths.  I want to say something loving and reassuring to people who've lost someone, but I feel so unsure about exactly what to say.  Because people have so many different thoughts and feelings about it. And I don't want to say the wrong thing.

I'm not afraid of it though. Not at all.  It will either be positive (if I'm right) or it will be nothing (if I'm wrong).

I've already written out a program for my funeral service, complete with poems I want to have read and songs I want to have played - because the last thing I want is for my daughter or other loved ones to have to come up with all that when they're missing me.  I keep it with my legal papers and life insurance policies.

It does kind of sound like you might benefit from talking to a counselor or something, even if just once.  With life being so short, as you say, you don't want to waste it on worry.

:)

The only way I deal with it is to not deal with it.  It's the only thing that keeps me sane.

my best friend has this exact same problem. when she comes back from traveling im gonna show her this thread

i just tell her its nice to know that your out of the pain that this world puts you through

I dont think about it. I mean. I am not afraid of it. I dont believe that people actually die. Like their body does, but when you die i think that you actually still stay in the same life, in a differant state of mind. No heaven. No hell. Just thoughts. I dont think we actually exist, we are just thoughts, no one is having, just floating around who knows where

Original Post by vicereine:

No I haven't lost someone recently, I just have this, I don't know, obsession, with it. What I mean is I think about how one day the people I know, and myself, are going to die. This is a daily occurrence, more than just once a day! I just have a hard time wrapping my head around it, and sometimes I get really upset that this is something that WILL happen, it's not like something I'm supposed to do and can make the choice to just don't do it because it's unpleasant.

May sound weird but for awhile I would sit here and think, I wonder if I will have these thoughts 'next time'. Then I realized that was basically believing in reincarnation with that idea, but I don't believe in it really so that was upsetting, there won't be a 'next time'. Maybe I was having trouble accepting that like animals, we just go away when we die.

Sometimes I wish I still followed my Christian upbringing (I consider myself Agnostic now), I think of my Grandma who has cancer, and while I'm sure she's upset and probably scared, at least she believes there is something more after death. I wish I had that comfort.

I tend to think of this the most when I see evidence of just how fast time flies by. Even at 22 I feel like my time is ticking away! I guess I feel like I'm not living to the fullest too. Who knows, I might not be lucky enough to make it to old age, I could get a disease or have an accident. If I feel random pains, I start thinking maybe its cancer (but too afraid to get things checked out). I'll ride in the middle car of the subway thinking it's safest incase it crashes or gets crashed into. I was afraid to fly when I went to Europe this summer (took off/landed 11 times total I think...I nearly started crying on one flight because the plane didn't feel safe, and infact that airline had a crash that day [SAS], but it was just landing gear malfunction, it didn't really 'crash' and no one was hurt, but still, yikes!). If I don't hear from someone, or if they go somewhere and come back late, I start thinking the worst.

I really don't know why I'm like this, and I wish I could get it off my mind. I tried getting some info on google, found a couple forum posts similar to how I felt...I think they called it death anxiety or something like that. I found this described me well link Do you think that this is something beyond my control like a disorder? As in more to it than just worrying a lot?

 

Anyway feel free to reply to that if you like, I kind of rambled a bit, my original intent of this post was just to see how other people deal with/accept death.

 Please get psychiatric help or other counseling. I had/have many of the exact same symptoms you do and most of my life I thought I had to just DEAL with it! However, there are many forms of treatment for "anxiety disorder". I'm not attempting to diagnose you over the internet, but I think you should definitely make anxiety at the top of your research list.

With medication and therapy, I am 90 to 95% improved. My goal is to be off meds completely while still keeping anxiety under control. Some of my symptoms are/were:

-obsessing over death, picturing very vividly the details my own death and that of my family members

-worrying excessively about where I would go when I die

-being terrified of time passing; being afraid of growing old; obsessing over 'wasted' days 

-obsessing over the fact that I kept getting obsessive thoughts

 

If you think you are worrying about things more than other people, you PROBABLY ARE! And it REALLY can hinder you from living your life. I wish you the best! 

I agree with feanor...  I have anxiety too, and this sounds a lot like at the very least obsessive compulsive behavior... 

I take the medicine and it has helped with all those thoughts for me too.

I also think that it would be good for you to check into religion, it really helped me to know where I am going.

We came from somewhere and we will go somewhere....

Let us know what is up okay??? 

I remember worrying and worrying about this when I was about ten.  I think what calmed me most was how my mom explained it:

Humans are capable of the biggest miracle of all, creating life.  We can make a new life, out of nothing (babies)!  If we can do something so miraculous as that, then surely if we wanted to we could continue our own life, regenerate forever.  We don't do this, because we are meant to die.  There's a purpose to death.

Imagine how scary life would be if you knew you would live forever?  (Tuck Everlasting)

I agree with nomoreexcueses, in that I don't think life can just extinguish itself with death.  I mean, we learn in science that energy can be neither created or destroyed, and we are basically an energy.  I remember my brother telling me that while trying to create artificial intelligence they discovered that the one thing they couldn't replicate is the 'observer' or 'consciouness'.  They don't understand what it is, the actual scientific term for it is the 'observer' (look it up ;) )

Nothing can really be created or destroyed.  Energy, matter, space.  That's just science. 

I hope this helps.  I know you'll get over this.  Everybody goes through something like this at some point or other.  It helps to talk, and be close to people.

I know how you feel.  Ever since my husband got diagnosed with brain cancer (at age 24!) last year, I've been preoccupied with everyone's safety.  Sometimes I'll wake up at night and if my husband isn't snoring, I'll nudge him to make sure he's still alive (I know, it's really weird...). 

I've also started vividly imagining people close to me dying.  Like, how I would react, what the funeral would be like, etc.  It's quite unsettling. 

However, I've been doing better lately--I think time is helping (it's been almost a year since my husband's diagnosis).  I find I just have to distract myself from those thoughts, because once I get started, it's hard to shake them. 

Im not afraid of death, but more afraid of other people dying around me. When i was younger and in elementary school, sometimes the conversation would come up and someone would ask "what would you do if your parents died?" and i would always say that i would prob kill myself if one of my parents left or died. But then it happened last year and i mean like when something ACTUALLY happens, you handle it differently than you think you would. not saying there were never suicide thoughts. but you learn to adjust and deal with things. but I am more afraid of my mom dying, or my freind dying, because i dont really mind if i die i would just not want people around me to be hurt. Because death causes a ton of people pain, not just a few inner family members.I dunno

I'm glad I read this because I think about this often as well. I'm not afraid of dying, but I'm afraid of others dying. Because I don't know if theres an afterlife or not. If there isn't, that's horrible to me. Not EVER being able to connect with my loved ones again. Its hard for me to comprehend, and knowing that it is enevitable is terrifying to me.