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Thanatophobia - Fear of death or dying

Mick P said:
Yes but he is right. If I was depressed or worrying to that extent, I would be jumping off a tall building.
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Of course he's *right*. Just like he'd be *right* if he told anorexics to get a decent meal every day and the obese to cut their portion size in half. But telling alcoholics to stop drinking doesn't address the underlying cause, does it?
 
Neither does the sympathetic approach cure it. It may make you feel good being kind and understanding but the man is still an alcoholic.
 
Hook said:
I don’t get panic attacks as described, but I am experiencing more frequent periods of feeling down. Usually only lasts a few hours, but I hate the feeling!

Sometimes it is related to thoughts of mortality (more so about family and friends than myself). But more often my trigger is something else (e.g., the never-ending pandemic, racism, misogyny, right wing idiots, and so on).

I hate feeling pessimistic, and I do not want to become just another angry old man who can only see what’s ugly and wrong in the world.

It has gotten to the point where I no can longer ingest a steady, daily diet of political news and opinion. But I know how important it is to remain informed, so I am trying to figure out how to do so without becoming obsessed and upset. Will keep working on it, but no clue if I’ll ever be successful.
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I know what you mean. A lot of it might be down to Situational Depression (google it if you're not familiar) and limiting your exposure to the news and even some of the threads here might help that.
 
Mick P said:
Neither does the sympathetic approach cure it. It may make you feel good being kind and understanding but the man is still an alcoholic.
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Of course dealing with the root cause is the only way to address the problem, however, there are effective ways of doing that and then there's the direct approach.

It's slightly reassuring to know whilst your posts are less frequent, when they do arrive, they're still of the quality we've got used to.
 
I get down, too. My work load has increased significantly since March 2020. I'm more or less living in a basement office, trying to keep on top of everything.

My frail mother is not well, so I spend weekends helping her, cleaning her place, doing her laundry and bringing her groceries I've ordered online to lower the risk of my exposure to COVID that would almost certainly be the end of her even though she's doubly vaccinated. I've not seen many people in person for more months than I can recall. It's isolating and I've become weird(er).

When I'm down, I turn to things that bring me happiness — the kiddo, the wife-o, the catso, the Trek and the hi fi. Oh, and you clownfishes when I have a second. :–)

LL&P fishies,
Joe
 
stevec67 said:
Thanks for your sympathy, I'm sure that the OP now feels a lot better. Now you can go back to your day job of telling depressives to snap out of it, sufferers of PTSD that sh it happens and they should just move on, and the clinically obese to just eat less, fat lazy bastards.
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But he does have a point: life is tough and then you die.

I'm quite a cheerful person, except when I'm not.
 
MikeMA said:
But he does have a point: life is tough and then you die.

I'm quite a cheerful person, except when I'm not.
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Christ, you too? How many times tonight? The whole point is that a phobia is an *irrational* fear. Just like alcoholism is an *irrational* desire to have a drink, obesity/anorexia an irrational relationship with food, and serial killing an irrational desire to kill people. You wouldn't tell a serial killer that he really shouldn't be killing women, because it's not exactly fair, is it, and expect him to stop, would you? He bloody well *knows*. You telling him will not make him stop.
You can't fix an irrational thought with a rational observation.

Anyone can lose weight, give up alcohol, drugs, etc. You just stop doing something. But that's the easy part. The hard bit is getting your mind to the point where you want to and are prepared to do what it takes. That's really difficult, really complicated and will probably take longer than the actual weight loss, drying out, cold turkey. Why do the obese eat compulsively? Why do they feel the need to eat twice what I do, every day? I don't have the answers to this, if I did and I could bottle it I'd be a billionaire.

This is a long way off Joe Ps observation that he is brassed off about working too hard, caring for a frail mother and there being a bastard pandemic just to add to the fact that not only have you just stepped in something a dog left behind but your shoes leak so the stuff is *inside* your shoes as well. Those are rational and proportionate responses to a crap situation. (I feel for you Joe, hang in there and concentrate on the good stuff).

Irrational stuff can't be addressed by attacking the symptoms. If the house is flooded, you need to stop the rain coming in, or turn the water off, before you mop up.
 
stevec67 said:
Christ, you too? How many times tonight? The whole point is that a phobia is an *irrational* fear. Just like alcoholism is an *irrational* desire to have a drink, obesity/anorexia an irrational relationship with food, and serial killing an irrational desire to kill people. You wouldn't tell a serial killer that he really shouldn't be killing women, because it's not exactly fair, is it, and expect him to stop, would you? He bloody well *knows*. You telling him will not make him stop.
You can't fix an irrational thought with a rational observation.

Anyone can lose weight, give up alcohol, drugs, etc. You just stop doing something. But that's the easy part. The hard bit is getting your mind to the point where you want to and are prepared to do what it takes. That's really difficult, really complicated and will probably take longer than the actual weight loss, drying out, cold turkey. Why do the obese eat compulsively? Why do they feel the need to eat twice what I do, every day?
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You're not a fan of George Carlin then?
 
stevec67 said:
Christ, you too? How many times tonight? The whole point is that a phobia is an *irrational* fear. Just like alcoholism is an *irrational* desire to have a drink, obesity/anorexia an irrational relationship with food, and serial killing an irrational desire to kill people. You wouldn't tell a serial killer that he really shouldn't be killing women, because it's not exactly fair, is it, and expect him to stop, would you? He bloody well *knows*. You telling him will not make him stop.
You can't fix an irrational thought with a rational observation.

Anyone can lose weight, give up alcohol, drugs, etc. You just stop doing something. But that's the easy part. The hard bit is getting your mind to the point where you want to and are prepared to do what it takes. That's really difficult, really complicated and will probably take longer than the actual weight loss, drying out, cold turkey. Why do the obese eat compulsively? Why do they feel the need to eat twice what I do, every day?
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Fantastic post.

It is the pointlessly -reductive attitude of those who , erm, parry / wont bother to even begin to comprehend these (and other comparable) problems that inhibits; and leads: no, has led - us to the kind of expectation of ' There is no such thing as Society' Government that blight us, in the UK, today.
 
I used to have claustrophobia dreams. I'd wake up at 3:30 AM afraid to go back to sleep lest the dreams resume.
 
Steve,

There's a component to the crap that's rational and it's what I'm experiencing at, say, 3 p.m. However, at 3 a.m., the crap feels very different.

Joe
 
Fatmarley said:
Every so often (roughly every 10 years) I convince myself I'm dying and even get symptoms (chest pains etc). The fear can be so bad that I can't sleep at night, and I've even had it so bad that I shake with fear and get dizzy spells.

Does anyone else suffer from this?
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Every 10 years? How long does this fear last every 10 years?
 
Hi,

Very interesting thread, some very good and helpful posts, like every subject there will be those that can relate to this and some will either not understand or not be concerned about the issue, and there are reasons for those views as well.

Here is the Wiki page on it for those that are interested, hope it helps some with the understanding of this issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_anxiety_(psychology)

Cheers

John
 
sean99 said:
Chest pains and dizzy spells can also be common with panic attacks, which are much more common than you might think.
That said I think it's worth booking a non-urgent appointment with a GP for reassurance if nothing else (assuming you have not already done so).
I'm not advocating the worried well stampede to the Dr, but if your symptoms are only once per decade I would hope the NHS could handle that load.
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I haven't had chest pains for about 25 years. The pains weren't bad but we're all over my chest, and never seemed to go.
They wired me up to a machine at the hospital and as soon as the doctor told me I was ok, the pains disappeared.

Probably started as a pulled muscle and my brain did the rest.
 
Mullardman said:
Sounds like this thing has a lot in common with plain old anxiety, though as a long term sufferer I am in no way intending to minimise its impact.
Anxiety is a very odd thing and I have no idea why different people develop phobias around such a wide variety of things.
Most of my anxiety is focused on health. Yet oddly...not on my well diagnosed heart conditions..which I just sort of accept. Instead my phobias are around infectious diseases...which of course have made the last couple of years huge fun. ...:( Little logic there. but then anxiety isn't logical. That's the point. In many ways it represents a failure of logic.
I would start by looking for online sources of help and info. Anxiety is very common and can be at least minimised through a proper understanding of self help and self talk techniques.
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Yes, I'm sure it's an anxiety thing.

When both my son's were born I used have terrible thoughts. I can remember the fear of the thought of someone stabbing my son in the head when I was out with him. A mate at work had similar thoughts, so I assumed it was normal.
 
Sean K said:
As Sean says, these may be hyperventilation-mediated panic attacks.

If we hold ourselves tense, which we often do when stressed or anxious, this can make it difficult to move air in and out of our lungs via the usual method, of using the diaphragm and instead, we use the intercostal muscles in the rib cage to the same effect. (Thorassic breathing)

This has several effects. We are so used to feeling the diaphragm moving, that when it isn't, we can think we're not breathing, which although is untrue, is alarming if one believes it.

If we think we're not breathing, we can 'over compensate' by thorassically breathing even harder. This has several effects. We're not used to breathing like this and the muscles can soon become tired and sore, the chest pain can be misinterpreted as a heart attack. You can actually shift quite a lot of air this way and if you're simpli lying in bed, then you'll be shifting too much air for the activity your engaged in. This can extract more CO2 from your body (normally dissolved as carbonic acid) than is optimum. This is completely benign and reversible, but it temporarily raises the pH of your internal chemical environment. This can feel weird, hot , dizzy, pins and needles, hearing can go a bit, etc. If you feel further alarmed by this, then adrenalin gets released, leading to increased heart rate, etc.

The whole CO2 thing is the reason why people are sometimes advised to breath into a paper bag; you'll soon have a bag full of moist CO 2 rich air, and breathing this quickly restores the pH, etc. But you don't need to do this, you can just cup your hands over your mouth or better still. Just stop hyperventilating.

We normally train people to. manage this by teaching them to deliberately hyperventilate, and swith back and forth between this and slow, shallow diaphragmatic breathing. (Not deep breaths).

This helps to demystify the process and makes it much easier to spot hyperventilation early on, rather than when the uncomfortable sensations develop.

We also encourage people to really push hyperventilation to it's limits, so they can demonstrate to themselves that with some very rare exceptions, you can't harm yourself this way. Discovering this makes the whole process a lot less scary.

I often use the anaolgy that if you knew nothing about astronomy, a solar eclipse would be truly terrifying, the sun god is dying, it's the end of all life, etc. But just some rudimentary knowledge turns it into a completely different experience.

Anyone struggling with these symptoms is advised to approach their GP; they will first want to rule out anything nasty, with a view to referral to a Clin Psych or appropriately trained CBT therapist, as it's much better to tackle this with a good teacher.
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I've only had a few panic attacks, but they were a very long time ago, when I was 17 years old. Doctor gave me beta blockers, but I didn't need them. Just having them on me did the trick.
 
Seeker_UK said:
Yes. About every two or three days. I spend a lot of time wondering what new ache / pain is the beginning of the thing that's going to finish me off. Then I get this horrible sick feeling realizing I'm going to die. Then it goes. Until then next time...

Probably not healthy for a 50-something.
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Sorry to hear that. I've found breathing exercises help a bit. Breath in for 4 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, and the breath out for 7 seconds. It's not magic or anything, but it does help a bit.
There are apps you can download but I haven't really tried them properly, so I don't know if they are any good.
 
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