thinking about death

LegacyUser

hi, im a regular poster but going unregistered for this. hope thats ok. im female, early 20s.

about a month before Xmas i was browsing boards, bored, and ended up in the bereavement forum. i dont know why, but i was reading threads there and all of a sudden it hit me...im going to die, and im not going to be seeing my loved ones every day. obviously I always knew I would die, but it was in the back of my mind and wasnt something I thought about.
at the time, when it "hit" me, i cried for about two hours and rang my bf to try and take my mind off it. but after we got off the phone it was all i could think of. at the time i was on a new birth control and VERY weepy/emotional, if someone said boo to me i would have cried. (i have since come off this birth control and back to my usual one,mostly because i was hoping the death thoughts would go away)
i have a fairly good life..i have no debt and living in a nice house. im unemployed atm, but i dont think that has anything to do with it. i have a great boyfriend who i love so much and wonderful family who im fairly close with.
anyways ever since then (over 2 months ago) i keep thinking about death, multiple times a day. i am terrified of it and losing my loved ones. obviously its going to happen us all but its getting me so down
about 5 mins before i came here to make this thread i had another "moment" where it just kind of hit me and i started crying. last week i went to visit my great grandmother who i usually enjoy chatting with, but instead i couldnt wait to get out of there. shes 96 and just seeing her barely even to move upset me, i suppose ageing is also bothering me which i realised after seeing her. again, this wasnt even on my mind until after i started thinking about death 2 months ago.

can anyone give me any advice, i hate that its on my mind. after seeing my great grandmother i mentioned to mum that it was sad that she is unable to do much other than sit down watching tv on her on, mum said its not sad because shes lucky she got to live such a long life. i told my bf about it too and he keeps telling me im being silly and far too young to worry about it..and i agree with him, i really do, but i just cant push it to the back of my mind do i need to see a doctor?

i would appreciate any advice on this..its wrecking my head and ruining my days. i will see an old person and realise i will be that old someday, or i will realise i wont be able to see and talk to my loved ones once we all die, etc. its horrible and tearing me apart inside

i dont know if im depressed or what...can anyone please help...thank you!

Beruthiel

death11 wrote: »

i am terrified of it and losing my loved ones.

You are not thinking rationally.
There will be no fear of losing anyone.
You will be dead, you will cease to exist, therefore there will be no emotion of any kind.

after seeing my great grandmother i mentioned to mum that it was sad that she is unable to do much other than sit down watching tv on her on, mum said its not sad because shes lucky she got to live such a long life.

You're mother is 100% correct.
If your Gran got to be 96 and still have her facilities, she is unbelievably lucky!
What's more, your Gran knows that. She is also accepting of the inevitable.

Its wrecking my head and ruining my days. i will see an old person and realise i will be that old someday, or i will realise i wont be able to see and talk to my loved ones once we all die, etc. its horrible and tearing me apart inside

Would you consider that you cannot sit back and think about this rationally?
If you cannot, then yes, go talk to a professional.

Might I also suggest that you spend time with the loved ones that you will miss when they are gone.

LegacyUser

I went through the same thing in my teens after an older relative died. It didn't hit me at the time but instead out of the blue, a few months later and was like a panic attack. I literally couldn't stop thinking about it- everytime I talked to someone all I could think of was that one day they would be dead and couldn't understand how people got up in the morning, studied, worked...bothered doing anything basically. What was the point when it was all just a futile distraction from the horror of the situation we were all in?

In my case I didn't speak to anyone about it and it (it was a period of extreme depression really) went away gradually over the course of the next 6 months. I can still imagine the horrible feeling, but I don't feel it as such and it doesn't affect my day-to-day life. I think you should speak to a counsellor- I wish I had been able to. I think I would have got through it a lot faster if I had. It seems that a lot of people go through something like this, when you first become properly aware of your mortality and what it entails and therapists are well used to dealing with this- it's a fundamental human concern after all! I'm studying counselling now and we have a lot of teaching on coming to terms with mortality and the importance of finding personal meaning/purpose in your life.

This should pass OP, as your mind is able to process and reconcile the knowledge, but speaking to a professional may speed up the process and give you some support as you do so. I'd also recommend a book called "Staring at the Sun", by Irvin Yalom (a famous psychiatrist). It's about his clinical work and reflections on exactly this topic and is oddly uplifting!

It's horrible OP, but you are not the first to feel it and it will pass. All the best to you and hope you feel better soon.

Sindri

I think, OP, you are experiencing one of the many existential crises that we experience through out our lives.

When we first become familiar with the concept of death, we fear it. It is not something that cannot be reasoned with. We usually cope with this by assuming the position that there is life after death, or that of fatalism of nihilism. In fatalism we except not that we will die, but that there is nothing we can do about it, so we repress any thoughts of it though usually these thoughts are sublimated into other fears and they recur to cause us to suffer from a low self esteem or we end up participating in hedonistic careless behaviour. These are common human behaviours and coping mechanisms until we accept death.

As humans, a lot of our fear and behaviour is motivated by our fear of death, as it attacks our self esteem, our self efficacy in how we feel capable of coping to life. I have experienced similar thoughts to you. You, and I, it would appear suffer from necrophobia and thantophobia. We are assaulted by thoughts of our morality and the brevity of life that leaves us sad and depressed. As I said it lowers our self esteem because to us life seems pointless and we also feel pointless or useless. Others have felt the same, they just find a way to cope with it.

It would also appear that you are possibly experiencing a mid life crisis (which occur throughout our lives, they are just knowing by this name) where we evaluate ourselves and our happiness and our morality. I experienced my first at the age of 10. I felt worthless, that life was worthless if we were just going to die, and be forgotten and if all around us changed beyond recognition. What's the point, why bother the effort of continuously coping to changing situations in search of an elusive happiness if in the end we will die.

The sad fact is there is no point to life other than the ones you choose. Every response you get will either be that there is life after death or that of fatalism, no matter how fallacious either is, you don't have to accept death. You can do what I do. Live every moment in happiness. Seek out what makes you happy, live what makes you happy, cherish what makes you happy. That's the only way to cope to death, what few others realise, is to live your life. The difficulty you are having now will subside, it will never be gone, but it will subside.

The thing is no one sane ever excepts death, they just find a way to deal with it. Fatalism is the most popular. You, OP, are just experiencing a mid life crisis. It will be all topsy turvy until you come out the other side and have re-evaluated your life goals.

I wish you the best.


(p.s.) what usually works for me is to remember that I am worthless and life is pointless only if I think so. I remove myself, as in my ego and selfishness from my thoughts, and I feel much better. I can approach life with out the idea of my self at the centre of it and not get caught up in my feelings of my fear of death which are perfectly rational and is what is to be expected from a egoistic rational being. I know why I fear death, and why everyone else does to. Once you can account for your behaviour and realise it is perfectly natural everything will seem better.:)

Acoshla

OP I was the exact same as you, female, mid 20's, one night I was in a sad place in life, had been sick for a few months with various things, was very stressed in a job I hated, both of my grandparents were sick and showing their fragility in old age, I was sitting in on my own and this night I was particularly miserable with just a cold, which I wouldn't bat an eye at normally but I was very, very miserable. And suddenly out of nowhere I thought "What's the f-in point in anything? We struggle through our crappy lives and then we die and that's it". It hit me like a ton of bricks, all I could think of was that someday I was going to die, anything I do was meaningless because someday I'd be dead and none of it would matter. Not gonna lie, I felt like this for quite a few months, it was like I had never heard of death before or something!

Anyways I struggled with this secretly for months, I tried to bring it up with one or two people but you can't say it without sounding mad or miserable to be honest, so I said nothing for the most part. Like you visiting my Nan really hammered it home, she couldn't speak, was bed bound, and I just thought ugh, what's the point.

One day I was in the car overthinking things as usual when - again out of nowhere - I was thinking about my Nan and how crap her life now is and I just thought she's had a great long life, is loved by her family, yes she's in the last years of it now and can't do much but my God if that isn't a reason to cram in fun stuff now while I still can I don't know what is. When I'm old and bed bound I want a massive bank of memories that I can replay, think about, bore people with, and who cares if none of it matters when I'm dead, it matters now! In a few seconds my view had changed completely, it was mad. The more I visit my Nan the more I realise how right I am with this attitude, she's 90 now, bed bound (she can move one arm), has very mumbled speech but we can understand 80% of it, and she is happy out, has accepted her new life in the hospital and doesn't let it get her down, lives for chats with the staff and visitors. She reflects on her life, how much she loved my grandad, how great her grandkids are, and how well cared for she is now. Whereas my other nan died at 53, never got to see any of her grandkids, barely got to see her kids grow up, and we would give anything to have her with us now, even if she was in the same way as my 90 year old Nan at least she'd be here and wouldn't have missed everything.

Now I try to do as much as I can with my time and my life, I don't worry about the future, I hop on planes to meet friends in foreign cities, I take time out of work to do fun things, I shower friends and family with gifts and affection, and I take loads of photos. When I'm old I want to know that I enjoyed things while I could, and I hope to get really super old because it's better than the alternative. Depending on what you believe, when you die you're dead, gone, food for the worms, and you won't care that you're dead because you're dead! Or you'll be in heaven, in the afterlife, wherever that is, and that's apparently meant to be a happy place so it's win/win wherever you end up.

LegacyUser

thanks for the replies everyone..had a long reply but just deleted it. basically..i feel very very low, its still bothering me and ive had about 4 or 5 "episodes" for lack of better word, today, where i just keep crying.

i do think i need to see a counciller but im on a medical card atm and i doubt theyll see me straight away even though i feel as low as i have ever felt.

Ickle Magoo

There's no point ifing and buting and assuming things and staying miserable.

Make an appointment with your GP today and tell them how you feel, at least you'll get the ball rolling.

All the best.

Curva Sud

Nobody know's when were going to go that's just the way life is.The only thing you can do is live each day as if it was your last with your family and friends ,enjoy life and don't be worrying about death.

theg81der

Death11 what do you think happens when you die? what about losing your loved ones freaks you out? Op is it by any chance panick attacks that your having when your having this episode? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_attack

Op I think this is a normal phase that people go through, everyone just finds a way to cope, you need to find yours and if you can`t you need help. Don`t be ashamed of how your feeling it is normal.

LegacyUser

op here again. thanks for replying

to answer the questions, im not sure what happens after death, well what i think happens. i used to always tell myself there was an afterlife but now i am thinking well what if theres not. what freaks me out about dying..a number of things. 1. i have never lost anyone close to me and am terrified for it to happen, nobody is getting any younger and im sure its only a matter of time before it happens. 2. not being here to see my loved ones/them not being here eventually either. 3. the idea of not being alive, rotting away in the ground, not exisiting and everyone eventually being forgotten.

i dont know if its panic attacks.

after spending most of yesterday crying for hours, i went to the emergency dr service last night and they were absolutely useless. the woman on the phone who i had to call to make the appointment was so lovely and sympathetic. when i got in there the doctor was watching tv and it was obvious from the get go he wanted to get back to his tv show instead of listening to me. multiple times throughout the conversation he would say things like "ohhh so you're still on the pill" even though i had already explained it to him! he also asked "is this the first time you have tried to harm yourself?"...he obviously didn't even properly read the file the woman sent him! he kept mentioning it was an "emergency service" and making me feel bad for being there. i would understand if it was busy but we were the only people there the whole time! not even one other phone call. i also feel like he didn't realize how badly it affected me, even though i started crying multiple times and arrived with puffy red teary eyes.
a few hours before i went to him i had looked up "signs of depression" on wikipedia because i was trying to figure out if i was depressed, and when i got there he began asking me a list of questions as if he had just went on wiki himself and read them. he also didn't know birth control pills can have mood changes, he was shocked when he looked it up in his little medical dictionary and is putting it all down to that. i dont believe thats the case as i have been on it nearly two years.

he did give me xanax to get me over the weekend, he said i quote "ill give you some of these tranquilizers to make ya a bit dopey for the weekend!"...nice. i haven't taken them, i was so tired last night that i fell asleep early. he said it seems to be anxiety more than depression, and that pills aren't a long term solution for me and councilling would be better. i do agree and am glad they don't want to drug me up long term (had a relative on these pills and its not nice!) so ill go to the doctor on monday and hopefully they can arrange it. i just hope the waiting list isn't months

Taltos

OP

please follow through and go to your doctor as soon as you can.
If they cannot help seek a 2nd or 3rd opinion.

As the advice has tended towards the medical at this point and you are correctly seeking medical advice I am going to close this thread. If you require more advice of a non-medical nature please contact one of the mods and we will re-open this for you.

Please note we value discretion and privacy extremely highly here.

All the best with your doctor.
Taltos