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I do not know how people can deal with the reality of their own death - every time I think about deeply or read an article about it it just destroys my entire d
by EZ-E 3y ago
I do not know how people can deal with the reality of their own death - every time I think about deeply or read an article about it it just destroys my entire day. The author is much braver than I am. I am very scared of death, and what happens before (illness, losing autonomy). So far I haven't found a way to accept it.
- byvirtueof 3y agoHave you ever been very ill, or ill for longer periods of time? My guess is that much of a fear of death is a fear of the unknown, and a fear of unknown suffering. People who have been deathly or chronically ill have less fear of death than those who have been healthy most of their lives, partly because they know suffering, and partly because death can be promise of a future relief rather than a punishment for them.
- bowsamic 3y agoI don’t think that’s relevant. The fear here is fear of oblivion, of not existing, not fear of pain
- rob74 3y agoSame for me - I think this is a profound contradiction between the unique ability of humans to think about the future (which enables them to know that they will one day die) and the basic self-preservation instinct which all living beings have.
- sschueller 3y agoAs someone who does not fear death anymore I would ask you to find out what exactly it is you fear? If you have regrets or something you have not done you want to do you should either go do that or be at peace that you did not do it. Sometimes you also need to realize that what you are regretting you should not be. For example sometimes not taking advantage of an opportunity which you may be regretting actually led to something else much greater. If you fear for the people around you having to deal with your death you can take precautions and make their life easier. If you fear debilitating illness you always have the option of going when you decide[1] and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. [1] https://www.exit.ch/en/ https://www.exit.ch/en/
- gautamcgoel 3y agoYou say that you "always have the option of going when you decide" but the link you provided only applies to Swiss citizens.
- sschueller 3y agoI assume there is a similar service wherever you are.
- monsieurbanana 3y agoThere isn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_die#By_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_die#By_country
- arpa 3y agoOh my sweet summer child.
- datavirtue 3y agoNah. Here in the US the religious people worship other people's suffering. It makes them feel better. (I'm serious, there is this whole story of Jesus suffering were it's the point of everything) You have to come up with your own solution.
- rootusrootus 3y agoThis varies by state, of course. My dad used prescribed medication to end his own life, quite legally. Oregon.
- stef25 3y agoHere in Belgium the system is possible the most permissive in the world. People can fairly easily get a doctor to euthanize them due to a loss of quality of life, even for purely mental issues. I recall a rape victim, young woman with a husband and young kids who did this. One of the victims of the airport bombings here in Brussels chose euthanasia because she couldn't overcome the mental trauma of that day. People who are paralyzed for life (but basically stable) ... the list goes on.
- Dalewyn 3y agoI have made peace with mortality because it's something I literally can't do anything about. No amount of doing or worrying or indeed caring can nor will affect my eventual and inevitable death. I might die tomorrow (or today!) or 50 years from now and I will definitely be dead a hundred years from now regardless of whatever I do. So I don't worry about it, because it's a simple waste of my precious and limited time. Remember the old saying: Death and taxes are the two guarantees in life.
- devwastaken 3y agoDeath does not mean illness or loss of autonomy. Death is where we came from before birth, and where we return when we die again. The particles of our body are composed of others present and past. The self is an illusion, manifesting as ego.
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago> Death does not mean illness or loss of autonomy. dying does almost always mean severe illness and loss of autonomy.
- thqoeraway 3y agoMore then a decade I made the decision to kill myself. Came within a few millimeters from succeeding. My mother caught me in the backyard wearing a sweater and jeans drenched in gasoline with a lighter in my hand. My mother was never really athletic or decisive, but she moved as faster then I'd have ever seen her in my life. Hugged me hard and refused to let go no matter how hard I struggled. Took me longer to realize why she was doing that. For me to burn, I'd have to burn her as well... and she knew damned well I could never do that. The only reason I'm here is for her sake, but only just. After she is gone that there's little else that compels me to stay. It's not as if I'm unafraid of dying. It frightens me just as much as it does you. But even now don't find living to be more appealing, for reasons I cannot remember anymore. I'm just here, a clock in the shape of a person that's waiting to die.
- nly 3y agoCan someone else not be the person you stay for when your mother leaves?
- thqoeraway 3y agoHow unfair would that be to that someone? Having to bear the burden of being the sole reason for another to live? I spent years deliberately and intentionally slowly distancing myself from every friend, every acquaintance, until my existence was nothing more then a fading echo of a memory to everyone that would mourn not just a death of a human being, but the my death in particular. I've crossed paths with many of them in recent years, and to them my face is that of a stranger's. So to answer your question. No. Not without some sort of actual desire to live from myself.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agomy impression is that you are closer to accepting death then you think. almost nobody can face death without fear. most people simply deflect this fear by means of platitudes and smart mental constructs. this is all just empty words as soon the time comes.
- verisimi 3y agoDon't worry about it. Death is something you'll never experience.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mvncleaninst 3y agoI have no idea how people accept it either It's the one thing that's consistently sat in the back of my mind since age 5 and hasn't left The only response I have is this: the stress from thinking about dying makes life expectancy go down, so logically if you want to avoid death you shouldn't think about it in excess (this whole thing is contradictory, but a contradiction is the best thing I have)
- rootusrootus 3y ago> It's the one thing that's consistently sat in the back of my mind since age 5 and hasn't left Sounds like my son. He's been having occasional existential crises since about that age (he is 10 now). I don't remember worrying about it myself at such a young age, though I definitely have thought about it too much as an adult. I've learned that lying awake at 2am in bed is the worst possible time for that thought to occur. Just have to turn on the lights in that case, and find something productive to do. I keep telling myself that I didn't notice the billions of years before my birth, so I won't notice the ones following either. Life is infinitely long, from my own perspective.
- cambaceres 3y agoI have been in the same boat and this is a realization that pretty much cured me: Fear of death is not rational. There is nothing like "being dead" more than there is anything like "not being born". Our anxiety of our mortality is just a cruel evolutionary accident. Feeling scared when facing possible death is an evolutionary function for making animals avoid dangers. Unfortunately for humans we got a brain that can simulate the future very well, and we can understand that we will die. These two generates our fear of death. Again, the fear we feel is not based in anything rational, since we will never experience being dead.
- idle_zealot 3y agoI don't understand this line of thinking at all. It's irrational to fear something you can't experience? That very lack of experience is the scary part.
- cambaceres 3y agoWhy? You will not experience it. What negative is it if there is nothing? Was it scary before you where born?
- EZ-E 3y agoI think it's the period before death that scares me more than the big empty void. The big empty of death triggers a bit of anxiety but the process of my health degrading is what I feel triggers the depressed feeling...
- trabant00 3y agoYou can't think or reason your way to accepting death. Nor can others explain it. You reach that acceptance through having certain experiences. Long periods of suffering being one of those experiences.
- borbulon 3y agoMy friend, it may be one of the most important lessons you learn. I have Stage IV lung cancer and have had some brain metastases along the way which can thankfully be cleared quickly (mostly due to my proximity to boston). I do not know how much longer I have in the world. It may be 1 year, it may be 20. What I do know is that for my current mental health, I work to get to a place where I can greet death as a long-lost friend.
- david-gpu 3y ago> I do not know how much longer I have in the world. It may be 1 year, it may be 20. What I do know is that for my current mental health, I work to get to a place where I can greet death as a long-lost friend Wise words. None of us know whether today is the day we die, so we develop coping mechanisms, from keeping ourselves busy with other things, to faith in religion or technology, to sobbing at the inevitability of our death and the death of the people we love. There is also peace in surrender, in truly accepting that we are powerless to prevent it. If we fight it we will fail, like so many before us. Thus, we live, we enjoy the time we have with the people we love, and we die.
- Towaway69 3y agoStoic philosophy covers a lot of this, I particularly enjoyed listening to Marcus Aurelius Meditations[0]. Live life, be nice to everyone around you, enjoy the now and be humble. Strangely those ideas are 2000 years old and yet we still don't understand them. [0] https://archive.org/details/meditations_0708_librivox/meditations_00_marcusaurelius.mp3 https://archive.org/details/meditations_0708_librivox/medita...
- viking123 3y agoMy mom has ALS, got it completely out of the blue without any family history, and she had long living parents too. Thankfully in my country the care is okay, the government pays a nurse so she can stay at home and get help when needed etc. But it hurts to watch the degeneration, and I don't understand why more countries do not allow assisted suicide? I am not afraid of dying really, but more so that I get stuck in a very bad condition that is like hell and I have to suffer a lot. If I had the option of medically assisted suicide, it would somewhat eliminate that fear as I would know that I have that option.. One thing I use to cope with it is that I am only 27 and maybe in few decades there are better treatments, at least one can hope right.. But looking at treatments for neurodegenerative illnesses, it seems they have gotten absolutely nowhere
- playday 3y agoYour feelings are valid but I struggle to understand. I’m afraid of death too but in a visceral way (don’t jump off a cliff, don’t drink poison, etc). I know I’m going to die and think about it sometimes but it doesn’t bother me in the abstract.
- bowsamic 3y agoIt’s the opposite way around for me. The abstract notion of death is far scarier than the means
- aftoprokrustes 3y agoHi, I came here to tell the exact opposite, so I guess this is a good idea to do this as an answer to your comment. I feel like death is what makes life beautiful and precious. Because if you have an infinite amount of something, this is really not precious at all, is it? This is actually a central theme is Buddhist mythology: the realm of humans is seen as the most worthy place to be born, because it is mortality that gives one the possibility to understand and practice the teachings of the buddha. There are higher realms, where beings live many eons and with very little suffering - nice for the time it lasts, but it makes them unable to really understand the preciousness of live, and ends in bad karma and rebirth in a lower realm. Knowing my life is finite is what makes me cherish beautiful moments. This actually often a consequence of fatal diagnoses: I could for instance observe how my father in law inceeased his interest in my children pretty much overnight after he was given one year to live by an oncologist. There are meditation techniques focused on the awareness of death, and they can be very liberating: my favorite is called "the 9 contemplations of Atisa", if you want to look it up. I personally added a few contemplations to it, to take into account the secular setup in which we live: I find it extremely helpful to ponder the fact that we do not, and will likely never, be able to know what death is and what is the nature of consciousness. Maybe it is the end of everything, but maybe it is also the reunion with the great everything, or I will be reborn as a butterfly. I also find the "charnel grounds" meditation to be very freeing, but some people do freak out there, so take your time.
- TrackerFF 3y agoI've had two surgeries where I've had to be put under. It kind of helped, as far as my anxiety for death goes. I went from counting backwards, to being awoken, in what felt like an instant. No grand dreams or things like that...just waking up and feeling groggy in what felt like a couple of seconds, when in reality 60-90 minutes had passed. But, what if I hadn't woken up - what if I had died on the operating table? It would still have been lights out and absolute nothingness. I can only hope that death will be the same. One minute you're there, then nothingness. The process of dying seems to be much worse than death itself, so I hope I'll go quickly (huge aneurism, massive heart attack, etc.) or heavily sedated.
- jseliger 3y agoA big part of the answer is, I think, that right now it's inevitable. Barring radical life extension, it's what is going to happen.
- adamc 3y agoYou will lose that fear if you are miserable long enough. I went through a divorce (and subsequent estrangement from my child) that left me deeply depressed and devastated. The depression eventually lifted, but the bleakness changed me in a lot of ways. I don't fear dying much. In a lot of ways, I feel I've already taken the worst life can offer.