Fear of death

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Does anyone else have a fear of death? Is it common in people who suffer from depression/anxiety disorder like I do?

I seem to get all tearful when I hear that another tragic death has just happened on the news, and I wonder if it's a fear of death. Dying from old age doesn't spook me out so much because that's the best way to go, since you've lived a full life and you're dying when your body is ready. But being stabbed and seeing blood everywhere REALLY freaks me out. Yes, I know you don't know anything about it after you're stabbed to death, but it's still a frightening thought while you're alive.

And after hearing about that 60-year-old woman who randomly got her head cut off in Tenerif really freaked me out. Even now I keep on looking over my shoulder when I'm out because I keep thinking some weirdo's going to creep up from behind me with a knife and cut my head off. It's just a horrible feeling: one minute you're a healthy person full of life and all in one piece, the next minute you're lying on the floor in a pool of blood, oblivious to life.

Aaaahhhhhhh! How TERRIBLE!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !

It's not death itself that scares me as much as what the death will feel like. Even if you die fast, you do have at least a moment of pain or awareness. I've read that even people who have their head cut off in quick methods, like he guillotine, are conscious for 12-15 seconds afterward. How they found that out, I don't recall. Decapitation with a knife would take quite a while longer and be infinitely more painful, I imagine.

I smoke, and I'm afraid that eventually I will get lung cancer and die while struggeling to breath. That scares me.

Frances

It's not death itself that scares me as much as what the death will feel like. Even if you die fast, you do have at least a moment of pain or awareness. I've read that even people who have their head cut off in quick methods, like he guillotine, are conscious for 12-15 seconds afterward. How they found that out, I don't recall. Decapitation with a knife would take quite a while longer and be infinitely more painful, I imagine.

I smoke, and I'm afraid that eventually I will get lung cancer and die while struggeling to breath. That scares me.

Frances

I suffer from depression and am also crabby most of the time, and have a little fear of death. It's died down mainly because I've had about 5 near-death experiences.

1. When I was born I was WAY skinnier than I was supposed to be and was basically kept on life support
2. Got pneumonia at 3 years old
3. Almost choked on a marble (this also led to me getting emetophobia)
4. Almost drowned
5. Almost drowned again

With a track record like that, it's hard to be too scared anymore. If anything, getting sleep paralysis (which is fairly common for me) is something that I fear more.

Joe90,

My anti dwelling-on-death plan also involves:
- being with those I love as much as possible
- have as much sex as possible (with those I have loved),
- walk up as many beautiful mountains as possible, meet as much nature as possible
- relaxing with swimming and yoga
- avoid all horror and thriller movies, shopping centres and ugly built environments.

I watch the news but don't dwell on reliving the horrible events such as you describe. I have a tendency to exactly as you describe, but I make my thoughts move away.. Look at the statistics for all the things that are scary to you. I know you truly feel the horror that this really happened to someone, but the point is that random fatal violence from a stranger happens incredibly rarely in UK. You are safe.

Control the risks you can control such as your health, diet, exercise.

I'm also scared s**t of the world ending. It might end in a way where we're all going to die slowly, or it might feel so awful in the last few hours of waiting for the tragic. It'd be so sad too, because we will look around at everything and think, ''we are never going to be doing that again.'' Also it's such a morbid thought to think that Earth will look so ugly, with trillions and trillions of dead bodies laying all over the planet, with buildings gradually colllapsing, after all that effort we humans have put into this society.....what a waste!

But I had a dream a few months ago, and it was practically a nightmare. It was actually about the world ending by a nuclear bomb, and I was sitting with my family waiting for it, and I saw my bus go by (which is my special interest) and I cried, ''I will never ride that bus again!!'' and I was feeling all bewildered, waiting for it to hit us. It was an awful dream, I really don't know what made me dream it, but it was so realistic that I actually thought it was real, and I cried, ''I wish something came along to stop this, but that will be impossible now!'' But then just after I said that, I woke up from the dream, and it was early hours of the morning and the birds were singing, and it was actually my day off today and so wasn't going anywhere, but then after having that dream I decided to get the bus and actually absorb the beautiful earth and it's creatures around me. That dream really made me think. Unfortunately I've forgotten the dream now, but if I really think about it, I still get a sort of feeling of glee that it hasn't happened, and I just hope it wouldn't happen! Come on, the world's been here for all this time, why should it end now?

I'm not scared of dying at all.
I'm more afraid that I would get bored with life or something and not have anything interesting to do.
I can't imagine what I would be like as an old man either.
I wonder if anyone can relate to me?

I'm the very same. Since a very young age actually, death has always been something that has terrified me. I can't help but worry about it when I'm feeling depressed, and it only takes one report of someone's death to basically ruin my day. As you said, a natural death from old age doesn't seem to bad, but deaths from other causes particular murders absolutely terrify me so much that I'm very anxious being anywhere outside at night. :/

I've also had dreams about the world ending too. For me they've always been the result of a supernova from the sun. They're terribly frightening, and usually in the dreams everybody knows off the inevitable and the dream takes place just days before it happens. I'll be watching programs at TV or be attending concerts and they'll be free with the performers announcing "Since this will be one of the last moments of our lives, we want to try and give everybody a happy time and anybody can attend without paying anything." And it'll end with me cuddled up with my room with my family, just waiting for the inevitable,, and I'll be looking outside and it'll be rapidly getting brighter and brighter and the earth starts to rumble... then I wake up.

I really worry about it too much, and it causes me a great deal of anxiety when it;s on mind.

"Last Night" is a great movie.

Nope, never had fear of death. Was "raised" atheist, and acceptance of death as being something natural comes pretty early that way.

I've had two near-death experiences where by all rights I should have died, but somehow didn't. Wasn't scary, didn't suddenly find God either. I am surprising resilient, given that I do not desperately cling to life.

I don't have a death wish either, though. I guess I am death-neutral.

I expect to die of heart troubles in my 40s, cause that's how it is in my family, and I'm okay with just letting that happen. Don't want to be revived, don't want to be a zombie propped up with western medicine because I'm afraid to die and let my molecules dissolve back into the ecosystem.

A lot of people get freaked out and think this is really depressing when I tell them this, but I don't find it that way at all. I'm actually living right now, living a lot, instead of squandering my time contemplating an afterlife strategy.

I fear, more than death, serious injury or illness that would incapacitate me. As it is now, my body works well, I rarely get sick, and I have good physical ability and looks. Losing, let's say, a leg, in a car crash would severely screw up my plans for the future. Or getting sicker somehow or another. I think the reason I fear this, it would widen the gap I have between my thoughts and my actions and abilities even more. I wouldn't be content "just" thinking, and would really actually hate it very much if I was just forced to become a hikikomori who stayed at home, got really fat, and played video games all day for the rest of his life due to some illness or injury. So I pray that my health and everything stays well almost everyday, for those reasons.

As far as sudden death, I believe in the afterlife, and hope to be in Heaven after I die. So, for me, death would not really be death, it'd just be a new state of being. In that regard, I know if I die, God will be a good judge of me. I try to live my live ready for death in that regard, and plan my life if I were to die, what would God think of what I did and didn't do? How many people have I impacted positively? How many negatively? But yeah, I sorta see death as "just happening" and obviously I try not to do anything reckless on my end, but sometimes things are beyond your control.