Existential Crisis - Death Anxiety
Studies have shown that we become aware of our own mortality between the ages of 3 - 8 years old. This is when we become self-aware and so we begin to realise that our lives will end and we must die. I am no exception. At the age of 3 I began to fear death after seeing an article on day-time magazine show 'This Morning' about a house fire that had killed someone.
At 15 it happened again while I was watching crappy soap 'Crossroads'. One of the major characters was killed off with a heart attack (later it turned out they were very popular and the whole thing had been faked...that was a death...the death of any remaining credibility in the show and so it was cancelled). At 22 I was in a terrible relationship that left me worried I was wasting my life and that I would be better off either dead or out of the relationship. I was scared I had achieved nothing and that this man had wasted my time and my life. My self-esteem was at an all time low. I finally got round it with talking therapy and find to this day that being open about my problems helps to alleviate the feelings of finality I have about life.
At 28 it is happening again. I am not bed ridden as I was at 22, but I am not well with it. This is something that I understand now that I didn't understand at 22.
Before my counselling I could not understand why we would need to live if we would only die at some point. That and being a total control freak I wanted to know the how's and when's of my death, which, of course, one should never know. What my talking therapy helped me with was the understanding that my death anxiety was a projection. Something else was going on at the time that made me feel that way. At 22 it was the relationship I was in. I was looking at the way I was treated and I was not happy in my life. If I have been on my death bed and looked back on my life after staying with that person then I would have felt I had wasted my life. There were loads of changes going on in my life at the time. I had just got my first full-time job after leaving university and had all these positives and this one negative. He needed to go. It was part of the change. I will not list the things he put me through as this blog is not about that. I will say this. It wasn't pretty and I was not being overly dramatic in my physical, emotional and mental reactions to him.
How does this projection apply to someone who is 3 years old, as I was the first time I became aware of death? Well, I began to form memories and associations. I began to grasp basic concepts of existence and what it was to live. Applying it to my 15 year old self I can say that I was nearing the end of school and working on my GCSEs, which was a huge upheaval on my life and there was pressure (from myself and my peers and my parents and my teachers) to do well. I was also studying death and existence in Religious Studies during my GCSEs so I am sure this is why I was focussed on this at the time.
Therefore this is all about change. At 3 I was looking at going to school, a massive change in my life. I was also not going to be alone for the first time. My younger brother was born when I was 3.5 years old and this changed my life as I was no longer the centre of my parent's universe. At 15 I was leaving school, at 22 I had just left uni and I was starting work and in a terrible relationship. At 28 I am finally becoming an adult as I am about to leave my parent's home forever and make my own way in the world.
I am very excited to be leaving home and making my own with my fiancé. There is part of me that is apprehensive though. It is more the waiting while we are buying the house that is getting to me. That is causing the anxiety.
Often, people who suffer death anxiety do so alone because death is a modern taboo. In ages past, death was embraced and people would talk about it and have rituals that encouraged a connection with the dead. Today we do not talk about it and try and deny the existence of death.
Death anxiety is defined as: 'the morbid, abnormal or persistent fear of one's own mortality.'
This includes: 'a feeling of dread, apprehension or solicitude (anxiety) when one thinks about the process of dying or ceasing to 'be','
There is even a medical term for it, from the Greek, 'thanatophobia' which is literally 'fear of death'. This is not the same as 'necrophobia' which is a fear of dead or dying people and things.
Death anxiety takes different forms for different people. Some fear being harmed (predatory death anxiety), others fear physically or mentally harming others (predation or predator death anxiety). For yet others if is the basic knowledge and awareness that natural life must end. This is 'existential death anxiety' and is the one I most closely relate to.
Part of the problem is that humans have evolved very quickly and around 150,000 years ago became aware of the self and of death. That's a short period of time in the grand scheme of things to come to terms with the finality of personal existence. This is where religion has come in. It helps to comfort the mind as humans have believed in a form of after life. For those of us who are atheist (myself included) we are trying to find our own answers to the purpose of life, the universe and everything. Weirdly, I am comforted at the thought of returning to the universe when I die. It is the process of dying I don't like.
Sigmund Freud said that no one believed in their own death and the unconscious does not deal with the passing of time as you can't calculate your remaining time. Unexplained childhood conflicts were his reasoning for death anxiety.
Erik Erikson said that ego integrity develops in later life and it is this that helps us come to terms with life. The fear comes from a feeling of missed opportunities in one's life. I relate to this theory quite closely and know that at 22 this was an issue for me.
A theory I more closely related to is the 'terror management theory' by Ernest Becker. It is based on existentialism and suggests that death anxiety is not only real, but it is the primary concern. It can lead to other things like fear of being along, fear of confined spaces, etc. Many people try and deny death to keep 'in control'. This is something I relate to because I like to be in control of my life and if I do not feel in control I feel lost. I am the one who doesn't just want to be on the plane, I want to be flying it!
There are many other theories around death anxiety, but the main ones I can pick pieces out and say I can relate to many of their aspects. I don't see that any one of these fully defines what I feel about my existence.
Interestingly it seems that women are more likely to feel death anxiety than men. Men see dying as a 'noble' thing and this could be a hang over from the grand old days of the brave warrior who saw glory in death. These warriors were primarily men. Women are also the primary care givers and so try to prevent illness and death for the ones they love. This makes death a primary worry. Thousands of years of social and cultural expectancies on gender have a lot to answer for.
Between the ages of 20 - 40 death anxiety becomes more prevalent. I have always had it but I have noticed it get worse in my 20s. Strangely, as you get older, this is supposed to drop off (65+ years). It may be down to life acceptance and fulfilment.
Other things for me are actually really helpful. I am sort of comforted in my atheism as I stated before. I know there's no heaven or hell and I'll return to the universe and that is pretty cool. For me, I know this is a projection of fear on to the changing situations in my life. My slow house buying is something out of my control and death is something I cannot control, therefore, I have anxiety. I will be over it once I have confirmation of completion and a moving date. In the meantime, I am using techniques from my counselling years ago.
What I want others to know is that they are not alone. We can do this together. I will leave you with this quote from Benjamin Franklin: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
At 15 it happened again while I was watching crappy soap 'Crossroads'. One of the major characters was killed off with a heart attack (later it turned out they were very popular and the whole thing had been faked...that was a death...the death of any remaining credibility in the show and so it was cancelled). At 22 I was in a terrible relationship that left me worried I was wasting my life and that I would be better off either dead or out of the relationship. I was scared I had achieved nothing and that this man had wasted my time and my life. My self-esteem was at an all time low. I finally got round it with talking therapy and find to this day that being open about my problems helps to alleviate the feelings of finality I have about life.
At 28 it is happening again. I am not bed ridden as I was at 22, but I am not well with it. This is something that I understand now that I didn't understand at 22.
Before my counselling I could not understand why we would need to live if we would only die at some point. That and being a total control freak I wanted to know the how's and when's of my death, which, of course, one should never know. What my talking therapy helped me with was the understanding that my death anxiety was a projection. Something else was going on at the time that made me feel that way. At 22 it was the relationship I was in. I was looking at the way I was treated and I was not happy in my life. If I have been on my death bed and looked back on my life after staying with that person then I would have felt I had wasted my life. There were loads of changes going on in my life at the time. I had just got my first full-time job after leaving university and had all these positives and this one negative. He needed to go. It was part of the change. I will not list the things he put me through as this blog is not about that. I will say this. It wasn't pretty and I was not being overly dramatic in my physical, emotional and mental reactions to him.
How does this projection apply to someone who is 3 years old, as I was the first time I became aware of death? Well, I began to form memories and associations. I began to grasp basic concepts of existence and what it was to live. Applying it to my 15 year old self I can say that I was nearing the end of school and working on my GCSEs, which was a huge upheaval on my life and there was pressure (from myself and my peers and my parents and my teachers) to do well. I was also studying death and existence in Religious Studies during my GCSEs so I am sure this is why I was focussed on this at the time.
Therefore this is all about change. At 3 I was looking at going to school, a massive change in my life. I was also not going to be alone for the first time. My younger brother was born when I was 3.5 years old and this changed my life as I was no longer the centre of my parent's universe. At 15 I was leaving school, at 22 I had just left uni and I was starting work and in a terrible relationship. At 28 I am finally becoming an adult as I am about to leave my parent's home forever and make my own way in the world.
I am very excited to be leaving home and making my own with my fiancé. There is part of me that is apprehensive though. It is more the waiting while we are buying the house that is getting to me. That is causing the anxiety.
Often, people who suffer death anxiety do so alone because death is a modern taboo. In ages past, death was embraced and people would talk about it and have rituals that encouraged a connection with the dead. Today we do not talk about it and try and deny the existence of death.
Death anxiety is defined as: 'the morbid, abnormal or persistent fear of one's own mortality.'
This includes: 'a feeling of dread, apprehension or solicitude (anxiety) when one thinks about the process of dying or ceasing to 'be','
There is even a medical term for it, from the Greek, 'thanatophobia' which is literally 'fear of death'. This is not the same as 'necrophobia' which is a fear of dead or dying people and things.
Death anxiety takes different forms for different people. Some fear being harmed (predatory death anxiety), others fear physically or mentally harming others (predation or predator death anxiety). For yet others if is the basic knowledge and awareness that natural life must end. This is 'existential death anxiety' and is the one I most closely relate to.
Part of the problem is that humans have evolved very quickly and around 150,000 years ago became aware of the self and of death. That's a short period of time in the grand scheme of things to come to terms with the finality of personal existence. This is where religion has come in. It helps to comfort the mind as humans have believed in a form of after life. For those of us who are atheist (myself included) we are trying to find our own answers to the purpose of life, the universe and everything. Weirdly, I am comforted at the thought of returning to the universe when I die. It is the process of dying I don't like.
Sigmund Freud said that no one believed in their own death and the unconscious does not deal with the passing of time as you can't calculate your remaining time. Unexplained childhood conflicts were his reasoning for death anxiety.
Erik Erikson said that ego integrity develops in later life and it is this that helps us come to terms with life. The fear comes from a feeling of missed opportunities in one's life. I relate to this theory quite closely and know that at 22 this was an issue for me.
A theory I more closely related to is the 'terror management theory' by Ernest Becker. It is based on existentialism and suggests that death anxiety is not only real, but it is the primary concern. It can lead to other things like fear of being along, fear of confined spaces, etc. Many people try and deny death to keep 'in control'. This is something I relate to because I like to be in control of my life and if I do not feel in control I feel lost. I am the one who doesn't just want to be on the plane, I want to be flying it!
There are many other theories around death anxiety, but the main ones I can pick pieces out and say I can relate to many of their aspects. I don't see that any one of these fully defines what I feel about my existence.
Interestingly it seems that women are more likely to feel death anxiety than men. Men see dying as a 'noble' thing and this could be a hang over from the grand old days of the brave warrior who saw glory in death. These warriors were primarily men. Women are also the primary care givers and so try to prevent illness and death for the ones they love. This makes death a primary worry. Thousands of years of social and cultural expectancies on gender have a lot to answer for.
Between the ages of 20 - 40 death anxiety becomes more prevalent. I have always had it but I have noticed it get worse in my 20s. Strangely, as you get older, this is supposed to drop off (65+ years). It may be down to life acceptance and fulfilment.
Other things for me are actually really helpful. I am sort of comforted in my atheism as I stated before. I know there's no heaven or hell and I'll return to the universe and that is pretty cool. For me, I know this is a projection of fear on to the changing situations in my life. My slow house buying is something out of my control and death is something I cannot control, therefore, I have anxiety. I will be over it once I have confirmation of completion and a moving date. In the meantime, I am using techniques from my counselling years ago.
What I want others to know is that they are not alone. We can do this together. I will leave you with this quote from Benjamin Franklin: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
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