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Does anyone suffer from Thanatophobia?

4K views 11 replies 7 participants last post by  drewr007 
#1 ·
Hi, I suffer from Thanatophobia (the fear of death/dying) and sometimes when I think to hard about it I'll get panic attacks, and one of them recently caused me to start suffering from depersonaliztion. I don't feel like anything is real anymore and my sense of physical touch is all wonky. I also am starting to feel like I'm only alive when I'm dreaming and I was just wondering if anyone had similar things going on. Thanks
 
#2 ·
Hi! Yes I have a similar symptoms! Except mine is less myself dying than a constant fear of someone close to me dying. It's been a pretty recurring thought with my dpdr and it gives me tremendous anxiety and panic. I'm working through this is therapy though. I'm sure once our brains go back to normal and anxiety goes down I'm sure this fear will lessen. I don't know about you but I didn't obsess over death until dpdr.
 
#4 ·
Yep - every day, all the time. I can't cope with the thought so my dp/dr gets worse and can feel panicky. Also constantly worrying about aging. Never really had it before dp/dr.
 
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#6 ·
Also CBT therapy or EMDR therapy might be help you to work past this phobia. Might be something to look into if you are interested ☺
Thank you for replying I appreciate it, the anxiety is slowly starting to fade away the more I talk about it with people, but I'm afraid of going into therapy because I don't want to get judged. Not just by the counselor but my family as well. My family is very religious where as I am not because of Thanatophobia, and if they found out that I went to therapy for this they might judge me. What triggered my DPDR was this panic attack(and I've never had one this scary before) I had from Thanatophobia, and yes now I've started to obsess with the concept of death because of it and I get anxiety on just the topic alone. I've tried talking to my boyfriend about it and while he is supportive he also strays away from the topic because he thinks it's too depressing and then I don't have anyone to really talk to about it. But as where yours is someone close to you dying mine is myself dying (because of the unknown of what's going to come after death) and when I have my panic attacks they cause me to feel like I don't exist which scares me even more.
 
#10 ·
Everyone at one point suffers from the fear of dying; we are running on borrowed time. The mere phenomenon of self-awareness makes us realize that we are finite beings and that death is imminent and therefore cannot be prevented.

It's a very human thing to do, worry about death, that is. But to constantly ruminate about it, is as unhealthy as ruminating whether snickers is better than butterfingers. What an analogy you might say, it sounds ridiculous to compare both this way and yet when you think about it, that is the whole point: It's ridiculous to overthink about death!
 
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