r/thanatophobia

I’m 18(F) and I never thought about death this seriously until a few months ago, I simply didn’t care but when the realization of death and absolute uncertainty hit it hit so bad. I’m diagnosed with OCD, I use 100mg Sertraline daily but that thing doesn’t help anymore.

I can’t cope with the fact that one day I will die, it’s scary and I don’t want to stop experiencing, living. I never believed in any religion or afterlife stuff and I started to believe that we just simply cease to exist since it was the simplest answer. I couldn’t sleep countless nights because of this though. But my spiral didn’t end here because then I remembered the fact that this planet will also be destroyed by our sun one day and this universe will be either face a heat death where nothing will happen or disappear in another way, that’s what science says at least and I can’t help but feel that everything is painfully pointless. No one will remember us and there won’t be anything to remember. Nothing matters because when we die we won’t be able to tell how much time has passed and we can just think that the universe died in a blink of an eye from our subjective perspective. Even if I was immortal I don’t think I would want to experience this awful things. Dying and seeing everything die (if we’re really a part of this reality we also disappear with it so there’s no actual immortality yada yada 🧍‍♂️) are equally scary.

I can’t sleep properly, I’m always tired and always in a derealization state, I can’t focus on my life because I always think about the “bigger” stuff, my life doesn’t feel like “my life” anymore, I can’t get myself to care. I don’t know what to do, I hate that everything will end one day and it’s scary.

I’m spending hours to search about the space, consciousness and physics only to find a hope that life is meaningful in a way. Eternity isn’t reachable for us but at least I would want something less boring to happen. Sometimes death feels beautiful, I won’t struggle with my mental health… But only sometimes. I’m struggling with valuing transience of things, of us, of me. Reading all those NDEs filled with love, completeness and beauty feels good but I also feel like I’m lying to myself with cherry picked things. Maybe it’s because of my problem of rationalizing things to an annoying degree but even when people close to me tell me about their NDEs or when I remember the moments I saw the little slices of the future in my dreams I just can’t hope… I just want to focus on my life but I can’t, this feeling of worthlessness is awful.

Like it just suddenly clicks one day and now you have panic attacks about it. I thought I understood it before but now it feels so much more real (and worse) to think about. Sometimes the concept just stares at you and you can think of nothing else. Nothing can drown it out (I’ve tried music, videos, doomscrolling, games, ect.). I need help. Idk what to do. One minute I’m ready to die (ie: why don’t i just exhale and not inhale, not quite suicide) then the next I’m having an existential crisis about what death is. The crisis just clicked when I hit 19 and I want everything to just stop. I want to never have existed in the first place so I would never have known any of this. I wish the concept never truly clicked. I don’t want to exist but I don’t want to die. The only person I can go to about this is my mom who is terminal with a bunch of things so it would probably traumatize her too.

[supprimé]

Sometimes I’ll just be doing something completely normal and then my brain suddenly goes “one day you, your family, everyone you know will be gone” and it honestly ruins my whole mood for hours.

What freaks me out most isn’t even pain or the process of dying, it’s the idea of just… not existing anymore. Like trying to imagine nothing forever.

I’ve tried distracting myself with work, games, scrolling, whatever, but some nights it still hits really hard.

Curious if other people here experience it more as random panic spirals or more like constant background anxiety.

Im an 17yr old girl, my entire life, since I gained consciousness, I have had an INTENSE fear of death.

I like to believe it’s because of my autism and adhd, but everyday, I have a nihilistic mindset, which can cause me to give up on passions I have fairly easily.
I am fairly optimistic, I laugh a lot, I’m happy to live, although I am an atheist, I believe there is absolutely nothing after death and I have thought that way my entire life.

My dad tells me he isn’t afraid of death because it’s natural and apart of life, I understand that, I would say I’m smart, I have taken an iq test as a child and got a high mark, and I blame that on my fear of death, every single day of my life I think about the legacy ill leave behind, I get upset that I probably won’t be famous because I want people to remember me, I feel like the way the world works is stupid and this isn’t how humans should live.

I’ve been researching and becoming fascinated by old
European culture, paganism, etc, I’ve been happy and content with that, but I guess I just need someone to kind of give me a new perspective, to help me to stop fearing what “legacy” ill leave behind, I can barley even live because all I think about is people dying, dead people, how everyone will die, EVERYTHING about death, it isn’t necessary scary anymore, but it haunts me and I need help.

I need help about a week ago I became really fixated on the topic of death and the afterlife I'm not too sure what triggered it I think it's because I made a joke about judgement [day] and then I really thought about it...and then I kept thinking about it and now I can't stop. Seriously. I've only been able to cope with endless distraction via my phone and I feel terrible. I can't get off my phone for more than like three minutes without spiraling. I'm barely eating, sleeping like crap, barely moving, all because of this, it's literally all consuming. and doomscrolling makes my brain feel like it's melting, I just want this to stop, I can't get medication/therapy for now I think. I don't want to tell my parents because I don't want to scare them since they're already stressed but I want this to go away, but idk how to cope.

Sorry if this is the wrong sub for this question btw I don't use reddit much.

I (M35) have had issues in the past with bouts of depression/anxiety normally before something big in my life happens. Out of nowhere a few days ago with no massive changes in my life my latest existential crisis happened and I've just hit a brick wall. My wife has been avoiding me and I don't blame her as she was subjected to this before during my last bout and it wasn't fair on her.

I tried private therapy that didn't help as no one can answer or confirm my biggest fear which is nothingness after I pass. I find myself asking what's the point of it if nothing is what happens at the end. My whole life and memories just gone this absolutely terrifies me and nothing is taking my mind off it. That's just scratching the surface of what's on my mind.

I feel bad because I have the most wonderful 20 month old son who I love more than anything and children even at this age can tell something is wrong when I see that smiling face run at me I try my best to be normal daddy for him but he knows something is up. I have to try not to break down crying. I feel so selfish I don't want him to see his dad like this.

I function to the point where I can do my job, walk the dog and look after my child but it just feels like my own life has just hit a wall. I'm calling my doctor on Monday to see if I should go back on medication.

Any advice from parents that go through this?

I gived this post a trigger warning because im gonna write about things that might be uncomfortable to some- it will be slighty a body horror thing, i dont know?

When i think about death, my own body and mortality i always inevitably start to feel this disgusting feeling of being a flesh. In every day life, sure i know i am a flesh- i have after all a heart, i have a skin, hair, eyse...but when you realy, realy think about it, it is so terryfing. When i have panic attakcs, i can almost feel all my flesh, i feel aware of the each cell in my skin, i am aware that im soft, warm and wet combination of organs wired with nervs. I feel very vurnable, its overwhelming when you realise you are never, NEVER, immune to dying. Its terryfing we, me, are just brains (pondering conciuness itself is also oddly terryfing) and we are alive yet inevitably we gonna turn into mere objects. Its scary how this two things, conciuness and lack of it arent that far away from eachother. I start to feel like my personality slip away, im not sure if i dont have some undiagonsed problems but i often do feel like im split into many parts, like a broken mirror, and each of this parts want to go away and escape, in the other hand want to be whole again, and thoughs about death reinforce that.

No u/redditor123 it does not help me

I'm going to high school this year and for the past two months all I have and can be able to think about is aging and dying. My parents are in their 40s and I know that's not old but the thought of them not being there for me and one day me being all alone makes me so scared. Even while writing this I can't stop but cry thinking about it. Growing up feels so terrifying, I want to stay young forever I don't want to get old I don't want to live in a world without my parents and I don't think I'll ever be able to. I get days of where I get to leave school early and just this week my mom was talking about how she doesn't want me to grow up and she just wants me to stay young forever because on the days I get off early we do stuff like go to lunch and have fun. These past two months have gone by in a blink and now that I have been thinking about dying time seems to fly by I want time to go ass slow as possible and I just want to go back in time 3 months and make myself never have the thought of dying. I'm growing up and I can't do anything about it and I'm so scared to be in high school. This all ties back to the fact that I'm scared of dying and scared that one day no one will remember me or anybody I know and I'll be forgotten like everybody else that has lived. My parents do so much for me and I love them so much that I never want to leave them and never want them to leave me. I used to be so excited to grow up and go to collage and now I want to just stay young and when I inevitably finish high school I'm not going to collage just because I want to spend time with my family. I can't stop these thought of the future even though I know it won't happen for a long time. I want to still be a kid I want my mom to pick me up from school and go to lunch I want to go home and not worry about high school I want to live without the fear of aging or dying I want to go back in time and live the life I've lived forever and ever. I have no one to talk to this about because I do t want to dump all this in the people I know and even the people on Reddit but I wouldn't be doing this is it wasent my last resort to help me out if this please if anyone have gone through this help me I can't have fun anymore I'm not the same person I was three months ago and its all because I think to much I with I could go back to 2020 when I was simple minded and had no care in the world. I want to get the most out of the time I have on earth but I can't do that always fearing death. Thinking about what happens after you die overwhelms me so much and like I said earlier a world without my family is never a world that I will be able to live in. So what I'm asking for is for help to get through this and how other people have gotten through this.

Hi everyone, I’m not sure if I can call this a phobia. Since I was a child, I’ve always had anxiety and would cry when thinking about death. As I grew older, it calmed down a bit.

Recently, I went through a sort of breakdown for no clear reason. I started having anxiety/panic attacks, shortness of breath, and intense fear.

Talking all night with a friend helped me feel a bit better at the time.

Now the attacks are less frequent and less intense, but I feel completely different. I feel like I’ve changed as a person, but not necessarily in a good way — more like I feel different or disconnected. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t feel like the same person after this period of anxiety.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

(Im 18)

Hi, I expect this will be long, sorry.

This started a couple of years ago, where for two weeks I couldn't stop thinking about death. About non existence, the thought of nothing. I'd research every article under the sun about possible afterlives, I'd notice stupid things like touching walls and just the feeling of walking around, and remember it would all end. And at night, that horrible anxiety where it feels like my entire body is sinking in on itself.

I only really got out of that mindset because of my mother, who helped me, but she passed away at the end of that year. I still thought about it, and feared it, but not to that detrimental degree.

Now it's back. I've never been religious, and I've always been a sceptic when it comes to mysticism or the paranormal. So I have no comfort in believing in some form of afterlife, or even just existence after death.

It's not the pain of death I can't stop thinking about, it's everything about the lack of existence. That there would be no me, no memories to look back on, none of my thoughts or the people I love, not even darkness.

I've had people say it's just like when you fall asleep, or just like before you were born. Which only makes the feeling worse, because... I feel like screaming, "exactly?!" that's exactly what I don't want.

I also understand the fact that thinking about it won't make me understand the concept. I know it will only make it worse. But when I try to put it out of my mind, I feel like all I'm doing is delaying the inevitable and it just comes back. Sometimes, I wonder why the whole world isn't screaming about this.

I'm sorry for the long post, but I just wanted somewhere to talk about it where I would be understood. I love the people around me, and they're wonderful, but when I try to talk about it they're compassionate, yes, but it's a heavy topic, and I understand not wanting to talk about it further.

I don't really know what I want from this. Mostly just confirmation that it somehow does get better? I'm not looking for indisputable proof of an afterlife, more that there is a way to get through this, because it's affecting my hobbies and my ability to talk to people without mentioning all of this.

my partner and I are both in our early twenties and she is extremely anxious and afraid of her loved ones dying. Professional help isn't something we can get at the moment but even if we did have it, i assume support from loved ones must play a huge role too. I'm hoping for advice on dos and donts when she's thinking of it more than usual, and if there's anything more I could possibly do...

We've had a lot of conversations about it at this point but I'm not sure if I should provide more context. If you guys have any questions, I'll answer what I can.

thank you.

basically the title. I feel like my default mode is atheism and being hyper skeptical of everything. I was raised in a Catholic household but I always found it pretty hard to believe in a lot of what I was taught as a kid. I had lapses where I'd be a bit more firm in faith but it usually slipped away. I could never even hear about death without panicking a bit and imagining oblivion. As I've gotten older I've looked more into paranormal phenomena like near death experiences and more scientific stuff about consciousness. It helps a bit but I still find it hard to really believe anything. There's constantly so much science stuff coming out about how we're just brains and how we've proven there's nothing after death. It always feels like we're on the edge of finding out consciousness is just a brain thing and there truly is nothing more. I post some of my doubts on the subreddits devoted to this kind of stuff but sometimes they just get deleted and I get no answer. I really don't know what to do or what to believe anymore, I feel like some kind of social outcast for worrying what will happen to us or being scared of eternal nothing after death because no one else seems to care. The only real way the anxiety could ever end for me is if we scientifically proved consciousness isn't a brain thing, I used to believe that would happen one day but now I realize it's sort of an unrealistic expectation. I feel cursed with this worry, like I'm the only one worried about never seeing my loved ones again, about wasting my only life, about spending eternity as nothingness. i see stuff about psychics who verify themselves and stuff but I'm just unable to convince myself fully that there isn't a deeper materialist explanation to this all. I don't even know what the point of this vent is but I just need to get it off my chest.

I know that some people fear death because they fear loosing their memories, especially ones that are very dear to them. So I wonder if theres a way to cope with that specific aspect? Would journaling help? What are your ideas?

I've become a distant person. I don't care to talk to anyone more. I don't care about anything really. I lost all interest in everything I used to care about. Knowing it's all over soon has me apathetic. Listening to music is really the only thing I care about anymore.

All the life affirming advice like live life to the fullest and find what makes you happy means nothing. Painting a picture or traveling or spending time with friends does nothing to get me out of this mindset.

I wasn't like this before. I used to have aspirations, dreams, fulfilling hobbies but they all disappeared. I've done some of them and I still feel empty knowing what's coming. This fear has changed me entirely as a person.

I don't know what to do. Fake it until you make it hasn't worked.