Facing mortality makes death anxiety visceral

So, how does the certainty of your earthly demise affect you?

Earlier in my career, I worked closely with individuals facing death, as well as their families. Stints in a hospital oncology unit with the terminally ill, as well as consultation in a communitybased hospice, afforded me a close look at how we humans face our mortality.

I learned that, when ministering to the dying, one confronts one’s own impermanence and the trepidation that often engenders. I’ve had my share.

The fear of dying (sometimes called “thanatophobia”) takes three primary forms. Some of us feel frightened about the experience of dying itself, others are afraid of being dead, and a few have both. Regarding the first sort, Woody Allen famously quipped: “I’m not afraid of dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Of course, one can question whether the fear of death qualifies as a phobia per se. After all, by definition, phobias are “irrational fears,” and death is a whole different animal than common phobic stimuli, such as elevators, spiders or flying.

Sure, you might get stuck in an elevator, but there is no “maybe” about death.

In contrast, many of us claim not to fear death, although that’s a far easier assertion when one is not terminally ill. Denying the possibility of one’s own existential exit is a daily practice for most of us (“Not me, not today”).

One middle-aged woman I worked with illustrated these complexities. In the end stages of metastatic cancer, when we first met, she asserted that dying was of no concern because of her deep religious faith. In fact, she earned a reputation on the oncology unit for being upbeat, resolute and courageous.

That is until a few weeks before her passing. While unwilling to let down her brave front with family and friends, she quietly confided in me about her worries. Most of them were typical, focused on the impact of her death on loved ones, particularly her children, as well as certain things left undone, but eventually she shared that her unshakable faith in God and an afterlife was ebbing.

It’s often hypothesized that one of the main reasons humans become religious is to cope with the fear of death, as many faith traditions posit an existence beyond the grave. However, an analysis of multiple studies in this regard challenges this premise.

Surprisingly, this research determined that being religious does not alleviate death anxiety for most people. And, even more confounding is the study’s conclusion that atheists report less fear of dying than their deistic counterparts.

I recall discussing death anxiety with a terminally ill man, an atheist, who was in hospice. As he put it, “I’ve spent decades getting used to the idea that death is the end. I came to peace with it a long time ago.”

Aside from thanatophobics, most of us never fully understand the depth of our fear about dying until we face it as probable or certain. Anyone who’s teetered on the edge between life and death understands this elemental angst in a visceral sense.

For the rest of us, that day will come.

Philip Chard is a psychotherapist, author and trainer. Email Chard at outofmymind@philipchard.com or visit philipchard.com.