I’m sorry but dying scares the sh!t outta me. I lay in bed every night just fearing it and remembering that E.A. Poe once said that sleep was little slices of death.
Sure there’s a built in little voice that keeps us from jumping headlong into a meat grinder, but is it possible to actually be TOO afraid of dying?
Probably so and you probably are. This may be a serious problem such as clinical depression so I’ll make no jokes. You may want to seek professional help if it’s as serious as you say. Welcome top SDMB.
If I understand the OP correctly, they are expressing a fear dying process rather than anxiety about “being dead”.
Having spent most of my adult life nursing sick people and having watched many of them die in pain or other distress which the medical profession either cannot or will not relieve, I can understand the OP’s fear.
Should I be in a hospital when the time comes, then I want morphine all the way. Not only am I not interested in experiencing the distress I’ve watched others endure in extremis, I’m not the least interested in subjecting my children and others who care about to me that ordeal.
I think it was Keats who wrote “have in love with easeful death”.
I want mine to be easeful all the way.
Chalk me up as someone who wants to go quickly and painlessly. Me and the rest of the world. (OK, the truth is I really DON’T want to go at all, but if I have to…) I’ve seen too many people suffer at the end, and that just can’t be fun. My grandmother did it right. First thing in the morning, she made a cup of tea, sat down and took a sip, and had a massive stroke. Doctor said she didn’t feel a thing.
Remember… every day above ground is a GOOD day.
I think an important distinction is the difference between a fear of dying and a fear of death. I myself fear dying to some extent – I fear the pain and suffering, the lack of control, the lack of certainty about what is going to happen. I fear the transitional phase. However, I do not really fear death itself. For me, not knowing what is going to happen and having no control is much more difficult than even imagining a horrible afterlife. At least, after I die, I’ll know, and I won’t have to worry about it anymore – I’ll just have to deal with however it is, if it is anything, positive or negative; if not, then I won’t know either way and my consciousness will end.
What exactly is your fear, norm11469?
“I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather, not like the other screaming people in the car he was driving.”
Actually its funny. Most who responded said they feared the dying process more then being dead itself. For me its the opposite. Sure there are ways I wouldn’t want to die (drowning, for one), but at least at some point it would be over.
Then what?
For me its the “infinateness” of being dead that just swallows me. I just can’t deal with it some times.
Sorry, didn’t want to turn this into a therapy session.
norm11469, I feel exactly as you do. I can’t grasp that there will be an end to my consciousness. Sometimes when those thoughts are running around in my mind (like you, usually when I’m trying to go to sleep), I get an actual physical feeling, sort of like a flush up and down my torso and a squeezing of my heart.
The thought that I will no longer “be” is terrifying and sad and really makes me think, what is the point? I wish I had a belief in an afterlife; that might make it easier to bear. The concept of my energy/particles living on in the environment is just not good enough.
I discussed this with my psych. and counselor one time but they kind of smiled and agreed and basically said, just don’t think about it. Right! They also said, instead of coming to the conclusion, what is the point?, perhaps my fear should make me cherish the life that I do have that much more.
So I think yes, you can be too afraid of death, to the point where it occupies your mind and doesn’t allow you to enjoy life while you’ve got it.
Assuming that conciousness dies when we do, I remind myself we;ll never know whebn WE’RE dead. So it’s not like we’ll be in our body bags thinking, “Oh wow, this is what it’s like to be dead.”
As for the prospect of not existing, the closest comparison I can use is that we didn’t exsit before we were born, so (a bit of a streach here), in a sense we were “dead” than too.
In other words we’ll experience the year 2201 the same way we experienced the year 1701.
I dunno, 1701 was a pretty cool year, don’t know if 2201 will top it. Well, it helped to pull the bug out of my ass.
Norm, a lot of us deal with the prospect in different ways, some of us with our theological beliefs and others by acknowledging there will be no conciousness. I don’t know what afterlife will be, I am Christian, but I don’t expect it will be the puffy cloud and halo image. I can actually relate to the feeling because it consumed me as a small child. I would lie awake all night pondering eterninty in a coffin. Now I know that won’t happen. The worms will eat me first.
what is this death you speak of ?
to the caterpillar the cocoon is the end to the butterfly it is just the beginning
then the butterfly hits the no-pest strip and it’s the end…
(:
Not to sound like a complete weirdo, but the prospect of being dead has never bothered me at all. In fact, I’ve always been incredibly curious about it.
norm11469, The only comforting words I can offer is the simple truth that no one knows what happens after we die. Everything we have imagined is literally a possibility as are things we haven’t thought of. So, if we can’t know, why stress over it?
I guess that’s what makes it okay for me. But, only you have the power to alter your attitude and start feeling better about the inevitability of death. At the very least I would suggest finding some other poets to read.
Best of luck.
I’m sorry, I’m not much help either but I am not afraid of dying. I just take it as it comes, I guess, and when it comes there isn’t going to be much I can do about it, now can I? So I don’t worry about it.
Easy for me to say, but I hope you can find some peace. 
The most terrifying picture of death I have ever heard.,was the scenario described at the end of Mark twain’s “THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER”-when the stranger expalins himself…“you are a single thought, which has existed alone, throughthe empty ages”-or something like that. I imagine death to be like being in s sensory deprivation tank-you cannot see, hear, or touch anything…eternal blackness…arghh!
I used to have nightmares about being killed, and I was afraid of both death and dying up 'til 1994 when my mom died when I was 37. In 1986, she had a “practice” heart attack, and during one procedure, her heart stopped and had to be shocked back into action. She never talked about being “out” for that time, but made us all promise not to have her ever shocked again. A week before her final heart attack, I had just finished reading, “Em-
braced By The Light”, written by Betty J. Eadie, and had offered
it to mom to read. She told me she did not need to read it because she already knew the ending. I know she has reached over and comforted me from the other side (corny, I know), and since her death I have not feared death or dying, in fact, I look forward to it when my time comes. The only thing I fear now is being predeceased by my children, and would lay down my life to protect and defend them. I am a big believer in God, Jesus Christ, an afterlife and the USA!!!
I used to think that, until I figured that the conciousness that could percieve the perdiciment- the part of you that would think “geez, I can’t see or feel or do anything” would be gone too. You wouldn’t percieve anything because you wouldn’t be there to percieve it.
“First thing in the morning, she made a cup of tea, sat down and took a sip, and had a massive stroke.”
—Jesus, what was in that tea? I’m like Woody Allen, in one way only. He said, “I don’t mind the thought of dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
How do you know it will be infinite? Maybe the Hindus are right, and we will come back as something else.
Ditto. I’m not gonna go kill myself just to find out but when my time comes I’m kinda looking forward to seeing what happens. I don’t usually share this much because you’re right, it does make one sound like a complete weirdo.