How do I stop worrying about death?

I used to worry about dying when I was quite young. All I know is that my worrying about death has decreased over the years, even though I am obviously closer to death now than earlier. Many people don’t seem to be unduly worried about death, while others are absolutely terrified about it. There is a way of learning how to not to be so worried about it.

You can stop worrying about death once you understand how the “worry mechanism” works.

Let me explain.

• Worry is part of our survival mechanism found in all people. Worry, anxiety, fear and panic are all tied together in a primitive part of the brain.
• This mechanism is constantly on guard, watching what you do, and it becomes very active when you perceive danger in your world.
• It helps you escape from danger, and remembers all your past defensive responses. so that it can prepare you to defend yourself in similar future dangerous situations.
• Worry is quite useful for helping to make rational decisions about long term goals, such as looking for a good paying job, trying to choose the right partner to live with, choosing the right vacation, and hundreds of other things where we have to plan for the future.
• However, worry gets us in serious trouble if you give it an unsolvable task, such as finding out what happens when you die.
• Your worry mechanism will not stop looking for an answer, as long as you demand an answer.

If you want to stop the worrying, you have to stop demanding an answer!

• The only way to stop demanding an answer is by practicing facing the fear that you will never know the answer.
• Eventually, you can get peace by accepting the uncertainty of life and death.

How do you tell this “worry mechanism” to stop looking for an answer?

• First, need to look at how this primitive worry mechanism works.
• This mechanism is so simplistic that it can’t tell the difference between a thought and reality.
• It simply watches what your do, and if it sees you trying to escape from a thought, it will activate all sorts of escape mechanisms to help you to literally run away.
• But you can’t run away from a thought!
• The panic mechanism eventually gets exhausted, and subsides.
• But the next time you get the thought, the survival mechanism remembers what you did the last time, and repeats the whole process.
• Repeat this process enough times , and before long you are suffering from a phobia.

So how do you stop this vicious cycle?

• Remember, the worry remembers what you did in the past, and helps you to try to escape again.
• So if you begin to act as if you are not in immediate danger, (which you are not), your worry mechanism will fight you initially.
• But if you DO survive, ( which you will), the worry mechanism is surprised and a bit confused.
• If you keep letting the thought be there and NOT escaping, the worry will learn that a thought is not dangerous, and give up trying to protect you.

This technique is called Imaginal Flooding, the most powerful technique for getting rid of phobic thoughts.

• If you can work with someone well-versed in the technique, I would strongly recommend it. But if you are left to your own devices, here are the basic steps.

1. Lie down and get relaxed for about 5 minutes.
2. Now bring to mind one of less scary thoughts about death.
3. Keep the thought in mind as vividly as possible, feeling the fear.
4. But stay completely relaxed and breathe very gently as you feel the fear. It is extremely important that you show as little physical reaction as possible.
5. ( If you can’t stay still, try the process again with a less scary thought.)
6. Now keep the thought in mind for 10 minutes.
7. Take a break for 5 minutes.
8. Now repeat steps 2, 3, and 4 for another 10 minutes.

Chances are you scared yourself each time, but you gave a message to the worry center that you no longer run away from this type of thought. That is the major point of this exercise.

Now, each day:

Repeat the above procedure, but simply do everything in one 20 minute session, staying completely relaxed through the whole time while trying to scare yourself by making the thought as vivid as possible.

You will find that the thought gets less and less scary each day. As it becomes less scary, try to introduce other more scary thoughts, scaring yourself as much as possible, while staying relaxed.

In a couple of weeks, you will begin to find is more and more difficult to scare yourself. And with further exposure, you will begin to get bored with the whole process.

It is living with the mismatch of feeling scared, but refusing to run away from the thought, that teaches the worry mechanism that these thoughts are not dangerous.