Death anxiety/phobia and "not being" experiences

[deimosva]

Hi, I am a 20 years old girl constantly bothered with a fear/phobia/i don't know how to call it.
First of all I am going to apologize for my writing (english is not my native language) and if this post is in the wrong section
So here is the thing. Note that I have never talked about this with anyone other than a few words with my boyfriend, who couldn't really help me out.
I have been having several thoughts on death, and i am terrified everytime i think about it, which is very often. It happens when i am laying on my bed at night, but also in the morning when i am waiting for the bus to come, or in any moment when i am alone and i can think. it scares me so much, the thought that one day i will be not existing anymore, i will not have any feeling because "I" will cease to exist, I will cease to "be", and that is just terrifying for me. But it is not all.
Sometimes, when i really let my mind travel and i don't push myself into other thoughts, i have this super weird and super, super scary experience, the most terrifying thing i have ever felt in my life. I don't really know how to put that feeling into words. it is a very short feeling (vary from less than a second to 2 seconds circa), in which i kinda feel like i am dead. I feel some kind of palpitation? that overwhelms me and scares me deep down, like i'm feeling the fear inside my heart and bones. And after this "palpitation", there is a brief moment when i feel nothing. Nothing at all. Even saying that "I feel nothing" seems wrong, because in that moment I really don't feel at all. like, as I said, I am dead. And you can imagine how scary that can be from a person that has a deep fear of being dead.
I don't know how to cope with all of this. I feel lost and small, afraid that i am just gonna cease to exist and no one will ever remember who i was and i will not exist in anyone's thoughts either, but mostly i am scared of these weird experiences i have had and i continue to have.
Any advice will be so appreciated, I know you may not be able to solve my problem but just learning more about what i am having or at least giving a name to my feelings would make me feel really better and safer. Thank you so much and sorry for this long post!

[ryanla]

Hi Deimosva.

In the last 2-3 weeks I've been having the same thoughts as you and creaking myself out a lot. However, I haven't had the latter symptoms you have described. Instead I have been feeling as if I'm not real and questioning things around me. It's a very horrible feeling and thought process.

I do take medication for it and I am seeing a therapist, everyday feels slightly better than the last and over time I'm sure it will pass. Do you take medication? Have you seen a doctor?

[deimosva]

Hi Deimosva.

In the last 2-3 weeks I've been having the same thoughts as you and creaking myself out a lot. However, I haven't had the latter symptoms you have described. Instead I have been feeling as if I'm not real and questioning things around me. It's a very horrible feeling and thought process.

I do take medication for it and I am seeing a therapist, everyday feels slightly better than the last and over time I'm sure it will pass. Do you take medication? Have you seen a doctor?

Hi, I haven't seen anyone or taken any medication. I'm in the last year of high school, I just got my driving's licence, I really don't wanna take any more money from my parents and I wanted to stay out of medications...

[SLA]

Hi deimosva,

It does sound scary. BUT!

You are letting your thoughts rule your life. You are placing too much emphasis on your thoughts, and identifying with them too much.

You have become caught in a downward spiral of anxiety. You need to give your brain a rest, and let it recover.

[ana]

I have the same set of fears. In fact, it may be reassuring for you to know that my panic attacks started because of (though my therapist disputes this) recurring thoughts of death and of what it'd feel like to 'not exist'. The first panic attack I'd ever had, I was 13 at the time, manifested as severe depersonalisation, unreality. Nothing, including myself, felt real. I still get this feeling, more often than not. Death terrifies me, and it appears as though my panic enjoys showing me what it feels like to not be present. It truly is awful, isn't it?
Medication and therapy have helped me immensely, and I'd strongly advise you to seek help. You're still young, if I'd done 15 years ago what I did a few years ago which is to seek help from a therapist who knows what they're doing and take medication that actually helps treat my condition, I'd have avoided going through endless cycles of anxiety episodes and benzodiazepin dependency.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi and welcome to NMP

What you are experiencing may be Derealisation or Depersonalisation. These tend to happen due to very heightened periods of anxiety or result from panic attacks. Others on here who have a bad panic attack have then suffered this.

It tends to be the way the mind tries to escape from the mental anguish, which may sound similiar to Dissociation (but this other forms it can take too), and it can be a very unpleasant & alien state to feel in which just feeds anxiety more.

There is a sub board for DP/DR so I suggest you have a look at that and the advice people give to deal with it. Try to accept it as such a function and you can work your way out of it. Grounding Techniques are also used to help with it, there are plenty out there via Google.

[~Unknown]

I have this too, I'm 27 but have had this since childhood. I honestly think it's the worst thing to ever happen to me. It is absolutely terrifying because I can't talk myself down. I at the moment am having to avoid things too heavily related to death while I recover. If I think of it too much I get panic attacks, or this feeling that I am not really in my body or there at all. I feel my skin begin to tingle all over and I feel dizzy and it's horrible. I have to avoid being alone with my own brain for too long else I start thinking of death and non-existence, to the point where I become scared of my bathroom as there's no distractions there. When it's bad I get kind of angry that I was born in the first place just to have everything taken away from me one day.

Go to a doctor, if you have not already. If you can go to a therapist do that too. We are not meant to be feeling this way, even on a purely biological standpoint it is not right for us to have out of control anxiety that prevents us from functioning normally. When my meds are working I handle things a lot better, and am more or less content that we simply don't know what happens when we die (I am agnostic), why would our generation be the one that has it all figured out when 100 years ago people were also pretty confident in what they believed, so I shouldn't live in fear of the theory that upsets me the most. But the fear of death is horrible, it makes everything feel unsafe and sometimes unreal. Just know that it can be beaten, and that you are not alone, I'm recovering from a bad bout myself. Keep strong, try to normalise your life in the ways you can (I find talking to people about normal stuff helps ground me, and if I am home alone I go to an anxiety chat to keep my mind from wandering). You're not meant to feel this way, it's a problem that needs treatment and your brain is making it all scarier.

Also as someone who gets horrific side effects from starting SSRI pills, which are the long-term ones people are commonly given for stuff like anxiety, it's still worth it to me. I'd rather take a pill each day than obsess over death each day, and once the first few weeks passed the side effects improved a lot. I feel more like myself on them, as I can focus on stuff that makes me happy and the present rather than my own death. Sadly therapy is not in my price range but if you can, then do.

[Hopeyet]

I've had a similar thing in the past.

I'm in my 30s now, but years ago as a teenager I can remember a really intense moment of panic confronting the idea that I will eventually cease to 'be'.

That's not really happened again since - that's got to be good news as it means what you're going through could be an isolated occurrence. But, I do get fairly frequent bouts of depersonalisation as Terry described above. I'm seeing a therapist for something else (health anxiety) and he mentioned that this is actually a very common experience./ I forget the figures, but he seemed to think something like 20% of people experienced depersonalisation at some stage.

Personally, I would only use medication as a last resort. I'm quite opposed to medication as a general principle and I can't claim to know a great deal about it medically, but it strikes me there's a great potential for dependency or side effects. I'm sure that's a topic in itself, but I think you're doing the right thing to try and tackle it with other methods first.