I wanted to know if anyone has extreme issues with this that have been helped in any way by anything
I had a psychiatric episode recently in relation to this and its been getting worse over the years
TBC I am not asking for medical advice and I am being seen and looked after by medical teams
I just want to know (without triggering detail) if anyone has gotten through the same and what helped them
I nearly died about three days after an operation,, all I remember is sinking into a lovely warm brown place, I was so comfortable, however I kept getting this pain in my chest, I rose up a bit from this warm and lovely place to find a nurse rubbing her knuckles on my ribs, along with the other medical staff doing things, I just kept muttering 5 more minutes, like I was late for school or work and just needed a few minites more sleep.
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If you miss out on the terrible twos and threes, then you also miss out on all the amazingly literal things small children come out with, bring around people with no concept of abstract thinking is really refreshing.
You could be like my Dad who when he found out he was teriminally ill, created a bucket menu of all the foods he'd never had and wanted to try, lobster's truffles and stuff like that.
what bothers me more about death isn't so much the concept of not existing anymore, it's the regret of mist opportunities.
Then why not make the focus of your life about making the opportunities, finding ways to do the things you wish you could.
I'm in my late 50s and still doing this - if there is something I really want to do then I find a way to do it. You don't need to be 21 to do things - just get fit and be healthy and you can do a big chunk of the same sort of things.
Going to somewhere that is too loud? Get noise cancelling ear phones, going to climb Mt Everest? Get fit, find out how to do it, learn to climb smaller mountains and plan it.
It is only when your body starts failing that you will be really limited in what you can do. Got a family and kids - upskill, get a better job and make more money so you can afford it.
Not got a partner and want one? Get studying social interaction, find a coach to help and find out how to do it then get yourself into the dating scene.
In essense, JFDI.
All that said, if you want kids then consider looking for a partner who already has some. You miss out on the sleepless nights, the terrible twos, the troublesome threes and the terrifying fours of childhood and should save yourself a lot of premature aging.
Life it way too short not to do this stuff in my opinion.
As I get older (I'm only 33 so this may well change once I get to an age where death is much more around the corner) what bothers me more about death isn't so much the concept of not existing anymore, it's the regret of mist opportunities. It's the fact I'm never going to be 21 again that upsets me and I know I can never go back and change things. Right now what bothers me most is I failed to find anyone in my 20s and I'm probably not going to have children. I always wanted to find someone in my 20s to have fun with but it never happened.
I have had this fear of death numerous times. I will mention that religion has played a big part in helping me though.
What I found ironic for me was my mum who was at the time more agnostic had reassured me about heaven and afterlife and even got me into playing some angel characters I had to give up playing (due to other family members bullying me) again. My “dad” however, who is supposedly catholic, didn’t help at all and got annoyed when I took religion more seriously and also bullied me for playing these angels on my game. Basically what helped me get through was my mum, the little characters and reconnecting with my faith and the more I practiced to better I felt, until my “dad” ruined everything. But since then a therapist I used to see was a nurse in a small private hospital for patients who had major surgery and the ones who were actually proven dead had said they got to experience heaven so that has made me feel reassured as well. I mean that’s me and there will be others who are against religion and that’s their choice I won’t change that but I hope they can respect my choice and views too.
IF there is anything next, I'm looking forward to the adventure of finding out what it is. That is a subject for its own thread though I guess
I think that many people yearn for something better than this life after they die. Others believe everything will cease. Reincarnation is also a possibility that some consider. The issue is that we don’t know of anybody who has died and come back to tell us what the afterlife is like, so that is where faith comes in, rather than evidence.
People have written about having ‘near death experiences’, yet while they may truthfully record their experiences, there has never been accepted proof of the events. Moreover, there are compelling arguments that can offer alternative explanations.
I used to fear death and what happens to the body afterwards, I found learning more about the processes of death and what hapens to the body afterwards strangely comforting, it enabled me to seperate "me" from the body I inhabit.
Having a faith helps with the what happens to "me" after, as I believe I will go to an after life for a while before being reincarnated. I used to fear not existing anymore at all, but not anymore, I sort of find the idea comforting, maybe because I also have a stupid fear that as soon as I die some numpty will come along and come up with a foolproof method of necromancy or something and I'll still be bothered by people asking me stupid questions, lol.
As I once said to my son, when were discussing this topic, 'when I die, if there nothing, there wont be any me to care, whereas if you wake up dead one day you're going to feel a right, numpty'.
Perhaps older people are more likely to have had more experiences of people around them dying
I've seen a bit too much for my liking, but it did teach me a valuable lesson that my analytical brain has been able to grasp and make sense of.
There have been about 117 billion people living in the total of known history and the vast majority of them are already dead, with all the ones alive now almost certain to die within the next 100 years.
There is no escape and it is just a part of the natual cycle of living that is going on around us - embracing it as a cycle and natural steals a lot of its power to scare you.
For those who believe in heaven/hell or an afterlife, the possibility of all those people around there is a scary one I guess.
However, since our autism stems from our brains and the brain will not be there when we die, will we still be impacted by it? The issues often stem from sensory overload and your senses are corporeal and will not exist after death so there is that to look forward to.
IF there is anything next, I'm looking forward to the adventure of finding out what it is. That is a subject for its own thread though I guess.
Exactly! I knew that the only way I could deal with death would be to deal with the subject full on.
I do wonder if the topic is easier to deal with as we grow older or if that is too much of a generalisation. Perhaps older people are more likely to have had more experiences of people around them dying and perhaps we also acquire other life experiences that better equip us for the inevitable.
Thanks for the link to the book, It is deep stuff and I would need to take time to study it in detail. I am very interested in Mesopotamia so I need to re-read several translations of the Epic of Gilgamesh, along with expert commentary, prior to further study of “Staring at the Sun”. I hope I won’t feel the need to do this with the Greek philosophers and everyone else who comes after Gilgamesh.
Thank you, I really appreciated reading this and could relate to some of it - especially being told I’m “too serious” and to “just stop thinking about it”. Even if I had had the choice to “stop thinking about it” which I didn’t (I think because of an autistic lack of synaptic pruning), I’m not sure it would have been a wise approach anyway as I think my life has somehow become richer for engaging with the topic of death.
I think this is a really valuable topic to open up so thank you for posting. I’m sorry to hear about the extreme distress that reflecting on death is causing.
In the past I have had existential dread that was more disturbing on a day to basis than I felt it should be. My theory is that some autistic people are more prone to more extreme existential issues. I’m definitely someone who has to work on the distress created by the existential givens of life. Here is an AI summary;
Existential Givens;
Death: The awareness of our own mortality and the inevitability of death for ourselves and others is a central existential concern.
Isolation: our connections with others, each person ultimately exists in profound isolation, experiencing a fundamental separateness from others.
Freedom and Responsibility: Human are fundamentally free to make choices, but this freedom comes with the ultimate responsibility for those choices, which can be a source of anxiety.
Meaninglessness: Life does not come with inherent meaning; individuals are tasked with creating their own meaning in a vast and seemingly indifferent universe.
For me being autistic touches directly on how I experience all of these givens but particularly isolation and freedom and responsibility - I could write a lot more about that but I have a tendency to write too much so I will stop.
With death anxiety I have, I think, found a way to harness it to cease (editing this as that was a Freudian slip typo for sure - should read SEIZE not cease!!) life while I can.
I really like Irvin Yalom writings on death, which helped me a lot personally.
This is a link to the first chapter of his book “staring at the sun”
https://www.yalom.com/staring-at-the-sun-excerpt
It’s also a lovely audiobook.
Years ago, I discovered that fear of death with the oft accompanying fear of oblivion is more common than I imagined. So from that aspect, you are not alone and your fears are entirely normal.
I used to have a consuming fear of death and of the uncertain possibility of hell/heaven or oblivion. Nowadays, I believe that after death it is likely that my body & mind (& soul, if I have one) will cease to exist, but the thought of oblivion used to drive me round the bend and frighten me so much.
When people I know die, I find it difficult to comprehend that they have been here one minute and gone the next, and eventually nothing will be left of their mortal remains. I know it in my head, but it is difficult to ‘really know it’ in my heart. It is so much more difficult to comprehend when I am contemplating my own death, and I have been accused of being too serious about it and in the past told to not think about it.
Years ago, I addressed some of my fears by doing an Open University undergraduate course called “Death & Dying” and alongside it I volunteered at the Hospice as a driver. I discovered that many people of all religions and none were keen to talk about death, so the experience was very helpful.
TV programmes on nature, the animal kingdom and astronomy have helped me to consider my own place in the world as one mortal human being among many.
Meditation has been helpful and although I used to be a practicing Catholic, I did a meditation course run by a Buddhist nun for cancer patients at Macmillan. She taught me some useful breathing and mind exercises. We meditated on death and it was all very uplifting, yet none of these practices required me to convert to Buddhism or to change my existing beliefs.
I like to meditate on the size and beauty of our world, to consider the lifecycle of animals and plants that were here before I existed as an embryo in my mother’s womb, and to consider everything about that world before I was here. I consider the stars, planets and things that were around millions of years before me, and I contemplate my insignificance as a being less than the size of a speck of dust in the vastness of everything. Somehow, that gives me peace.
