I cannot get over my fear the non-existence after death. Every time I think about it all my feelings start bubbling up and I get depressed. It's terrifying thinking about non-existence, it fills me with so much dread
I cannot get over my fear the non-existence after death. Every time I think about it all my feelings start bubbling up and I get depressed. It's terrifying thinking about non-existence, it fills me with so much dread
I'll tell you what helped me, but... it needs a big caveat, which I'll get to.
What helped me was the idea that "it's okay to be scared." Just let the fear happen, be mindful, watch it come and go, and realize that the fear cannot hurt you.
And now for the caveat. I was too young to correctly follow my own advice. I was only a teenager, I lacked the maturity or life experience to guide myself through the fear I was feeling. I didn't know about meditation or mindfulness. So "it's okay to be scared" gradually turned into "become detached from your own feelings" as the fear lessened and I forgot to keep "letting it happen." This worsened the dissociation I was already experiencing as a young enby egg. Now I'm older and I have a lot of feelings I have dissociated from, including the existential dread I used to feel, and I'm trying to dig up all those old feelings so I can re-process them and finally stop dissociating.
But I want to emphasize, I really do think "it's okay to be scared" is the right call, even if I didn't quite pull it off correctly as a teenager. The solution is to build mindfulness, to slowly develop a little interior space in the back of your mind from which you can watch your feelings come and go without being consumed by them.