“Staring at the Sun”
Irvin Yalom, the brilliant writer and psychiatrist, writes in his “Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the dread of death,” that therapists often assume a client’s fear of death hides an underlying issue – that the fear is a defense against another problem. But a client’s fear of death may be just that – the fear of the end of existence – a fear so solid and pervasive it is like the Earth itself. Nothing can be stashed beneath it because it is the core. It is the ultimate human fear – nonbeing.
Our collective avoidance of death
Death is a culturally-avoided topic. We may say someone “passed” instead of “died” we are so fearful of using the word “death.” Even a therapist may avoid the topic. “Death” is plainly upsetting and frightening. It’s natural to avoid it. However, when it comes time to really talk about it, that avoidance makes it even more daunting. Yalom’s text on the fear of death provides some powerful insights into the fear of death that may help you begin to think about your own relationship with death. Getting to know your fear may help turn it into a productive force in your life.
Awakening Experiences
Yalom describes “awakening experiences” as the development of a death consciousness – coming into a realization that you will die. An “awakening experience” is the “confrontation with death that enriches life.” These could be explicit events, like a friend’s near-fatal car crash, or more subtle, like a life milestone like retirement or planning your estate. What came up for you when you had your awakening experience? Here are your first clues about how you understand death.
Fear of missing out
A fear of death may express itself as a fear of missing out. What about those trips I never went on? What about all of the things I will miss in the family? These thoughts indicate a sense of an “unlived life.” The transience of life is hard to grapple with. Our lives are temporary. But, although our lives expire and our experiences end, it does not mean they are not valuable. The following questions are helpful to counter a fear of losing what you haven’t had. They can also help you identify what may be giving you a sense of your life being unlived:
- “How can you live now without building new regrets? What do you have to change in your life?”
- “What can you do now in your life so that one year or five years from now, you won’t look back and have similar dismay about the new regrets you’ve accumulated? In other words, can you find a way to live without continuing to accumulate regrets?”
- What if you lived this same life over and over again?
Yalom also offers the concept of “rippling” as an antidote to the terror of death’s finality. With rippling, you leave behind “something from your life experience; some trait; some piece of wisdom, guidance, virtue, comfort that passes on to others, known or unknown.” Every person, though their life is transient, leaves behind some part of themselves, even if we do not know what it is, or cannot know it, there is something that remains, transforms, and ripples forth beyond our time.
Fear of the sensation of death
If you have a fear of what death will feel like, Yalom provides a couple of existential salves. For those who do not believe in an afterlife, the soul and consciousness end at death. There is nothingness after death. So, there is nothing to fear in death because it cannot be perceived. Another thought experiment asks you to imagine the parallel state of non-being that existed before birth. Death, the period after life, is the twin of the period before life. There is endless nonbeing before our birth, then our brief flash of life, followed by endless nonbeing during death.
Defenses against death
A fear of death may be showing up in your life in unexpected ways. Some people may exhibit a fear of death by pursuing endless wealth accumulation or dive deeply into religiosity – ways to imitate immortality. Others may exhibit a fear of life by restraining from living fully. This is actually, by contrast to death anxiety, a life anxiety. In our lifelong journeys to individuation, becoming our true selves can be frightening. Reaching great self-actualization comes at a risk of isolation, vulnerability, and loneliness – traits that characterize death. This hesitation to live fully ties into a fear of losing all of it with death.
As humans, we require connection. Death is the ultimate lonely state. That is why our collective cultural neglect of the topic compounds the fear of death. When we’re together, we don’t talk about loneliness. Discussing the fear of death and its presence in our lives provides a connective comfort. What is there to learn in our relationship with death that can lead us to live more fully and authentically?
Speaking to a therapist can help you sort through these difficult questions. If you need to speak with someone urgently, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.