I am looking for some advice from someone smarter than me because about a month ago I got hit with intense crippling fear of death. It usually hits me in the evenings and started with just my thoughts wandering thinking about the lives of different people in different parts of the world. Eventually, these thoughts came back to me and my mortality. I started picturing the transition into nothingness. The fear of knowing that I am drawing my last breath. The different ways I could die. This started resulting in panic attack like symptoms that persist late into the night until I tire myself out and fall into short uneasy sleep. It got better for a week but is now getting worse again. I had this same crippling fear of death when I was 4-7 years old. After a while my mind focused on other things and at some point I discovered the concept of not worrying about death while alive because you aren’t dead and after you are dead you don’t know it. That was the thing that kept me not worrying for the past 12 years or so but whatever circumstances has led me to where I am today has shattered that as a comforting thought and actually made it into an actively upsetting one. What I am specifically afraid of is not being. I don’t want to not exist, to not experience life. I want to see the galaxy and the universe. I want to know what it’s like to be a professional athlete. An ship captain. A state leader. A chef. I don’t want this to end.
Regardless of your personal beliefs there is next to nothing you can do to preserve this life beyond the brief existence you're currently enjoying. That's a hard pill to swallow but it's also a very freeing one. There is very little value in worrying about things totally out of your control.
If you have the means it might pay to talk to a therapist about this. You don't have to be unwell to see one. They can help guide you into developing new tools to deal with the anxiety and perhaps find some peace. At the very least talking to close friends or family might help.
Edit: just read the follow on in the comments. It looks like you have tried these suggestions. Sorry I don't have much else to suggest. Only this, if you worry to much about your end you could miss out on your now. Good luck figuring this out.
1. The most obvious is that I shouldn't exist and I'm incredibly lucky to be here. It's a good time to be alive in history. I'm a person that can enjoy life, appreciate music and art, freely pursue my passions, and travel and see the world. Yes, I want to live longer or see what's happening in a million years. However, I need to remind myself that I basically won the lottery a trillion times over to be here, and asking for more at that point is just absurd. I should appreciate what I've been given.
2. There are lots of people I admire in the world today. Sometimes I'm watching a YouTube video or I'm talking with someone and I can't help but think it's cool that I live at the same time as this person, and how they can be a part of my life.
3. As for death, I think about the people I know that have died: family members, good friends, personal heroes or notable people in history. They died, so I find some comfort in going where they went. I don't think I'm above them, so if death was their end, it's an acceptable fate for me too.
4. We don't understand the universe. What are the odds a big bang creates a universe with the forces and elements required to enable life that can ask this very question? It shouldn't happen. I feel like we have such a primitive understanding of the universe and beyond, and that we truly don't understand life, and therefore death. I get a bit of comfort there, because the mysteries of the universe mean I can't be certain what death even means. Yes, my life as I know it will end. But, maybe I've already died millions of times before? Maybe there is an afterlife? Maybe this is a simulation? Maybe I'll live this life again? Maybe I'll live an even better version of this life? We don't know, so perhaps I shouldn't be so pessimistic about what it means to die.
I follow the scientists that are working on reversing the age of cells. Currently the human trials are only working on specific body parts, but in a few years it may be applied body wide assuming no major issues come up. The most promising work I am following right now is by Dr. David Sinclair and his team at Harvard. [1] There are many teams in numerous countries working on this and similar techniques.
In the mean time, I avoid things that cause premature aging and do what I can to reverse damage from the western diet I had eaten for so many years.
The perspective you have may change, I've seen a 105 year old talking he was so tired of life. If you are in constant pain, or horrible situation, life suddenly isn't so great.
Life is great when you are young, so enjoy it. The future doesn't exist yet, so don't overthink it.
However I believe strongly that everything has a cause and be it randomness or pseudorandom once it started it made sense how it kept going. If I made a wrong decision it was still the only thing that could have happened. ANd probably it was even the best choice at the time.
I don't know how to change as a person, but for me it's like this:
I'm OK with being average in some ways and I don't have to be remembered either. I enjoy life while it lasts, I don't have big plans, I don't collect many keepsakes. I simply optimize for being a decent being and enjoying life (life of course washes you elsewhere sometimes).
If I die tomorrow it will be a bit short, but I had a good run I guess. I try not to waste thoughts on things I can't influence.
In the end nobody wants to die, it's a always a tragedy and even fear might get to me, but as long as I have no reason to believe my end is near I'll be fine.
About the aging body: I'm fine as long as I don't have too much pain and I'm still sharp in the mind. For pain: I guess morphine will do in the worst case, so that's a solved issue. For a deteriorating mind: I hope there will be a cure against alzheimers, but if it's coming I might plan an exit strategy and try to execute it while I still can.
The only thing that does bother me a lot: pissing a way my life with a full time job. But even that: has to be right now, can change, I'm working towards that.
I know that feeling. It's like getting invited to a banquet with 5000 dishes from all over and getting to pick 2 or 3.
I was always thinking: wow, if I lived a thousand years, I could spend 50 years on this thing I really like, then 50 on that thing I really like. BUT: we get one of those. And any choice means discarding all the rest. HOW DO YOU PICK?
Since our time is so limited, we need to choose wisely. Realizing that, we have avoided the terrible loss we'd feel later. So you've rediscovered what you've been hiding from and faced it - to your advantage.
A while back I realized that, even if I could buy a jet and throw hundred-dollar bills out the window, I could never visit all the amazing places on Earth for long enough to really absorb them. So hey, I might as well start visiting them on Youtube. That's going well.
Everyone on Earth is in the same boat. In fact, each one of them is very much like another you. Suppose you were reborn without any memory of the self you now call you. Would that be you? Hmmm. Anyway, 'you' would have to ... gather new memories. Make or do or experience new things.
Admitting the truth, we can focus on what's important, making things or doing things or experiencing things. Every artist, nurse, baker, fisherwoman needs an audience. I don't mind just appreciating Nature - the best inventor of them all.
Birds, deer, fish, trees, insects, they're born into a much smaller, less mobile feast. They too die. Did they even have a 'you'? Do they have the luxury of choice?
It could be wrong to say, but at times it seems like some people - even people who 'have everything' - die without having truly lived. What does that mean? We have to decide. What does it mean to live a meaningful life? What's right or wrong, who decides? Enjoy? Raise a family? Help others to a better place? Tend to the sick?
However we ask that question and make that decision and carry through ... then for sure, at the end, we'll know we've made, done, experienced what was within our reach. Time for a new you?
The issue for me has been that while that advice is easy to hand out and to some degree I agree with it, it doesn’t say anything about how to reach that point of acceptance.
I’ve tried a lot of things to alleviate these panic attacks, and that’s as successful as I’ve been so far.
The answer: meditation and medication.
I visited a psychiatrist this year after a particularly difficult time and got diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. The doctor put me on a program where I started with natural alternatives, I was hesitant to try medication. But eventually, once it was clear that the natural remedies were not working, I put my reservations aside and tried the medication the doctor prescribed. And lo and behold, it’s actually helped. I don’t get the panic attacks as often and when I do they are not as bad.
There is only so much that medication will do for you however. My psychiatrist recommended I a read a book called “10 percent happier”, and this has helped become more aware about what goes on in my mind and what my body is trying to tell me.
P.S. - this has worked for me YMMV.
This is probably the most gut-wrenching realization I ever had. I've gnawed on this for many a night. But it also leads to the fundamental question: What do you want to experience?
It's the choices we make and the options we decide against that define us. You have to choose. And the great part is: You can! It is entirely up to you to turn the brief and glorious period of "I'm alive" between two inconceivably long spans of "I'm not alive" into the best it can be. But that involves making choices against things.
Personally, I try to make a regular habit of thinking about my mortality. Visualizing my friends and family after I'm gone, and seeing how the world keeps on ticking. It helps me limit my own self-importance in the world but also helps free my mind to focus on the things I really care about.
Like you, I would love to be able to many lifetimes where I get to try all those other paths in the road I didn't end up taking. And perhaps we will, maybe reincarnation is a thing. Or maybe the birth and death of the universe is cyclical and we get to try this all over and over. Sadly we can never know this.
If you haven't seen the show "The Good Place", it has some interesting takes on mortality and what it would be like to live forever.
Lots of people advocate trying to make peace, or ignore the train running down to where you're tied on the tracks. Might have been the best move anytime before a few centuries ago. Now, though? We might have medicine good enough to halt aging within the next few generations. You might be too late to save yourself, but you might be able to save your kids. So donate money to anti-aging organisations, or change your job- use your resources in the most efficient way you can figure out to help on the task of solving the problem. Long term, that's the only solution. Even if it's too late to get yourself to 'longevity escape velocity', being one of the million cuts that beats back death seems worthwhile.
It is about a man who becomes immortal and experiences a lot of things. Without spoiling you, it turns out not to be as great as expected.
Apart from this there is the somewhat classical : "A famous quote tells us the three things every man should do during his time on earth: Plant a tree, have a son and write a book. The reason behind this quote is generally believed to be that we are only here for a short time and these three things will live on long after we have passed. It’s like leaving a legacy and in a sense achieving a kind of immortality."
I've started a forum to discuss the idea with others but haven't got very far. Still if you have any questions or want to find links to more information it's at https://immortalityforum.com/forum/
An eternity elapsed before I was born, and the universe will go on for an eternity after I die. Keep it in perspective.
Concentrate on the multiple wonderful things you've experienced in this life.
Recognise that every single one of your ancestors had their life, then it ended just as yours will. Recognize that you are part of a community of all of those millions of lives.
If you let your fear cripple you, then you can't do anything with your life anyways. So that level of fear is not logical. Just accept your death - we are all going to die.
- Do I believe in god?
- Does the universe exist?
- What is my purpose in life?
I did not, and do not, have definitive answers but going through the rabbit holes trying to answer these questions have led me to adopting specific axioms which I use to help justify my place in this world.
You can give a try to transhumanism.
It does not promise anything, but it hints at the possibility to defeat finiteness either by biological/medical or technological progress, going through a bunch of paradigm-revolutionizing innovations called a Singularity.
Personally I'm atheist and when I seem to begin to have existential dread I climb to this hope of a future Singularity. Even if I know it could very well be that it would never happen at all, only the possibility of it allows my angst to disappear.
Things I have tried to at least slow down the panic:
Talked to my therapist. Her advice was to try to distract myself until coping mechanisms come back and help me protect myself from whatever is triggering me. All true but doesn’t change the fundamental facts. I don’t want to think of this stuff with more clinical detachment. I want to think of it with hope bordering on certainty.
Tried various anti-anxiety medications. This helps temporarily but same as above: doesn’t change fundamental facts. As I said above, going to try to adjust them again with my doctor to try to dial them in better for short term comfort.
Tried distractions like talking to friends and family. This is a mixed bag. When I look at my children I see the intrusive thoughts flash across my mind about their mortality and how I am powerless to change it. With friends it can often take my mind off things for a bit but they aren’t sitting by my bedside telling me distracting stories as I fall asleep the way my mother did when I was 4.
Talking to my partner. They are not nearly as afraid of death and think of it as very much a part of life. They are supportive but I think me explaining my reasons for being suddenly terrified like this take a lot out of them and I don’t want to make this their problem. When I need concrete things they are 100% there but I don’t want to offload this problem on them as they will take it on and if they can’t succeed will likely fall into the same situation while trying.
In distant past I have flirted with spiritualism and religion. My rational mind cannot accept a system that requires blind belief or that has some obvious logical flaws. And besides if I really am just getting a short 60-90 years to exist I don’t want to spend them worshipping something, be it a bearded man in the sky or some eternal light.
Briefly looked into brain upload/brain replacement. This brought me 48 hours of comfort. Some people believe the singularity is coming and that as early as 2045 we might have brain upload technology. This was almost what I want to latch onto as my mental life boat, but in the end these predictions sound a lot like predictions in the 1970s about cold fusion and AI: off by decades or centuries. Besides, who is to say that it would actually work correctly and not just create another copy that thinks it is me but I am not the one seeing through my optic nerves, so to speak. Or that if it’s available that it would be available to me? Or that it would allow me to be even a little bit human afterwards and not some beige box in my grand kids’ basement server rack?
Think about if there is anything I can do. I am not an unintelligent person; is there something I can contribute? Or do I really want to devote my life to pursuing something that five centuries from now will be a footnote in some college textbook? Or do I pursue things like status and monetary gain to be able to buy my and my family’s way into whatever brain upload type solution we as a species might find? Or do I accumulate wealth and invest it into this kind of research? Or medical life extension for myself and my loved ones until such time that a-mortality (if not immortality) is an option.
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I am asking this on HN because this to me is the most accessible community of people who are very smart and a lot are much smarter and more educated than me. It’s like I am hoping to get into a debate with someone where I argue about why death is inevitable, and then lose handily to someone who can show me why I should have hope because concrete solutions are coming. Solutions that aren’t religious or other forms of make-belief, overly-sentimental in the vein of people living on in others’ hearts, or unrealistic from a physics standpoint, or would only be available to the ultra rich/powerful/people deemed worthy. Any help or advice is appreciated. Any questions, happy to answer.
P.S.: I am sorry if this triggers anyone else. This isn’t a good time of year or a good year for this.
P.P.S.: say we manage to upload brains into new bodies with preserving the self and make the process perfect (no accidents at the body factory, no power outages during the procedure), AND solve the resource/environment problem of humans never dying, and manage long distance space travel. Won’t heat death of the universe be our final stop anyways? Or do we get to break out and keep going? What good is it to live a trillion trillion years just to freeze to death while starving?