Is there an effective treatment for thanatophobia?

Question

Some people are religious, others are spiritual. I'm Agnostic: we believe that we don't know if there's an afterlife or not. Many say that Agnostics are the most courageous people; still, there are times when anyone, even the most religious, will wake up in the middle of the night and ask, "Why? What's it all about?" Needless to say, this can cause some stress in one's life. So, if anyone knows of a way to deal with this outside of the box, so to speak, I'd appreciate learning how.

For CLICKHEREx: Carl Sagan had the same attitude. Have you read the December 2006 issue of SKEPTIC? If not, I highly recommend it.

Answer 1

I think a lot of people fear death and worry about their lives. I know I do. I think a good way (besides medication) to eliminate the fear, or at least not be so worrisome, is to do exciting and fear-invoking things. Bungy-jump. Go sky-diving or sail the world. Do something that makes you feel good. That way, if you are still fearful of death to an unhealthy degree, you can say, "At least I've done a lot." I know it helped me.

Answer 2

The implications of Quantum Theory, without which you would not have your computer, or the internet, is that infinite trillions of universes are splitting off from this one every attosecond, and in some of them you are already dead, in others you are slightly different, or that universe is, and in yet others you are very different indeed. In many, you never existed, and in others, life on Earth evolved in a completely different direction, as it would have done if many of the mass extinction events that have taken place over billions of years did not occur. An example is that of the dinosaurs, without which mammals like us would not have been able to evolve to the number, size, and to occupy the many evolutionary niches that we now do, from the polar regions to the tropics, from flying in the sky, as with bats, to deep in the oceans, as with whales. In others there is no life whatsoever...........Consider your life as being like a movie with multiple endings; you only get to see one version in this particular world (screening in this movie theatre), but across the road, there is another movie theatre, screening a different version, but both of them are you, and your life; and down the road is another movie theatre, screening another version, and so on. All equally valid; all you, all at the same time. Each individual version only gets played once (which is analogous to you actually experiencing your life), but it is always there. It's just, having seen one, you want to go next door and see what happens there, and then down the street............until you have seen them all. THERE IS ANOTHER WAY TO LOOK AT IT. When we first evolved, we were incapable of thought, or even independent movement, that only came after the first complex, multicellular lifeforms evolved. So, there was a time when we didn't dream, because our brains were not complex enough. But, when we began to dream, AND had evolved language, to be able to communicate those dreams, we created a belief in the spirit world, because of dreams of those people, long dead in reality, visiting and talking to us in our sleep, then waking and remembering. Not knowing it was a dream, we assumed that there was an afterlife, where others went when they died in the world of ordinary reality, and that there were creatures that were part animal/part human. This is when the shaman first began playing a prominent part. The next step was the invention of creation myths, to explain to the younger members of the tribe how they came to be there. Then priests, religions and multiple gods, like the god of lightning and thunder, the god of the seas, rivers and lakes, and the god/godess of hunting. Then the concept of one god. But having a belief does not make it so. There was a time when it was known that the Earth was flat, but that turned out to be not so. And so with religions. I used to have two way bet as well, in being an agnostic, and I also used to have a belief in god, and Santa Claus and monsters and ghosts and...........Nowadays, I adopt a scientific viewpoint, while still trying to keep an open mind.

Answer 3

Very good question. You might want to explore the beliefs behind the various religions to see if any of them have some ideas which will relieve the stress you talk about. It doesn't mean you have to embrace any one religion completely, but many religions have very sensible ideas about the meaning of life. One excellent non-biased website for information about the different religions is www.beliefnet.org. You might want to try their Belief-o-Matic inventory to find out if your current set of beliefs fit with any of the established religions or philosophies. Then you'd have a place to start your research.