Death is the ultimate cosmic joke. If there is no afterlife and when you die you cease to exist completely then what was the point to even living?
At some time in the far distant future the universe will die a cold energyless death. A hundred billion years of pointlessness.
I'm not even that scared of death, l'm more afraid of losing the individual consciousness I have now; the consciousness I have built over the years, my personality, my likes and dislikes, my hobbies, my very essence. Religion will not even bring me any form of comfort because I don't believe I would retain my personal consciousness if there was some afterlife, and even the concept of reincarnation means I would have to start life from scratch and be a new person, or will my soul interact with my new body and inform it of my new existence? Will I retain thoughts and memories?
It also doesn't help that things such as memories and thoughts are electrochemical, meaning they rely on a combination of electrical impulses and chemical signals inside the brain in order to be activated. Souls aren't anything physical, so are they capable of retaining these memories and thoughts? And why can I not feel my soul as I am alive now, why can I not interact with it? If I was to go to an afterlife, am I allowed the luxury of retaining my individual current consciousness?
Because if I am not, then what was the point of ever existing in the first place? Just as I didn't exist before I was born, I won't exist after. Or is it that my human mind and body cannot interact with my divine, meaning I need to stop worrying because there's no definite answer I can get while on earth?
Another thing that scares me in the inevitability of it. And anything that has to do with dates remind me of it, including older people; such as my parents, elderly lecturers or even elderly people on the street. There's no secret way out, there's no exceptions or requirements to be met or a waiting list for immortality, not like immortality is any better because I fear the concept of
"eternity", making me question why I exist at all, but that's another subject entirely.
I like to comfort myself by saying "Life is long" but then the never ending flow of time scares me, just a forever running unending river... meaning I would be looking back at this by the time I'm done writing and the very first sentence to the last would be something I had done in the past, it scares me that a measurement as little as half a millisecond is the past. Just as I was young sometime ago, I will be old sometime in the future and then rotten, a forgotten nobody 200 years later.
A lot of religions like Pantheism believe that we are part of the universe and when we die, we go back to a universal consciousness, but that doesn't really help because I'm selfish and want to retain my own consciousness. I do not want to be "energy" or rid of my human autonomy and essence.
Right now I'm trying not to ruin the life I have left by remaining a prisoner of these thoughts and live life to the fullest, but I'll always be horrified by the fact that in as little time as 100 years, I will no longer exist, just as people who were born in 1926.

Im f20, I dont know how much of this is related to my autism but I have autism, anxiety and depression, I keep having panic attacks about dying regularly, the process of slowly fading out of existence, seeing my body from 3rd person, being nothing, and like the thought of being nothing while my body decomposes, and I never exist again, and then when the universe ends, and like what happens then, I can't believe that this is eternal, and that life is so short, I wish I was never born so I didn't have to expirence this, what if reincarnation is real and I transport to another decade or something and it's like a loop, I'm just scared of all of the possibilities, I lost my best friend 2 years ago and it broke me so bad, I can't understand where he is, I can't imagine what he felt, I can't understand that Trying to improve, I know the mixing is a little buns in kinda bad at mixing, looking 4 feedback not really alive, I don't know how to explain it, everything just stresses me out so bad, I've barely done anything with my life

Ever get those thoughts from time to time... That one day you won't be here on this little blue planet of ours... That whichever way you go... Burial... Cremation... Or other(if there's another way) that you will cease to exist... That maybe one day... Someone will speak your name for the final time.... Does it scare you? Or empower you? Make you want to do more with your life?

‼️ Slight warning ‼️

this is my first ever post on reddit and my last resort about this issue.

for about 2-3 years, i've been in constant terror that i am about to die in some way or another. it's become a constant thought of mine no matter what i'm doing. i've never had anyone in my family die brutally in front of me or even had a traumatic near-death experience.

even when i'm in my room, doing nothing, i have the feeling something is out to kill me. like my house will explode out of nowhere or a killer might break in and kill me.

when i'm out, i'm constantly in fear someone is going to stab or shoot me.

every slight pain anywhere in my body is immediately registered as a deadly disease and i end up panicking for hours, sitting in front of a screen, researching every health/medical website for HOURS on end.

i have sleepless nights of just crying and having panic attacks, scared i won't wake up in the morning. i find myself struggling to imagine a future where i'm not dead. every time i try to, i immediately think of all the different ways i'll die instead. i can't think of a future i'm alive and/or happy in.

i just want to live my life, enjoy things, love someone, have friends, even insignificant things like eating food without panicking about choking or being poisoned, but these constant fears prevent me from doing even the littlest tasks.

please, if you know any way you can help, let me know. i am miserable.

randomly it hit me that I’m turning 18 soon. Realised how quick time flew by. It’s been more than 10 years of this phobia lingering in my life, some times leaving a more pronounced effect than others.
I try to ignore it by feeding my brain fog with excess dopamine from consuming content, but I can’t deny that I feel something looming over me.
I feel like I’ve lost a bit of myself to this fear, and I sometimes struggle to stay level headed.
My coping mechanisms can’t really pull through when I’m asleep, when I get dreams about death and existence.
I don’t know anymore. I look back on my childhood and I get sad over all my bad choices, then I look forward to realise that those bad choices don’t mean anything anyway which just makes me sadder.

before i start this, i know that i need therapy and i’m going to get it very soon.

i had never thought about death this deeply until around last year, may 6th 2025, i had went to the hospital because i was suffering from shortness of breath to the point i couldn’t walk up 12 steps of stairs without being on the ground for 10-15 minutes with my heart racing and chest tightening. all within the first hour, they had taken my ecg, blood, x-ray test done which is very unusual for emergency because they usually take hours to get things done so i texted my mom (since i went alone and had to update her) that they were doing everything so fast and to “say goodbye to me because your daughter may be dying” as a joke, i really do wish i never made that joke.

the doctor had pulled me aside maybe 2 hours later telling me that they need to prep me for a CT scan because they suspect i may have bloodclots in my chest which automatically freaked me out because usually i go to emergency and it’s depression/anxiety related or some sort of lung infection from being sick but this was actually serious this time, all i remember is that they got someone to put an IV in me and i just started crying all by myself in the waiting room across from this mother and daughter that i had been talking to. i remember the daughter being scared and the mother asking me if everything was okay, i couldn’t even put the words together so all i said is that i was okay and overreacting.. they confirmed i had two large bloodclots, one in each lung that could dislodge even with the slightest movement, they had put me on oxygen and put another iv in me so they could start giving me fluids and blood thinners.

they transferred me to a different hospital where they put in the PICU and put another iv in me so that they could grab blood whenever they wanted, i had a total of 3 ivs in me now. they didn’t know whether or not i needed surgery which they thankfully didn’t have to do and after a day they sent me up to the oncology floor because that is where they deal with patients suffering from bloodclots where i stayed for maybe 4-5 days before being discharged, after awhile in the hospital they had taken me off the iv blood thinners and started doing injections that i had to learn how to do at home which eventually just turned into pills. i was on blood thinners till august, it was caused by estrogen based birth control.

i actually was relieved at first that i had went through this experience because it had made me less afraid of death since it became so close to me, a few months later a girl i knew who i didn’t like a lot had died from an overdose on MDMA mixed with fentanyl meth. it was the strangest thing i had ever experienced because i had just seen her with her boyfriend 4 days before she passed, i hadn’t seen her in months nor did i want to see her, i remember texting my other friend who was “friends” with her and mentioned that i saw her and she mentioned that the girl had asked her to hangout and smoke sometime. we had spoken about this girl too not that long ago saying how she started losing weight really quickly and thought she maybe on something because there was no way she was able to lose weight in a healthy way, i think her dying really shocked me somehow and started taking a toll on me.

it wasn’t because that specific girl had died, i wouldn’t have even thought about her if I didn’t see her, it was the fact that death was so close to me without even realizing it.

all the old people you see in movies and shows from 20 years ago , are dead. people you don’t even know at this very second that you’re reading , are dead.

this year may to august, i was walking up and down the stairs at night, rechecking locks and alarms making sure that nobody is here because for the longest time I was convinced that someone was out to get me and kill me.. it was driving me nuts, i was sleeping beside a knife because i was so scared. it eventually stopped since i had gone on a trip to grenada but when i got back, i’m rechecking celebrities and if they have died or not, finding the cause for why they died and almost hyper-fixating on it. i can’t even think about what happens after death because i’m scared it’s just absolutely pitch black, like from before you were born and if i think about it too much, i feel like i’m suffocating. it’s like the thought of after death and trying to think about it is running through my head over each other, talking over each other screaming at me to the point that it’s causing me to literally have to try and tell myself out loud for it to stop.

there’s not a single day i don’t check if someone has died, if my mom is out too long, i think that she is dead. i’m checking if she’s breathing, if my animals are breathing, absolutely everyone. i don’t know what to do anymore.

May or may not trigger spirals for some people, especially if you also have OCD like me.

22 years old, and I know I theoretically have quite a few years left; provided no bad strokes of luck

But that doesn't help me at all.

The inevitability still lingers, and I find it impossible to live in the present for more than a little while. I don't mind aging and what comes with that, but disappearing entirely just runs my brain into a processing error.

I try to use stuff like the Symmetry Argument to chill out as well, but it only helps to a certain degree. Duh, I'm not bothered by the billions of years before birth, but that ended in awareness. That but for eternity in the other direction, I just can't process it.

I've sure looked for possible alternatives but unfortunately all of it is VERY human centered; we've only existed a slightly longer blink, and it has been full of suffering. I don't think LUCA was thinking much about anything. Or those weird fungus trees. And I know consciousness (*barring the whole conversation about defining that I know it's a whole thing) is pretty much just an accidental product of our brains through evolution, and will go when we die and that decays.

I can't find joy in anything. I haven't left my bed for like a week, ironically wasting more time. I've had existential issues since I was like 5, 10 concretely. Perhaps it will fade a bit when I'm older, but I kinda doubt it. It makes me so tired. I'm medicated and it helped for the manufactured society-level brain issues brought about by the evolution of "culture" over time, but it really can't help with this. Religion is also just an evolved cultural thing that was also used to explain things we didn't know, but well, now we know them. So it's pretty much just a means of control nowadays.

I have no interest in a career. So much of options is based on preserving humanity, and I like. Don't care. And even things such as birthdays heavily trigger me. No therapists have been qualified to deal with this — because really, what can you do? I wish I could bury myself in fictional worlds again, but the amount of Hope they hold makes me sick. I can't even play pretend anymore. I wish I could, because I know logically when I don't exist I well, won't be able to have an opinion on anything, etc lol.

At this point I'm too mentally disabled to function in the illusion of progress humanity has built and just ... Want to live with as little suffering as possible, if anything. Even though the mere existence of total Finality causes me much pain while I can think about it. Don't get me wrong though, immortality would suck. It's an endless feedback loop with no satisfactory answer.

I used to be pretty passionate about art, and just playing with friends, and stuff. Which confuses me a little because I never really was bothered as much by this stuff doing that knowing it was temporary too. I've never been religious. Never even particularly spiritual, though I understand why some people cling to it for peace of mind. There isn't really a Purpose for living, everything evolution wise has been an accidental chain reaction in a way. I just have complete anhedonia and apathy now towards former relationships and any former hobbies; hard to actively feel joy when you're hyper aware it's just translated hormones and stuff.

Where death is not, I am, and where death is, I am not or whatever. It just doesn't help this sinking dread. I never really cared for myself or that much of human society beyond wanting to minimize suffering for those forced to live, so I guess this is just the internal survival drive flaring up.

I also worry about losing the only shelter and stability I have soon I guess. My parents had me pretty old (and I was quite mad to learn I was an accident and yet my mother still had me. Darn, could've avoided all this!), and their passing is certain to bring me into another spiral eventually. Same with my cats. I am not capable of finding a job that will save me now that I'm out of the illusion. Everything feels like a waste of time.

Oh, yeah, and my mother is super spiritual and I'm not about to bother my dad while he's going thru chemo. So I have no sources of comfort haha.

At least trivial things that used to make me upset for stupid reasons are no longer a blip on my radar? I guess. I don't even like referring to myself in first person. The EGO certainly makes things worse.

Tldr I'm so tired, inevitable infinite oblivion is scary even though I know logically I won't care because I won't be there to process time, just let me be a pokemon trainer or some stuff again while I can if nothing matters anyway lol

Hello everyone just to prefece this sorry for any gramatic mystakes. Im a teenager and lately i feel extremly detached from my life. I started reading about death a lot due to the fear of it and i started doing some stuff to prepare just incase a car hits me or something. I try to stay present in the moments i picked up new hobies. I go into nature lot more but through all of that i feel somewhat as if im not experiencing it. I really dont know how to describe it but the proces of being fine with a suden death led me to a constant state of not really caring what im doing in that moment. I sort of walue myself as everything since i read that thats the thing that keeps people blind to mortality. Im no more than a spider i kill or a clound in the sky. Whitch im bouth fine with them disapearing so as im with myself. I dont want to go back to fearing death but im not sure how to enjoy being alive either. Any tips on books or maybe practicies to help with this would be mutch apreciated.

Without spoiling the movie I went to see today, there's a plot point that's basically "we need you to sacrifice your life so that we can beat entropy and the universe can live a bit longer."

And I almost had the biggest panic attack related to my fear of death ever, what caught me really off guard is that this was in the afternoon, normally my panic attacks are at night.

Specifically it was about there being nothing after we die, like, we can't remeber anything before birth, there will probably be nothing at the end as well.

I am looking for a therapist or a thanatologist to help me because I can't keep living praying and crying because I don't want to die.

I'm not sure if I'm even posting on the right sub because I'm really not afraid of dying at all. Even if being dead meant staring at a black void for all of eternity, I'd be okay with that. In fact, if I was told that I was gonna become "something", like a thread of energy or some other abstract concept after death, and that I wouldn't be able to actually "experience" anything, just exist, I'd also be okay with that.

What terrifies me and keeps me awake at night is the fact that there probably won't even be a black void to look at, nor will there be an eternity to spend staring at said void. It's the absence of time that scares me, the fact that I won't "exist". Not that I won't see, hear, think, remember or even be aware of my own existence, but the fact that there won't be existence at all.

Had to call Suicide Prevention today for the first time because I felt the line between "all of this is pointless" and "might as well end it now" become blurry. I can't go on like this. Just do you do with these thoughts?

I've been afraid of death all my life. Recently it's been really bad. I keep waking up around 2:30 am every night panicking about dying. I hate that it's going to happen. I'm the kind of person who tries to face my fears but this is something else. It feels like I will never get over this. I don't want to accept it. I don't know what to do..I guess I don't have an choice or control though

So long story short is I went completely unconscious. During that time I have no memory and didn’t dream at all obviously. One minute I was walking around the next I was waking up in a hospital bed. I really hope death isn’t just eternal nothingness and there’s at least a piece of us that survives.

From the moment of conception, we start our march towards death.
Everything that begins has an end. Nothing lasts forever.
Consciousness is a burden.
Knowledge of it is torture.

I'm tired of being aware of my mortality. I'm tired of the worry of when the end is coming. I don't feel safe. I feel that at any moment I will be plucked out of this life, losing everything and everyone I care about.

I don't particularly like life/living/being, however the nothingness of death sounds even worse than this.

The human body is strong yet so fragile. Everything is starting to get sore and ache with time. I'm dealing with a neurological condition that makes every day, every second, that much more difficult. I know that death will be peace for a hurting body but it doesn't take away the fear of the unknown.

The universe eventually will die like everything else too. And then what? More nothingness. Nothingness forever? I hate this. I want to turn off my brain and I know the only way to actually do that is brain death. The irony is not lost on me...

I want answers to life's biggest mystery before it drives me insane.

Just a vent I guess. Putting thoughts into words. Thank you if you read this far. Peace to you all.

I have this consistent fear of death that gets really pronounced when I think deeply about it, or about all of the life-threatening things going on in the world.

I do not adhere to any religion, I mostly just stick to science, but because I do, I know that there is no proof of ANYTHING past death. I know I simply didn’t exist before, and of course I didn’t feel it, but now that I’m alive and conscious, the thought of returning to that nothingness makes my knees buckle in fear. Sometimes I hate that I was born into a brain complex enough to understand death. Sometimes I hate that I was born into something that can’t live forever. But I know I will die.

The only respite from this right now for me is to just hope and hope and hope that there’s some sort of afterlife or reincarnation, the latter being more convincing to me, but even then I can intuit logistically that neither really make sense and are just earthly concepts to cope with our lack of understanding.

I’ve looked through certain medias to try to come to terms with the terror of death, such as Midnight Mass or Ask a Mortician, but they’re all just coping mechanisms.

I’m not sure there’s anything out there that could truly help me with this. The inevitability of it never changes, my control over it never changes. I WILL DIE. But if there’s something out there that might help, please leave a comment to help me out. Thanks for listening to my ramblings.

I’ve thought about what death actually is many times. My thoughts might be heavily influenced by a lot of factors, but I believe the question that formed from it is still worth answering to.

In my perspective, death means the disappearance of yourself from what we call reality. The thought of death this way is threatening, horrifying, and unbelievable.

Every time that I begin to think of death, especially mine, I feel hopelessly anxious.

What is a way to put death as something not as scary as it currently feels to me?

There is a TLDR at the bottom but I would suggest to just read it all :)

Having discovered this community only recently, I've found so many people understandably distressed with the thought of dying and not really many posts guiding people on how to recover or feel better temporarily from it, I hope this post can help.

Let me preface this with my own experience. I am 18 and have suffered from thanatophobia on and off for around half my life. I would have panic attacks, cry and spend days with severe anhedonia (Essentially nihilism), I would also feel like I'm not really living, but just experiencing. This was exasperated quite recently, when I started University. I would barely eat, not take care of my basic hygiene and almost never leave my room. To me starting university felt like another step towards my eventual demise. I've recently felt a bit better, but I know still for a fact that it will return eventually to kick my ass again, hence I might also be writing this post for my future self.

Firstly, it is probably wrong to even call thanatophobia a "phobia" since a phobia is described as the irrational fear of something. However, it is entirely rational to fear death, since it is just naturally how our brains are wired, I mean how else would the human race have existed for this long if everyone didn't give a damn about dying and avoiding it. Hence, It is perfectly normal for you to experience this feeling, and I am sure that everyone feels it at some point, though they may not be as open about it. I however do realise that it becomes a problem if death/dying takes a up a permanent spot on your brain, which I hope to ease here.

Secondly, you, as a conscious being are incredibly lucky to even be here and have the capability to fear the unknown. There are quintillions of possible humans who will never be able to experience what you are currently experience, and to fear death. Death is essentially returning to where you already were, assimilating back into the beautiful universe that we were given the lucky privilege to view, experience and love in. Think about it, you are made of matter, matter cannot be created nor destroyed, hence for as long as the universe exists (which is likely forever) YOU will exist too!

Thirdly, anything that can happen, will happen. The fact you are even here is proof that life is a possible state to be in the universe. There is NOTHING stopping the fact that after you die, your atoms rearrange into the exact form they are now, essentially like rebirth. No matter the time it takes, from your perspective it will be instant, since time requires an observer to pass, without an observer it might as well be instant. Take comfort in the fact there is a high possibility you will be able to experience something again. And if not? WHO CARES. You certainly wont, and the next time you have the opportunity to worry about it, you've probably been rearranged into the same atoms again.

Fourthly, you may still feel anxious, scared, panicked. You might think what I wrote above is a load of bollocks (which it might be, but its what I believe). That's fine, there is a famous quote that is quite often quoted on this subreddit:

"Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not." - Epicurus.

Take some time to really understand this quote. Essentially, Epicurus is trying to say death is completely and utterly separate from your conscious experience. Its about as separate to you as you are to a rock on the floor or another person. As such, you will not feel a speck of anything bad, pain if you are dead since its sort of like, imagine someone else getting hurt, you don't feel anything do you. Same concept. This, I am completely 100% certain about. I will stake everything I love and adore, that you will not experience anything negative during death, and if you do, please feel free to haunt me for eternity (jokes)

Fifthly, you may be scared of losing the ones you love, be that parents, friends or significant others. Just know that you being a part of their life would no doubt have fulfilled them to no end. Keep in mind that they are also humans, experiencing life and navigating a complex world, hence sharing your views with them and seeing their perspective on it would help you massively. The main fear is that you will not get to spend any more time with them, that is why you should do so now while you can rather than pre grieving the loss while they are still alive and will probably be so for much much much longer than you might be imagining.

Sixthly, time gets shrunk in your brain, try to imagine something you did a year ago, 6 months ago even. Even though it on paper doesn't seem like a long time, it really was an extremely long time ago. You will not be the same person you are now in 5 years time, even 1 years time you will likely have changed significantly. With a change of person naturally comes a change in mindset. Your beliefs will likely differ massively than what it is now. With the advance of medical research. I am sure the average lifespan of a human will increase a significant amount.

Practical tips! :

Now, a common mistake to have is to doom scroll this subreddit, reading the horror stories of other people describing their fear of death, and what they interpret it as blah blah blah. This is your brains way of feeling productive and thinking like you are actively doing something to solve this dilemma. However, all this does is exaggerate your own fear of passing. So my first suggestion is to stop or limit the amount you read in this subreddit. I would also avoid news about death (Especially MSN news, they post absolute nonsense fear mongering articles) and personally I use this for my daily news: BrightNewsDaily, and avoid social media posts from online Larpers who think its cool to be nihilistic and depressed and spam post negative content for clout.

I also have found numerous ways to recover and feel better from this phobia. One of THE most effective strategies is to talk to someone. Not via text, but verbally on the phone, face time or in person. People underestimate the effectiveness of conversing about their fears. In fact you don't even need to be speaking directly about your fears, just spending time talking about hobbies, your favourite games or movies or just straight yapping. Lots of therapists tend to brush off the fear of death, at least in my experience and quite a few others, so I would also highly suggest speaking with loved ones about your worries, It may not solve it but if even you feel comfort in that moment, that's progress and your life should be simply about comfort and joy. I also find talking to AI is very useful if you don't have someone to reach out to. It may get repetitive at times but you get to release your thoughts to something that "listens".

Another thing I do is simply to watch videos, play games and make music. All these I find easy to get lost in and reach flow state, where you don't think of anything but the task at hand. Its very helpful during extreme panic or anxiety attacks to force yourself to start a task, your mind clears up and you can start to think straight again rather than becoming drowned in your thoughts.

Finally, be daring, explore the world, live life greedily. Spend that money, learn that hobby, speak to new people. You were given this VIP opportunity to have the human experience, so take the full advantage of it. Take care of your body, your mind, and don't be afraid to seek help if you need.

Love yourself!

This was written mostly based on my personal beliefs. I completely respect peoples beliefs in an afterlife such as heaven or similar, or if you turn to a religion. You may completely disregard my statements if you deem them stupid or silly, but I sincerely hope this post has helped someone's day feel a bit better.

If you want to talk, just send me a DM!

TLDR:

I'm 18 and suffered from quite severe thanatophobia myself.

I hope this provided assurance and comfort during a difficult time for you.

Thanatophobia Isn't really a phobia by definition, but rather the persistence of thanatophobia is the issue.

You are so unimaginably lucky to experience life. Don't spend it worrying about what comes after.

What can happen will happen. Life is possible in the universe. Your life was possible in the universe. Absolutely nothing is stopping it happening again.

Death is completely separate from the conscious you. About as separate as you and any inanimate object of your choice.

Your presence on this world has brought great comfort and joy to all that surround you. Don't be sad for their loss, be happy for their existence. Same applies to you. Don't be sad to die, be happy that you were able to experience the joys of human existence.

Time gets shortened when its imagined. One year is an insanely long time.

Limit time spent reading other interpretations of the after in this subreddit. Its counterproductive and worsens your situation. Limit your exposure to the news, and social media posts regarding nihilism and death. I use this for news a lot more: BrightNewsDaily

Verbally speak to others. texting works but its a hassle and you lack the human interaction part. It works wonders. Also do things you enjoy like gaming, hobbies etc.

Be daring, do anything you want (just keep it legal lol) never be scared of others judging you, they are just living sad sad boring lives.

Take care of yourself!!!!