People have always grappled with death and the accompanying fear. Both in philosophical and religious reflection, the human relationship with death has always played an important role. In today's modern civil societies, death leads a rather marginal existence. This may be rooted in people turning away from religion and toward a fulfilled life in the here and now. However, from a psychological perspective, the fear of death is one of humanity's primal fears and often forms the foundation of overlying anxieties.
No Need to Fear -- We All Die Anyway
Death does not have a good standing in our society; dying is largely suppressed and there is hardly any engagement with the topic. Yet it would be important to face the twilight of life with composure, which can succeed if one engages with death early on. This requires dedicating oneself to life, its meaning and its value. For fear likes to spread in feelings of uncertainty -- gaining certainty is, conversely, anxiety prevention.
Why Are We Afraid of Death?
Within us lives a survival instinct that warns us of dangerous situations and, in a sense, protects us. This protection is important because it ensures our chances of survival. The fear of death is therefore not inherently bad.
Our relationship with the fear of death has, however, changed in an unnatural way over the course of civilization. There is scientific consensus that people in earlier times had far less fear of death, which is attributed to the fact that people used to come into contact with death much more frequently than today. They hunted and killed animals with their own hands, mourned the dead in wars they witnessed firsthand, accompanied family members to death in their own homes and buried their dead themselves. Our civilized life in the here and now has made much of that obsolete. We buy pre-packaged meat, wars take place far away, relatives die in care homes, hospitals or hospices, and funerals are handled by undertakers.
We have thus unlearned the natural handling of death to some extent through civilization, and so death usually catches us unprepared. Due to a lack of contact with death, our behavior in cases of death is marked by deep uncertainty. Even offering condolences to the bereaved is difficult for us. We often face death helplessly -- simply because we lack experience with it.
Facing One's Own Death With Composure
One might think that religion and faith help people face their own death more calmly -- religions preach rebirth, paradise or life after death. However, the prospect of an afterlife does not serve as a coping strategy: "Several studies have shown that religious people have neither an easier nor a harder time with dying than others," summarizes Matthias Meitzler, a sociologist at the University of Passau who studies the culture of mourning. "How we face our own death depends less on how we view the afterlife and much more on what attitude we have toward life in the here and now," Meitzler continues. This is an important point. Behind the fear of death often lies the realization of not having experienced enough or of being externally determined. This realization can be countered with a fulfilled life, and it is never too late to begin, because fulfillment comes from an active life in the present.
Furthermore, what frightens many people is not the act of no longer living, but the state of "being dead." These people lack the imaginative capacity for what it could be like before and after our life.
In coaching, the aim is to confront these and all other fear-triggering ideas, to question them and to develop new, more comforting and more liberating perspectives.
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Related Topics
- Fear of Death – Topic page on thanatophobia
- Why We Feel Fear – Background on the function of fear
- Fear of Loss – Walking through the fear of loss
- Existential Anxiety – Fear about your livelihood