How do you deal with fear of death?

I often find myself wondering what happens after death, but I won't try to find out.
 
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Have general anesthesia. Unlike sleeping, there is no sensation of time passing, you instantly flip from one scene to another. What is the time in between? That’s equivalent to nonexistence. Dying doesn’t feel like that but if there’s no afterlife that’s what death itself would be like.
 
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I did a lot of mushrooms once, like a shit ton, so many, and became convinced when the fireworks started I was going to die. My brain internally exploded and all the things that were me, my whole life, my entire past every regret and such came before my mind then shattered into dust until I was left egoless and empty yet whole at the same time. Then the fireworks started and I didn't die and I had this profound sense of joy and purpose and meaning in life, then my brain came back without all the dourness and badness.

Then, time went on and well, life and regrets and things occur and these days I just try not to contemplate death much.
 
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Grub said:
My brain internally exploded and all the things that were me, my whole life, my entire past every regret and such came before my mind then shattered into dust until I was left egoless and empty yet whole at the same time. Then the fireworks started and I didn't die and I had this profound sense of joy and purpose and meaning in life, then my brain came back without all the dourness and badness.
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This is the part that horrifies me. I would rather wink out like a blown lightbulb than experience any part of this.
 
NewRetroVagina23 said:
This is the part that horrifies me. I would rather wink out like a blown lightbulb than experience any part of this.
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Yeah, well, there's that whole thing where they found when people die you get this massive flood of DMT in your brain, and that shit can make a single moment feel like a literal eternity. Plus the experience you have usually involves things like lifetime regrets and such...So....yeah...
 
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I found something that helped me a little. Maybe not with death in general, but at least the present situation. Turns out CS Lewis wrote about this exact thing, because he wrote about everything. Well, would've preferred Chesteron, but he was already dead by the time nukes were dropped. Lewis is the next best thing though. This is an excerpt, I'm still looking for the full thing.

CS Lewis said:
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
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I'm not scared of it, not really. Sure the concept of not existing can seem kind of spooky but I've already been there for an eternity before I was born, and it wasn't so bad.

I sometimes wish I had the ability or capacity to believe in a religion. Having such a well defined and comforting system as that must be really nice for someone who actually does truly believe it! I would only wish for the afterlife to be able to see the people and animals I love again who have died. If I believed that someday I would, maybe that would help ease some of the pain that I do experience from being almost completely sure that I won't. Unfortunately I just can't accept that it is true because it is not provable. I do hope that my deceased loved ones are at least somewhere where there is no pain for them.

I feel like I have lived enough for ten lives in my short amount of time living. It has been a wild ride and I am satisfied with how it turned out! If I died tomorrow I would be at least somewhat fulfilled.
 
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I like to combine my belief that there's no life after death, with my belief that I'm retarded and wrong most of the time.
 
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I am kinda chill with death per se. I wasn't alive before I was born and that was ok, well it will be ok after I am alive no more. Just a dreamless slumber, like if you switch your computer off and never switch it on. You know when I was a kid I didn't get how could it be that old ppl wanted to die, waited for even. Like my 87 granny, who isn't gravelyh ill and still very active, she is impossibly chill about it. She just says that it's already too much and living up to 100 is not in her plans (I still hope though lol). When I was younger I didn't understand how can it be, but with age I think I begin to understand her better.
 
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I'm afraid of dying because I'm not fond of pain, but I'm not afraid of death. I know where I'm going and have strong reason to believe I know where my family will go. That was incredibly comforting during the sudden passing of my mother last year and has only cemented my faith further.
 
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I'm afraid of dying because I don't want to say goodbye to the life where I have friends and family, where I can travel and have fun. I'm not afraid to die; I'm so scared not to be able to do things I like with people I love.
And when I start thinking about death and feeling anxiety, I think about moments I've had, about the feeling I've experienced. And it helps. I don't know how it works, maybe, I realize how many unforgettable moments I've had, and death is nothing compared to them. Here is one resource https://samplius.com/free-essay-examples/fear/ where you can read some articles about fear. There I read one article on how fear affects our life, and I can say that after reading it, I changed my attitude toward that feeling. We don't have to be controlled by fears, but we have to take them under our control and don't let them make our lives more complicated. That's what I try to do - to take my fear under controll.
 
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Death is the price of life. Just is what it is. I am not going to spend energy on fearing it because that does nothing to stop it.

Death is the void where we all existed before life. I doubt an afterlife exists or if it does, it is non-specific, like in Advaita Vedanta where your sense of individuality is an illusion and you are an avatar of the universal consciousness that permeates everything.
 
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Have you ever heard of Dr. Irvin Yalom? He has written a lot on existential terror and dealing with the fear of death. He argues that it is very natural and even beneficial for a human being to experience this type of anxiety and he offers strategies for dealing with it functionally. His ideas are not new - essentially that if we are making the most out of our limited time we can more easily tolerate the fear of death. But he frames it well and puts many things into perspective. His psychology books have definitely helped a lot of people who are sick or otherwise obsessively preoccupied with death.
 
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