The chest pain that results in a Google rabbit hole at midnight. The headache that feels like a warning. The sudden shock of realising that one day you will not be here, that the people you love will not be here, and you cannot change it.
Maybe it started after a health scare. Maybe it built slowly as you noticed every small shift in your body. Or it arrived in one hit during a panic attack on an ordinary day. Since then, you have not been able to shake it.
People around you may struggle to hold space or understand. They tell you that everyone dies, as if that helps. They tell you to stop worrying, as if this fear listens to logic.
You keep checking. You keep scanning your body. You run through the worst outcomes. You estimate how long you might have left. The fear becomes a constant presence that grows louder at random moments.
What This Fear Actually Is
Death anxiety is rarely about death alone. It is fear of losing control. It is fear of separation, fear of the unknown, fear of time slipping away before you have lived the way you hoped, and fear of the pain your absence might cause others.
For some people, this becomes health anxiety. Every sensation feels like a threat. A racing heart must mean heart trouble. A cough becomes something serious. Your body feels unreliable, so you check it again and again.
For others, the fear is more existential. You lie awake at night thinking about what it means to stop existing. Your mind goes to places it cannot explain. The panic feels physical.
Both forms drain your energy. The fear does not visit once in a while. It shapes your days and pulls you away from the present.
Why It Gets Worse Instead of Better
You might expect that thinking about death so often would blunt the fear. In practice, the opposite happens.
Each time you search for symptoms, you teach your mind that your body is unsafe. Each time you seek reassurance, the relief fades and you start again. Avoiding the topic also makes the fear stronger, because avoidance suggests the fear is too big to face.
Anxiety triggers physical sensations. You feel tightness in your chest or dizziness. You assume something is wrong. The fear rises and the sensations increase. The cycle continues.
The basic truth remains the same. You and the people you love are mortal, and worry cannot change that.
What the Fear Protects You From
This fear often has a purpose, even if it causes distress. When your mind fixates on death, you do not have to look at other parts of your life. You do not have to admit that a relationship hurts you. You do not have to face work or choices that feel wrong. You do not have to approach unresolved grief.
Death becomes the container for every feeling you cannot yet face. It is easier to fear something you cannot influence than to look at the things you still could change.
Sometimes the fear is really about how you are living. You worry that you will reach the end and feel you spent your time anxious, cautious, or shaped by other people’s expectations.
That thought can be frightening, because it points to the possibility of change.
What Actually Helps
No one can remove fear of death completely. Therapy does not make mortality pleasant. There is no trick that silences existential fear forever.
There are ways to hold the fear with less strain.
- Reduce reassurance seeking. Repeated checking brings short-term relief that strengthens the cycle.
- Notice triggers. The fear often rises during stress or transition. Seeing patterns helps you understand the roots of the anxiety.
- Sit with uncertainty for short periods. This builds tolerance without feeding the cycle.
- Identify the specific fear. Pain. Separation. Unfinished life. The unknown. Clear definition makes the fear more workable.
- Look at what gives your life direction. Some people find that thoughtful engagement with mortality increases presence.
- Explore what else is happening. If the fear acts as a container for other distress, therapy can help you untangle it.
Living While Mortal
You will die. So will I. So will everyone you love. This is neither comforting nor avoidable.
The aim is not to erase fear. The aim is to live with it without letting it take your life from you before death comes.
This takes support. You may need someone who does not rush to reassure you, who will sit with the fear without dismissing it, who can help you understand what the fear points to and how you can carry it with less weight.
Therapy cannot remove mortality. It can help you live in a way that feels less trapped by fear and more rooted in the time you have.
If you are struggling with this, counselling may offer you a space to explore these thoughts, and the underlying emotions that feed the fear.
