George wrote:dlowan wrote:... I find the realisation that fearing death makes as much sense as fearing never having existed very comforting...
I still don't get that. How can you fear never having existed?
The very fact of fearing it means you exist. No?
The sense, for me, is that (being not in existence) one experienced no distress in not existing means that one will similarly experience no distress when one no longer exists...because, as you say, there is nobody to experience ANYTHING.
It makes more emotional than logical sense.
I had many early deaths in my family, and was consequently very aware of personal mortality, and quite frightened of it for a long time.
The thought that death could be no more distressing than one's previous non existence was is very comforting to me. Ie..there is nothing in nothing to be fearful of. By definition. Clients with a phobic anxiety about death also seem to find it very comforting (I don't use it with folk who believe in an afterlife!!!). I think the fear of ceasing to exist is largely an artefact of somehow believing one will experience this state, and experience it negatively...almost that one will be around to experience this feared nothing.
From my point of view, the comparison I made is kind of a cognitive tool for making people able to realise that they won't be experiencing ANYTHING, much less fear or distress.
I know that isn't logical, but we do not live by logic, generally!!
Similarly, adolescents (and some adults) who flirt with suicide are often narcisistically imagining that they will be around to see their nearest and dearest self-flagellating, and extolling the wonders of the tragically departed.
Cognitively, it can, for some folk, be helpful to point out the ridiculousness of this belief. (If they believe in an afterlife, this one would not, of course, be helpful.)
Does this help at all?????
