Death Anxiety

A great psychiatrist known as Yalom developed a model of psychotherapy based on Existentialism.  Yalom believes that we all have death anxiety, whether we realize it or not, we are constantly dealing with this in our subconscious.  We are all striving to have a meaningful life before we die. Thus, all of our anxiety and negative emotions come from our pressure to live a fulfilled life.  Our defense mechanisms we have to protect ourselves emotionally stem from death anxiety.  At some point in one's life, the thought of his/her own death will cause great anxiety.  It can be incredibly scary to think about your own death even for a few moments. Yalom also believes that it is not until we process what death is and accept it, that we are able to actually live happy, meaningful lives. The more we deny and ignore the thought of death, the more death anxiety we have, and the more we lead meaningless isolated lives.   Death is an inevitable part of our existence that if we refuse to accept and face during our time on Earth, we may have wasted much of our life being unhappy and failing to allow ourselves to find true meaning in life.  A good way to process death is to become more self-aware through journaling, reading, and/or therapy.

Mitch Albom wrote a great non-fiction novel, Tuesdays with Morrie.  Many of you are probably familiar with the book.  This true story is about a reporter, Mitch Albom, meeting and talking with his former professor, Morrie Schwartz, every Tuesday in the last part of Morrie's life.  Morrie had ALS (also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease) , a terminal disease that progressively degenerates all the neurons in the body until death.

 Morrie had accepted death and was living an incredibly meaningful and happy life. He discusses how he was able to reach such content and meaning and teaches valuable life-lessons throughout the book.

Below is an extraordinary interview with Morrie.  Fast forward to 4:25 to hear Morrie talk about important life lessons.

You can watch the entire interview here.

What's something you do in your life to have meaning?

P.S.  I changed the settings and you can now leave a comment anonymously! I encourage you to answer my end of post questions!