Discussion How do you let go and not be afraid? (Trigger warning - Existential/religious topics)

[broken_stoic]

I won't go over my whole story here, but after trying soooo much for so long, I'm getting close to just calling it again.

The problem is, I keep getting to the place where I'm just terrified to die. Mostly I'm terrified of the possibility that there could be something after. Logically, I don't see any reason whatsoever to think that there is something after. I grew up religious; that lead me to look very deeply into such questions and eventually completely reject religion as a whole. I did grow up in a particular brand of a particular religion that focused alot on how horrible the afterlife could be for certain people.

So I don't think that is true or likely to be the case. But I could be wrong.

What I'm really afraid of is just the unknown, the fact that we just can't know for sure that there is nothing after. Logically I think this is just a biologically programmed fear of death evolution gives us all. But, what if there is something that we just don't understand about the nature of reality and there is some kind of something "after". And what if it's unbelievably horrible?

Maybe the chance that there is something is .0000000000000000000001%. Maybe the chance that it's bad is even lower. No matter how low you can make that chance it still terrifies me to my core. Maybe some of that is natural. Maybe I'm just overthinking things. Maybe some of it is religious trauma.

Does anyone else struggle with this, and if so have you found something to make it better?

 

[Cosmophobic]

I have stuggled with it and I reckon it's fair to call it religious trauma. At the very least it's trauma that's partly related to a religious upbringing. It's also your natural fear of death manifesting in whatever way is convenient to it.

I don't really have an answer for you. I think this kind of fear will always be in the back of your mind even if you aren't actively suicidal. It "helps" to keep in mind that things are already unbelievably horrible. That's no guarantee they can't get worse but hey -- you can only focus on one realm of existence at a time.