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"Death is nothing at all; it does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room."
-- Henry Scott Holland
"Everyone fears the end of the imagined person," says Hale Dwoskin, CEO and director of Sedona Training Associates.
The fear of dying may be a small nagging in the back of your mind, or it could be an all-consuming phobia that envelops your every thought.
At the root of this fear is often the very common fear of the unknown, because no one really knows what it's like to die until they do. There's also the surrounding sadness – sickness, accident or tragedy – that typically accompanies death in the American culture, making it something that's unpleasant and scary.
Of course, we're all going to die. As of 2007, the death rate in the United States is 8.26 deaths per 1,000 population, according to the CIA's World Factbook. Births, meanwhile, come in at over 14 births per 1,000 population.
This cycle of life, albeit completely natural, is not something that most of us want to deal with.
Doctors' Fears of Death Influence Their Clinical Care
In your own life, an intense fear of dying phobia can be unhealthy in numerous ways. It may hold you back from living your life, making plans for the future, having meaningful relationships and even starting a family of your own. Yet, if you allow a fear of dying to control you, you are essentially giving up your life while you're still very much alive.
Interestingly, even doctors, who face the fragility of life and death on a daily basis, are impacted by their own fear of death.
According to a survey of doctors who specialize in care of sick newborns – published in the Fetal & Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood – one in three specialists said they were prepared to use painkillers or sedatives to relieve pain and suffering by intentionally hastening death in newborns with severe disability. And, three out of four said they would hasten death in babies for whom further treatment was futile.
However, the researchers found a link between the doctors' own fears of death and the ethical outcomes of their clinical care.
Doctors who had a strong "fear of dying" or "premature death" were more likely to hasten a newborn's death; the researchers believed the connection may be an unconscious attempt by doctors who fear death to relieve some of their own death anxiety.
How to Overcome Your Fear of Dying
If a fear of dying is causing you to miss out on living your life to the fullest, we urge you to give The Sedona Method a try. The Sedona Method helps to easily break the patterns of thought and behavior that cause these negative feelings to occur.
Our fears and doubts make us defensive. When we are defensive, we are holding in our mind what we don't want, so that's what we get. In other words, the more you think about fearing death, the more you will become preoccupied with it.
The Sedona Method can help you to let go of this fear so you can live in peace.
"There is a deep insecurity in us about dying as long as we believe that we are this body and mind," Dwoskin says. "If you allow yourself to let go of the belief that you are this body and mind, you discover that what you are is much more than that."
"We can also investigate what is actually here now," he continues. "If you look into your direct experience, you will discover that the body and mind are appearances in or on the presence of awareness that you are. This realization liberates you from the fear of dying because you know what you are is beyond both birth and death."
Sources
CIA: The World Factbook
Science Daily February 16, 2007
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