Helpful Resources You Can Use in the Fear of Mortality

Facing your limits is hardly ever an easy thing to do. Having an endless and open horizon lines up with our various desires for freedom and discovering that something is beyond your reach is a hard truth to swallow. When what is at stake is your very existence, that can raise all sorts of emotions and thoughts, from anger, to fear, anxiety, and worry. Being able to meet the reality of your own mortality is a necessary skill.

What May Cause Fear Of Mortality

There is a passage of Scripture that says “He has made everything beautiful in His time. Also, He has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, ESV).

Most people, whether they believe in God or not, have a sense that there is more to this world, to us, and to this life, than what we see. We have a sense of eternity that nothing can seem to satisfy, and that seems to balk at the idea of us simply ceasing to exist.

Reading the Bible, it’s clear where that sense comes from; we were created by the Lord to enjoy His creation and to be partners and stewards of creation. Death only came into the world because of human disobedience when humans decided to rule this world without reference to God (Genesis 3). We long for more because there is more to this world and our life under the sun than what our bodily sensations reveal.

A fear of mortality resides in all of us due to this common story that all humanity is a part of. However, your fear of mortality may derive from certain life experiences you have that can heighten your awareness of your mortality.

Finding yourself in a life-threatening situation is one way this happens, and it also includes seeing a loved one facing their mortality through illness or danger. Getting older also makes you realize that you aren’t invincible, as your body begins to break down, doesn’t bounce back from injury as easily, and is a little more fragile than before.

What can also exacerbate fear of mortality is when death feels like a huge unknown, and you aren’t confident about what happens to you after death, or you’re concerned about what happens to your loved ones after you die. This can happen to religious and non-religious people alike, and both can come up with unhelpful strategies to address this uncertainty, including minimizing the reality of death and its implications.

Lastly, one’s fear of mortality can arise as a result of looking at one’s life and feeling dissatisfied with it. One may have regrets, unfulfilled potential, or the fear that one’s legacy won’t be preserved as one intends. All of these things can make one look at their mortality with apprehension.

Resources to Help You Overcome Fear of Mortality

Being afraid of our limitations and inability to escape death is something that we all encounter in our lives at one point or another. It’s not easy to come to terms with that reality or to embrace the fact that you will die one day.

Memento mori, which is a Latin phrase that means “remember you must die”, reminds us that we are mortal, and whatever pleasures we experience in this life are transitory and will pass. One of the main thrusts of the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes is to hammer home this point; we will all die, we will in all likelihood be forgotten, and those who come after us won’t necessarily honor us or even know us.

This may seem harsh, but it is intended to liberate us. Instead of being beholden to what is transitory, or being ensnared by what others might think of us, or squandering our lives on fleeting pleasures, the point of Ecclesiastes is to encourage wise, rich, meaningful living that keeps the main thing the main thing, which is to “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13, ESV).

This in part means enjoying one’s food and drink with a joyful and glad heart, loving one’s spouse well, working diligently, and enjoying your portion in life (Ecclesiastes 9:7-18).

Certainly, one of the tools that Christians use to overcome their fear of mortality is to embrace that reality and leverage it to make the most of life. One of the Psalms reads

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom – Psalm 90:12, ESV

Knowing we are mortal ought to make us more considerate of how we live the lives we have. Being finite shouldn’t terrify you, or make you feel insignificant. In the face of the infinite God, our finitude and mortality should free us to love God and love others without the pressure of carrying the world on our shoulders. We can let God be God, and we can simply focus on using our opportunities wisely and well, leaving the outcome of it all to God.

Additionally, the resurrection is another tool that one can use to deal with the fear of mortality. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15), and to rescue us from the power of sin and death. He rose bodily from the dead, defeating death and opening the way for those who believe in Him to also inherit God’s eternal Kingdom.

You can confront your fear of mortality by facing it head-on and unpacking your thoughts with the help of a counselor. Your fears may stem from certain experiences or thoughts that may need to be processed further. Sometimes we have unhelpful, untruthful, or unhealthy thoughts that inform and shape our behaviors.

You may not have taken the time to understand where they come from, or how they’ve affected you. Speaking with a counselor can help you address your fear of mortality so that you can face life with confidence and embrace the reality of life under the sun.

As such, through interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy, you can begin to identify these thoughts and behaviors that feed into your fear of mortality and death. Your counselor can help you identify your triggers and begin to acquire the tools to assess whether your fear is proportionate to the situation you find yourself in that sets off that fear.

Beyond identifying these thoughts and patterns, your counselor can also equip you with the tools you need to challenge and disrupt those thoughts and behaviors, replacing them with healthy ones.

Another way of addressing your fear of mortality is to use exposure therapy, in which you are gradually and systematically exposed to the thing that you fear. If particular scenarios trigger your fears, such as sitting behind the wheel of a car because you’ve experienced trauma related to a motor vehicle, your counselor can journey with you as you work up toward looking at a car, sitting in it, sitting behind the wheel, and then eventually driving it.

Death in our broken world is inevitable, and feeling a certain amount of fear or anxiety about it makes sense. If your fear of mortality makes your life difficult to manage, or incapacitates you in some way, you should reach out and speak with a mental health professional such as a Christian counselor to address it.

Your counselor will walk with you as they help you improve your mental well-being and quality of life. Taking the time to analyze your fear will not necessarily be a pleasant experience, but through that work, you can gain a deeper understanding of your fears and begin to reframe the reality of death in such a way that you make the most of living the life you have.