Tanatophobia: what is it and how to fight it?

Traveling through life, often in a business-like and sometimes carefree way, we suddenly discover that the “ice” under our feet is getting thinner and thinner. For some, this “suddenly” becomes fatal and painful, turning into the fear of death - tanatophobia. Other, strong-willed personalities overcome this painful ordeal, showing courage and true knowledge of oneself.

Hardly anyone would argue with the fact that the most acute experience of the vast majority of people is fear of death. Some he motivates to fight, forming an active life position. For others, it becomes a fatal and serious disease.

Fear of death (thanatophobia) is activated, as a rule, in an environment that carries a threat to life or social status. The topic of death often emerges when a person seriously thinks about the meaning of his activity, in a situation of professional or creative crisis.

In this context, Z. Freud thought paradoxically, explaining that "the desire for life is psychologically equal to the burden of non-existence." In other words, in the human psyche two instinctive forces — Eros (creative love) and destructive, destroying Thanatos — constantly confront. According to Freud, the behavior and activity of man are conditioned by the irreconcilable struggle of these two forces. Hence, the disease is called “thanatophobia” - a pathological fear of death.

Awareness of their mortality is a heavy and often unbearable burden. A person understands that he will die with time, but at the same time he drives these thoughts away from him. “Deadly” knowledge is supplanted by psychological protection in the peripheral areas of consciousness, and often deep into the sphere of the unconscious. Nightmares come to the patient even in a dream.

In its pathological form, the fear of death is an intractable mental illness. The patient has a fear of dying constantly, and often in the absence of an object that represents a danger to life. Moreover, such an expectation of death is not passive in nature; it acts in the form of an irrational, painful and compulsive anticipation of death.

In the scientific literature can be found various descriptions of tanathobia, among which are conventionally distinguished 4 levels of fear of death.

• At the somatic level, the disease lies in the fear of physical suffering, pain and the appearance of physical defects. Fatal question: "What will happen to my body when I die?".
• At the personal level, the individual is afraid of losing control over himself, total loneliness, inferiority and his own inconsistency. "What will happen to my mind and personal accomplishments?"
• At the social level, the fear of the sudden loss of loved ones and the impossibility of previous relationships is painfully felt. “What happens in relationships with those who stay and who leave?”
• On the spiritual level, fear of traceless extinction dominates. Hopelessness and the inevitability of the highest court as payment for their sins."What is the meaning of dying, death, immortality?"

For the personal level is characterized by a positive relationship with depression, high anxiety and lack of confidence in their abilities. Anomalous, obsessive anticipation of a premature death seizes the whole being of the patient, all his thoughts, depriving the joys and possibilities of a full life.

Such anticipation does not contribute to the healthy motivation of the individual to perform productive and reasonable safety functions in critical situations. Consciousness, will and thinking of the patient are in a paralyzed state, which does not weaken, but progresses and strengthens its power over the person.

In a sense, phobophobia is ambivalent. Some tanatofobov experiencing panic about the suspense, waiting for them after death. Another part in the blackest colors, draws the last days of his life.

Studies of the fear of death show that this phenomenon is more often characteristic of people who sense the emptiness and meaninglessness of their own lives. People for whom life is full of a certain meaning are characterized by the perception of life as a meaningful event, so their anxiety is less pronounced.

What exactly is the cause of thanatophobia is not installed. The diseased are not clearly aware of when, at what point they have fear. Fear of death, inherent in every person, goes into a mental disorder after a certain event, which had a strong and deep impression on him.

Psychiatrists formulated the 7 most frequent causes of the development of thanatophobia.

• The source of fear is localized in religions that describe various variants of “life after death”, providing punishments for “sins” - deviations from religious institutions committed in life. Here the fear of death is actually replaced by the fear of punishment.
• The disease may develop as a consequence of the fear of uncertainty and uncertainty. People who are educated, inquisitive, and with developed intellect are more likely to develop this disease. The cause of tanathobia can be a feeling of helplessness of the mind when trying to understand the mystery of death.
• Devaluing one's life experience and significance during a personal crisis, leading to the thought of the worthlessness of one’s own being and to the fear of unexpected death, which does not allow one to fully realize oneself. Thoughts that a significant part of life is already lived out, exacerbate the situation.
• Constant self-examination and fruitless reflections on the meanings of life give rise to existential anxiety. In the process of personal degradation or the absence of any progress, the patient is disturbed by the thought of non-being that everyone expects.
• The pathological desire to subject everything in one’s life to the control of an overly disciplined, pedantic people faces a lack of control over the process of dying. The phobia formed for this reason is extremely difficult to treat, because a person is afraid at the same time of his sudden death, uncontrolled aging and the inability to influence what follows death.
• Often the cause of the disease is hidden in personal experience. It implies: the death of a relative or the experience of observing the heavy extinction of a loved one. Such events may well cause a person to change the system of priorities: he begins to feel life more keenly, feels the joy of his existence and at the same time the fear of the thought that he also faces painful or sudden death. The situation may be aggravated by children whose life depends on the patient.Such tanatophobes are desperately trying to live longer, showing enhanced concern for their health and fear of disease. Over-care of themselves and fears of possible catastrophes take extremely pathological forms.
• A phobic disorder can occur in an overly emotional person who is impressed with information gathered from the Internet, newspapers or television. The fear of death does not originate in its pure form, an emotional, individual associative chain, including possible episodes from wars, terrorist acts, natural disasters, etc., leads to it.

This psychological process is accompanied by an intense and aggressively presented by the media information flow about disasters, military clashes, criminal events and forms an opinion of anxious and suspicious people about themselves as a “risk” group. Obsessive thoughts about death are a direct consequence of this “social hypnosis.”

Often the fear of death occurs as a product of midlife crisis, as a result of ridding a person of illusions, in the course of a critical review of his value system and the restructuring of his worldview. The stressful state accompanying any moral crises, with an unstable psycho-emotional status, forms the basis for the development of obsessive fear.

From the standpoint of some psychological concepts, existential anxiety about the dangerous subsequent non-existence is a natural phenomenon in the process of personality development. The essence of it ultimately lies in the fact that at one of the stages of development a person stands before a choice - to degrade or progress. A sensible choice of a developmental scenario naturally leads to philosophical reflections - “what is the meaning of life”.

Specific character traits and personality traits, for example, accentuation, pedantry, excessive discipline, responsibility, and make-up act as a definite foundation for the disease. Obsessive pursuit of an ideal activity contributes to the birth of a pathological fear.

The fear of death is a category of moral and ethical order, suggesting the presence of a certain degree of maturity and depth of feelings.

The results of scientific studies suggest that uncontrollable fear appears on the basis of the unstable psychoemotional status of a person, under the influence of various traumatic situations, and is associated with the presence of certain physiological and characterological prerequisites.

Typical signs of thanatophobia are conditionally divided into three groups:

• physical - tremor, pressing headaches, cardiac arrhythmia and rapid breathing, nausea, excessive sweating, feeling of chills or fever, malfunction of the digestive tract, problems in the genital area;
• mental - uncontrolled panic attacks, a mixture of real and unreal, a painful reaction in case of mentioning the source of fear, depression, sleep disorders, decrease in libidinal level;
• emotional - evasion, avoiding discussion of the topic of death, anxiety, tension, feeling of guilt, strong and unmotivated anger.

People of the creative side feel the fear of the absence of any heritage after themselves, demonstrating an obsession with the realization of their super-ideas. These patients are characterized by: accentuation, selfishness, stubbornness, immunity to criticism and the opinion of others.All their experiences and fears are directly related only to their personal demise.

This principle of selective correlation with the trigger of the disease works constantly and productively.

In severe forms, tanatophobia is accompanied by:

• refusal to communicate with loved ones and a gradual reduction in the circle of communication
• loss of real life guidelines and inability to work;
• the formation of a number of other psychosomatic manifestations, dysfunction of the internal organs;
• desire to muffle the terrible thoughts of alcohol or drugs.

The atypical and strange behavior of a tanatofoba begin to notice those around him, and a person who has withdrawn from himself comes to loneliness, often showing alienation, irritability and aggressiveness.

Researches of scientists testify that it is impossible to overcome the complete fear of death, to overcome it, since its essential part is present unconsciously. Man is doomed to live with this sensation. The question is only in the intensity and level of "deadly" manifestations, often overcoming the bar of the norm. In such cases, phobophobic shown qualified treatment.

It all depends on how flexibly and effectively the individual psychological defenses of a person work against the background of his personal and character traits.

Drugs used in psychiatry are used to provide palliative support in severe cases. Drugs cannot replace the psychotherapeutic treatment program designed for the patient, aimed at correcting the ideological attitudes of the individual.

It includes:

• identification of real factors provoking the disease;
• definition of destructive thought chains;
• fixing useful and constructive installations;
• implementation of a new behavior model.

For this reason, psychotherapists combine psychological treatment with medication. Using antidepressants, beta blockers, neuroleptics and other drugs reduces the severity of physical symptoms, drastically reduce the level of panic attacks and depressive manifestations.

Psychology has as its goal the identification and analysis of the causes of phobophobia, the elimination of these causes and the development of the patient's skills for independent, effective resistance to the disease. To do this, use techniques from various psychological areas: cognitive-behavioral, exposure, rational, etc. In psychotherapeutic practice, they have known and positively proved themselves:

• confrontational technique;
• management of internal "energy";
• stimulation of adrenaline synthesis;
• hypnosis;
• desensitization;
• neuro-linguistic programming techniques.

These methods are designed to adjust the mind of a tanatofoba, inculcate skills of confronting fear in a situation of stress and addiction to fear. The patient learns how to relax and self-control, how to maintain reason and rational thinking in a crisis situation for him. Developed and individual program of work with the patient.

The majority of patients with tanatophobia who go to a doctor are aware of the anomalous state of their condition, since it is simply impossible to continue life with such a “burden”. However, the ways to overcome obsessive anxiety and release from oppressive thoughts are unknown to them. Individual tanathobes recklessly rely solely on "miraculous" pills.

One of the effective methods of treating thanatophobia is hypnosis. Such a choice is expedient for a number of advantages possessed by its modern technology:

• security;
• comfort;
• painlessness;
• atraumatic

Overcoming of the tanophobia and the accompanying phobias on their own is only realistic at the initial stage of the formation of the disease. A person with skills for introspection, able to catch the moment when natural forms of fear become obsessive, can fight and conquer a disease. In other cases, an appeal to a psychotherapist is indicated.

It is useful to carefully look at the profile of a person with a low level of fear of death. This is exactly the image to strive for:

• purposefulness and life goals (must be really feasible), giving life meaningful and concrete perspective;
• the ability to perceive your life "here and now" as an interesting, emotionally rich and meaningful story;
• satisfaction with the degree of self-realization at this stage of life;
• a strong personality with a certain freedom of choice, self-control, able to build a destiny in accordance with its tasks and ideas about its meaning.

Patients with a high degree of fear of death have opposite characteristics.

That is how Lomonosov, Repin, Suvorov, Lermontov, Tolstoy took their thoughts about their departure, calmly and rationally, accepting demise as a phenomenon caused by nature. They left without panic, without the slightest sense of confusion.