Getting Over Fear of Death

     Caitlin Doughty's video Confronting Your Death talks about a specific way that can reduce your fear of death. She mentions that knowing what you want to do with your body after your death will help with fearing it. This was a key reason in why talking about our dead bodies will be important to our fear of death. This helps by getting us to actually talk about our death with the loved ones that'll most likely be around to have to handle it. This is one important way to confront your death; by knowing what you want to do with it. 
     My objection is that not many will even want to think about this or even want this done to their bodies. Once you die, the consent of your body is taken away from you. It isn't like your no longer alive to make sure your wishes to your body are done. Not many people think of what they want done to their bodies until they're close to death. Knowing what you want done isn't something that comes to someone's mind first when the topic of death is mentioned. 
Talking about death in this sort of sense can either decrease your fear or increase it. It may be such a sensitive and uncomfortable topic to talk about, but we all must talk about it sometime. Just the way you want your body to be after death is a topic not many think about first, but is a light way to start the subject on your death. 

Comments

  1. Joshua MihalikApril 29, 2019 at 3:41 PM

    Hello!

    I reason that thinking about how we want to die can be good for some people in their process of relieving fear, as Doughty suggests. However, I also suggest that sometimes when trying to remove fear, we are less happy simply because in order to get rid of fear, we have to confront it. And doing this can make us sad, angry, even more afraid for a while, etc. All kinds of fear are different, and so there are different methods for removing different types of fears. But in the case of being afraid of death, not thinking about what will become of your dead body might make you happier in the end, especially if you accept that this is out of your control. It is tempting to want to control what becomes of your body when you die, but I think this is something people should not focus too much on.

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