When children experience separation anxiety disorder, it is often connected to excessive fear of losing major attachment figures – such as parents or other family members – to harm or tragedy from car accidents, disasters or significant illness.Ĭompulsive checkers repeatedly check power points, stoves and locks in an attempt to prevent harm or death. This makes sense because when we look closely at the symptoms of several anxiety-related disorders, death themes feature prominently. We might take endless photographs to create a sense of permanence. We focus on personal achievements and accomplishments of loved ones we take endless photos to create enduring memories and we may attend church and believe in an afterlife. Coping mechanismsĪccording to this theory, we manage our fear of death by creating a sense of permanence and meaning in life. A social psychological theory, called terror management theory (TMT), is one way to understand how this anxiety influences our behaviour and sense of self. There is growing research exploring the overwhelming anxiety that the inevitability of death, and our uncertainty about when it will occur, has the power to create. As author and existential philosopher Irvin Yalom said, we are “forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom and, inevitably, diminish and die”. Read the next article on helping children process death here.Īwareness of our mortality is part of being human. This is the first in our Coping with Mortality series, which looks at fear of death across the ages and how to cope with the dying process.
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