Anxiety over death

[CocoLeigh]

I think terrorism teamed with a huge ambition to succeed in my creative goals, as well as becoming more empathetic with age is giving me massive anxiety/fear of an early death. I know this is ridiculous, but I'm in a pretty bad spiral I'm having trouble getting out of. Anyone feel the same?

[blondguy]

Hello Coco

Welcome to the forums and good on you for posting too!

There is nothing ridiculous in having this fear. There are acts of terrorism occurring that can have an impact on our thinking and even cause us to have the odd intrusive thought too.

Drawing the line in our thinking between what 'might' happen and the actual minuscule chances of being personally effected can be a fine line.

You are a pro active and kind hearted empathetic person Coco. These events can have a negative effect on our thinking for sure. Many psychologists are very busy as a result of the tragic event that occurred in Melbourne.

If the thoughts become a nuisance and too regular, having a chat to a counselor can make a huge positive difference to our thinking. Our mind is no different to our body...they both need assistance now and again

you are not alone in your thoughts Coco

my kind thoughts

Paul

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi CocoLeigh,

Welcome to the forums and thanks for your post.

What you've said is absolutely not ridiculous, and even though you don't have many replies, there are many people that feel the same way. Terrorism is very frightening and what you're feeling is valid.

I completely agree with Paul/blondguy in looking at the probability of things happening. Is there something in particular that's set this thought and fear off? The Melbourne incident/Manchester incident?

If you can, try to look at things from a bigger picture; the Manchester arena for the Ariana concert was targeted specifically for the number of people. There were about 60,000 (approx) people there and 22 died. Of course this is incredibly sad, but it also means about 59,978 people were safe - so in a city targeted because of the mass amount of 8.6 million people this certainly could have been a scarier outcome.

I'm hoping that by showing you these numbers you can see that even the bigger and scarier incidents still have an enormous amount of people that are safe, so the reality and probability of you facing an earlier death because of terrorism is extremely low.

[Hope_for_the_best]

As Paul and Romantic_thi3f pointed out, many people feel the same too, including me. I was in Manchester last year. Although I did not visit the Arena, I was sightseeing nearby the whole time, so the incident hit me hard. I live in Sydney and there was a similar incident to the Melbourne one three years ago. I happened to fly overseas long haul that morning, so I only found out after I got off the plane. Still, it hit me hard because many of my friends like going to the Lindt Cafe. They did not go that morning, but it still left me being uncomfortable with dining in a cafe for a while. I remember I only went to cafes that keep their doors widely opened. So, you are not alone. What worked for me is to get myself busy so I don't have time to worry about that. I read from many sources that scheduling a worry period each day is helpful with intrusive thoughts. Probably you can try that.