1. What evidence do you have for the thought?
2. What evidence do you have against the thought?
3. Are you making a “thinking error”?
4. What would you tell a friend if they had the thought?
5. What would the calmest person you know say about the thought?
6. Are you worrying about something that you can’t control?
7. Is the thought helpful or just distressing?
8. What is a new, more realistic, and helpful thought?
Here are some thinking exercises you can go through as you experience thoughts relating to death anxiety and existentialism. I am always going to encourage you to engage with the thoughts, and therefore, engage with yourself. You are the thinker of the thought. It is occupying your mind. How you interpret it, and what you do with it, are yours to control.
In particular, 4-8, I think could prove useful.
Many of us may be the friend who always has advice for others, but none for ourselves. Try to think of what you would tell your friends.
Perhaps ask your calmest friend this question, or tell them about this thought.
We all know death is something we cannot control.
But that doesn’t mean the thoughts are always bad -- sometimes they can be helpful. Identifying those thoughts are useful to do.
Determining something more helpful, and more realistic, is also a good way to play the redirection game with your mind, and try to get towards better emotions, and more positive thoughts.
An example of such a thought: “I am going to die today.”
Thinking this thought likely has little evidence for it. Perhaps you’re sick. Perhaps you’re in pain. You’ve likely had experiences similar to whatever you’re going through. If it is truly distressing, you can go to a hospital to gather evidence, or consider the Call A Nurse line to go over the situation with someone informed.
If you’re not experiencing any pain or illness and it’s just a “gut feeling”, assess why you may have that feeling. Talk to your friends about it to seek their advice, or consider what you would tell them to investigate in this situation, and then do it.
You can take action against this thought to make it less distressing, in either case.
And then you can work on forming a more realistic thought based on what evidence you do gather.
