The Meaningful Life Foundation
The Meaningful Life Foundation works to raise awareness and provide support for people who experience intense anxiety and also intrusive thoughts about death and dying. They may also, or alternatively, be preoccupied by intrusive thoughts that come in the form of philosophical or existential questions. These may be questions about the nature of reality, the point of life or of what happens after we die. These questions are by their very nature extremely difficult, or perhaps even impossible, to answer.
This experience is sometimes known by the term ‘thanatophobia’. Other diagnostic terms used to describe this experience are of philosophical or existential OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Another more general term is that of ‘death anxiety’.
I am currently running online workshops that aim to support people living with these difficult thoughts and feelings using ideas from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. For more information please get in touch using the contact me form. I can also work individually with people experiencing these sorts of difficult thoughts and feelings.
Relevant reading
Below are some resources which may be of value for people who experience death or existential anxiety. Reading around the subject can be a really helpful initial step in learning how to better manage some of these difficult thoughts and feelings.
- Free Yourself from Death Anxiety: A CBT self-help guide for a fear of death and dying – Rachel Menzies and David Veale
- With the End in Mind – Kathryn Mannix
- Being Mortal – Atul Gawande
- When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
- Staring at the Sun – Irvin Yalom