The Therapy Edit - On how to feel less fearful of death

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

In this, the last of a special ten part series of The Therapy Edit, Anna talks through the second of The Uncomfortable Truths; I am going to die.The Uncomfortable Truth: Change Your Life By Taming 10 of Your Mind's Greatest Fears is Anna's 5th book was published on the 8th August.Order your copy hereHere's a teaser from Anna about what to expect in this long-awaited, transformative book.‘Some people don’t like me”“Bad things will happen to people I love”“I’m going to fail”… these words underpinned my anxieties and nightmares. I bet they feature in yours too.Our fears are anchored in the unavoidable truths of life; all things reach an end, bad things happen, and we lack the control we crave.As an experienced psychotherapist, who’s had years of therapy, I realised that ploughing endless energy into trying to control the uncontrollable is keeping us all tired, wired, and worried. Ignoring fears doesn’t make them less true, it makes them more powerful. I decided to try a different tact and it changed my world.Instead of doing everything I could to ease and avoid life’s uncomfortable truths, I sought a deeper acceptance of them. Through using this approach, my clients and I discovered that fear began to loosen its grip. We were living more intentionally and peacefully.So, face your fears one a chapter at a time, and discover who you are without worry, doubt and people-pleasing holding you back.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello you. I hope you're okay as you listen to this episode today. It's a big one. And I imagine you're probably wondering what the heck I'm going to say, because how on earth do we feel less fearful of? of our own death. Now, this is the 10th episode, the final episode of a mini-series where I talk

about 10 uncomfortable truths of being alive and how we can be more accepting of them and how actually as we find ways for these uncomfortable truths to sit a little bit differently within us, we can live more wholeheartedly, more fully, more authentically, more authentically, more freely, and less fearfully. And this is a big one, right? This is right at the end of the book because I really, really wanted people to feel like they could trust me to talk about these massive topics.

So if you're coming in fresh on this one, I promise you, I am going to go gently and I've got some hope, like the whole book. It's bright yellow. I wanted it to feel really, really hopeful, especially when talking about such big things. And it's not new to you, right? This is a fear that we are so often, so aware of.

And I think if we were to distill so many of our fears down on like an old school bunts and burner, I say old school, I'm pretty sure they're still very much used in labs all around the world. But I'm just thinking of chemistry lesson as a teenager. but if we were to distill down so many of our anxieties we would tend to find that a lot of them just boil down to fear of loss and endings ours and those of other people in the last episode I spoke about the fear of losing other people people that we love the fear of going through grief so that might be a good one to listen to if you haven't heard that one already so today's is today's episode is on that uncomfortable truth of the fact that our life has an end. And I'd like to start off with inviting you just to reflect for a second, how differently you'd feel, what decisions would you make differently? How would you express yourself maybe differently?

What would you go after if you actually just felt more accepting of this vastly uncomfortable truth? So I'm going to share a little excerpt from my book to start off. And then I'm going to share with you a tip or two to find a way to get a little bit more comfortable or accepting to say the least with this uncomfortable truth. So the book, I'm going to read it to you. While we're finishing off with an absolute banger here, aren't we? I'm going to take it gently. I know that this big truth is one that will all be challenged to confront at some point yet. It can be life changing to move further into an acceptance that your life won't last forever. How old you are and what you've been through in life will impact on how you hear this. Maybe you feel like you've got your whole life ahead of you and you don't actually have any wrinkles to tell you otherwise. Maybe you're listening to this having nursed a parent at the end of their life. Or maybe the aftershocks of traumatic loss are still rippling through your days, your minds, your anxieties, your dreams. Whether you have

spent time writing a will or want to shut family members down when they bring up the topic of death, you are not alone. There will be words in this chapter, in this book, in this podcast episode to soothe, encourage and inspire you towards acceptance. And it is a towards right, because I don't think we're ever necessarily going to fully accept that. Maybe actually saying that, I have spoken to my mum and she worked in a hospice for quite a while and she's also sat with quite a few people in her community as they've died and she says that some people do just have this real acceptance and some people she actually um where she lives there is they they have a cafe called a death cafe and i know that these are dotted around the country where

people go and they want to talk about death and they want to talk about it with people that are happy to talk about it whereas maybe they have friends and family members that just aren't comfortable talking to about it. So there are people who do just want to talk about it for whatever reason where whether they're just wanting to talk about this taboo topic in our society or whether they're facing it and they just want to talk openly about their experience and what lies ahead. So regardless of how many tricks and hacks we reach out for to prevent the slow and consistent decline of our bodies, although sometimes we can improve our health. We absolutely can, right? We can improve our quality of life, but we can never evade our death.

And as Irvin Yellon, one of my absolute faves, who I quote in the book a few times, he's got a book called Staring at the Sun, Overcoming the Terror of Death. And he says, the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death. Now, I have found ways to live more fully, and I'm a little less fearful of my heart. an ending. But in the same way, as I have found ways to become more accepting, I've also begun to feel like I'm living more fully. So let's step into this topic together with the hope that finding gentle acceptance will also find you enjoying a much more lived life. And that is the aim that is

woven throughout every single word of my book. So why do we find it hard? I've got loads of thoughts, but these are just a couple. Number one, maybe you're just not happy with the trajectory of life. If you're not happy with where you're at, then it can be hard to think about the fact that you have limited time on this earth. Maybe you have set yourself real, solid goals, or you've got this kind of rule list of shoulds for certain ages. I should have found a partner by now. I should have found a job. I should have blah, blah, blah. You know, when we place a framework on our life or we don't find enough of a sense of meaning and purpose at the stage that we're currently in, we can feel this pressure or a rush if we haven't hit those goals in time.

We can feel that really big sense of I'm wasting time, I'm wasting time, I'm not living how I wanted to live. So that could be one thing that really feeds into this fear. Another thing that feeds in might be concerned about how we're going to die. Now this is so understandable, right? There is so much about life, which is unknown. You may have witnessed someone dying peacefully or you may have heard of really traumatic stories of sudden deaths or people like my sister that died before her time. So one reason to

avoid living with the acceptance of death is to fear how it will happen if that's really taking up a lot of, yeah, that kind of psychological energy for you. So what are some of the tips? So the book is full of tips, but I've just got a cup of view to share with you right now. Number one, allow yourself to dance in and out of this awareness. So accept. Accepting that uncomfortable truth of your own death is absolutely to be viewed as a process, one that you'll never likely feel truly or comfortable or deeply accepting of. Maybe you will. Maybe you will. Now, don't pressure yourself ever to feel completely at ease with this or any of the truths in the book, actually. So the aim isn't just to get rid of all fear, but it's all about finding that gentle acceptance that leads you to live more authentically and intentionally. Now, there will be times in life when, just life, the daily demands are so absorbing that you're just completely embedded head down in the moment in every day. But there will also be times of challenge, loss, change, where what feels like normal hangs in the balance where you might actually have your attention fully

on the fragility of life. I had a conversation this morning that just really put it at the forefront to me with a family friend. And so my head's in that kind of space at the moment. So just aware, just got on a real awareness at the minute. So I wonder where you are. So the second tip, along with allowing yourself to dance in and out of that awareness and know that actually that's okay to pressure yourself to feel completely accepting as a really tall order. So the second one is to find your meaning. You know, why am I here? What is the meaning of life? These questions, have engaged discussion throughout the entirety of history. We need to experience as humans a sense of significance,

a sense of belief that we matter to ourselves and others and that we play a really meaningful part in the wider community. So to live with this inherent sense of worth allows you to stop spending your whole life searching for validation through achievement or opinions and possessions, but to actually engage feeling safe and secure in that knowledge. So a little, I've got a bit of a kind of an exercise in the book, but I'm just going to talk you through it to finish off. Ask yourself these questions, you know, what motivates you?

What would matter most if everything were to be stripped away tomorrow? How much your decisions, your resources and the way you spend your time in line with those things that really matter? What do you live for that feeds, calms and drives you to do good things and go to good places in life? or do your priorities fuel fear-based behavior like perfectionism, people-pleasing or self-abandonment? I am working on all of those things all the time and probably always will be. But ask yourself, what excites you? When do you feel like your most peaceful, content or alive? And are you doing enough of those activities in your life?

And maybe you want to write down a manifesto and include in that your values, whatever they may be. Think about how they shape your priorities, your goals, your decisions. because having a sense of purpose prompts these feelings of enthusiasm and accomplishment as you live in alignment with those values. And it's something that a lot of people find helpful, myself included, is engaging in a spirituality because this offers a further sense of meaning. I think a lot about life after death. And I personally, that's my belief that I draw a lot of hope from, that there is life after death. And millions of people all over the world explore the meaning of life and death through spirituality, as it invites us to reach out something bigger and stronger and more powerful than we are and offers a framework for life and beyond. So that's another kind of tip really to think about, yeah, what gives you meaning, what gives you hope, what helps things make sense to you.

So big topic. 10 minutes, actually 11 minutes 50 on that massive topic that actually deserves a book in itself and many books have been written upon it. But this is the last episode of the Uncomfortable Truth series. And I hope it's just giving you some things to think about as to how to find ways for these inevitable truths of life to sit a little less spiky and uncomfortable within you. so that there's less fear and less anxiety around them so that you're freed up, you're freed up to live more fully. And I have written at the beginning of the book. And this is the, I always get, you know, invited to write a dedication by my editor. And I think in all my other books I've like written to my kids or my partner like my husband or my family or I think maybe my therapist. But this one is to you. This book is for you because you deserve far more. than to spend your whole life living a half life.

And that's really my hope is that through the book you will find ways and feel inspired and have practical tangible ways to live morefully in the one precious life that you have. I hope it's been helpful. I hope you've enjoyed it

and I hope that the book feels really nurturing and gentle and incredibly powerful at the same time. Big brief. set myself there really wasn't it um but thank you so much for listening and i'll speak to you see i am so excited to announce that my brand new book the uncomfortable truth change your life by taming ten of your minds greatest fears is available for pre-order now and is out on the eighth of

august and in this book we tackle some of life's big unavoidable uncomfortable truths such as some people don't like me i am going to fail life isn't there. Bad things will happen. And in this book, we tackle these big, uncomfortable trees that rob us of so much headspace and energy as we try and control and avoid them. And as we move into a place of radical acceptance of these truths, you will find yourself living more freely and intentionally with more presence and confidence than ever before. So come on this journey with me and pre-order now at Wardstones and Amazon. We can celebrate together. back.