To reiterate, this mental fear of death is simply caused by your thoughts. To eliminate this fear, or to at least mitigate it so it doesn't constantly impact your life, you have to get rid of those thoughts. In order to do this, assuming you do not believe in an after-life, you have two choices:
1)
Distract your mind. Give it something to do. Stay busy, create a purpose, have & work towards goals, do things you enjoy. Your internal monologue cannot resort to contemplating death if you are doing things. At night, you may left alone with your thoughts and this is when the fear usually arises. Stay busy and exercise hard so you're tired at night. Practice meditation to help you become more mindful of when those fearful patterns of thinking creep up on you. The moment you begin to feel the fear or go down the rabbit hole of fearful thinking that produces this dread of death, rationalize yourself out of it (See point 2). If you're unable to, give yourself a task to do -- go for a walk, listen to a podcast, clean the house, etc.... just give your mind something else to do.
2)
Rationalize your fear away. This is easier said than done, but basically use logic to demonstrate why your fear is pointless or unnecessary. Here are some thought patterns I've come up with that may help:
- "I did not exist before I was alive to experience death, I will not exist after I'm alive to experience it neither. My non-existence before I was alive did not feel like an eternity of nothingness, so my non-existence after I'm alive won't feel like an eternity of nothingness either. It is only the attention of my mind itself conceptualizing
an eternity of nothingness that frightens me."
- "My mind produces thoughts of death. Thoughts of death produce a mental fear of death. When I die, my mind ceases to exist. I will not experience this fear. I will not experience death. It is doesn't make sense to live life fearing what I will not experience."
- "During surgery, I don't recall the timeframe I lost consciousness under anesthesia. I didn't recall losing consciousness, I just remember regaining it (translate to:
I don't recall being dead before I was alive, I just remember being alive). Losing consciousness didn't feel like
nothingness, not even for a moment. The days leading up to the surgery I could have lived fearfully as to what may happen during anesthesia, or I could have went upon my daily life as is. In either case, losing consciousness & my mind didn't feel like darkness nor nothingness, and it wouldn't make sense to live fearfully if it doesn't ultimately change anything."
- "I don't remember being 3 months old. I don't even remember being 2 years old. I had a mind to be conscious then, and I was conscious, but yet I still don't have any recall of my experience of that time. If I extended that to the rest of my life up until this very thought, how much would that inconvenience me? Probably not at all, because memories are just thoughts. If I extended that to my death and non-existence, the same would apply... I just wouldn't be able to recall my entire life. I wouldn't even have a mind anymore to recall I couldn't recall.
- "Under anesthesia, I didn't
experience anesthesia -- there was no active mind to experience the loss of consciousness nor the state of no-consciousness. I couldn't experience fear of anesthesia nor could I recall my life before I went under. I recall regaining consciousness, but I don't recall losing it. When I eventually lose consciousness come death, I will not experience death nor the state of non-existence. I couldn't experience non-existence before I was alive, and I will not experience non-existence after I die nor the fear of non-existence."
- and any other rationalization that helps. The ones that I shared help me. Others include: appreciating life while one is alive, applying meaning & urgency to life (fear of death vs fear of not living life to its fullest), etc.
Rationalizing your fear away can be very difficult.
For many people it doesn't work, or doesn't always work (rationalization is largely just really another distraction, replacing one thought pattern with another), at which point you would either need to go back to distracting your mind some other way, or adopt a religion or some sort form of belief that quells your fear of being dead.... You really don't have any other options...
And if you don't have any other options, and you have no power to change anything, you might as well accept death. The same way a very short man should accept his height -- accept it because obsessing over it literally changes nothing except for reducing the quality of your life by psychologically tormenting yourself.
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At the end of the day, anything you cling to because you're afraid to lose it will manifest fear in your life... be it a relationship, possessions, money, or life itself. It will impact your ability to live a fruitful and meaningful life...
And if you think living a meaningful life is ultimately pointless because it doesn't matter in the end because of death, then let's assume you're right and it really doesn't matter after you die. It probably doesn't. However, living a meaningful life
does matter at one point in time, and that point is
this moment.
Now.
Mental fear and
this moment cannot co-exist -- fear requires a psychological time perception of the future. When you are fearful, you are not present in
this moment. As you've grown older
@Maximus Optimus, you've grown more fearful because you've become less present. Your mind/attention is in the future. When the "future" arrives, it will be occur in
this moment, a future
now.
If you spent the rest of how many days of life you have left maximizing your presence, living in
this moment, you will simultaneously minimize your time spent mentally living in the future experiencing fear.
For the sake of your psychological well-being, while you're alive I recommend living life moment-by-moment to the best of your ability, with obvious practical exceptions (getting to work on time, the compound effect of a hedonistic lifestyle, etc).
