Fear of loss
Fear of dying • Fear of losing someone you love • Death anxiety • Anticipatory grief
Fear of Loss
Sometimes the fear isn't really about death.
It's about losing what we love.
The thought of leaving your children behind. Imagining life without your partner. Watching a parent grow older. Receiving a frightening diagnosis. Or suddenly becoming aware that the people and things we love cannot stay exactly as they are forever.
Love creates attachment — and sometimes the possibility of losing that attachment can become so frightening that the fear begins to intrude on the life and relationships we have right now.
You may find yourself worrying about death, imagining the worst, seeking reassurance, or lying awake at night thinking about a future that hasn't happened.
Rather than simply trying to make those thoughts disappear, we can become curious about them.
When you're fearful of loss, what kind of fearful is that?
Using Advanced Conversational Hypnosis and Clean Language, I help you explore what sits beneath the fear and discover the resources you already have to experience it differently.
“When the fear of losing someone begins to overshadow the experience of having them, something important is being lost already.”
Fear of Dying & Death Anxiety
Are thoughts about death beginning to interfere with living?
Perhaps you find yourself thinking about what happens when you die, frightened by the idea of no longer being here, or unable to imagine one day being separated from the people you love.
For some people these thoughts appear at night, when everything becomes quiet. For others, they begin after a death, illness, milestone birthday or experience that suddenly makes mortality feel very real.
Trying not to think about death can sometimes make the thoughts even louder.
Rather than treating your fear as something irrational that simply needs to disappear, we can become curious about it.
What are you actually afraid of?
Is it dying itself? Pain? The unknown? Leaving your children or partner? Losing control? Being alone? Or the thought that everything you know and love will one day end?
Using Advanced Conversational Hypnosis and Clean Language, I help you explore the thoughts, beliefs and emotions beneath your fear — and the resources you may already have that can help you experience mortality differently.
The aim isn't to convince you what happens after death or tell you that you shouldn't be afraid.
It's to help you reach a place where thoughts about dying no longer prevent you from fully living.
Feel free to contact me for a free, no-obligation conversation.
What If the Fear Is Trying to Protect You?
Fear can feel like the enemy.
It keeps you awake. It creates thoughts you don't want. It makes you imagine things that haven't happened and sometimes prevents you from enjoying what is happening right now.
So naturally, we try to get rid of it.
But what if, instead of immediately asking:
“How do I stop being afraid?”
we became curious and asked:
“What is this fear trying to do for me?”
A fear of death might be protecting a deep attachment to life.
A fear of losing someone might reveal just how important that relationship has become.
A fear of being alone might be connected to something very different again.
This doesn't mean you have to live with overwhelming fear.
It means we don't have to fight it before we've understood it.
Sometimes the very thing you've been trying to get rid of can become the place where our conversation begins.
When You Can't Stop Thinking About It
“I just wish I could switch my brain off.”
When we're frightened of something, our mind can return to it again and again.
What if something happens to them?
What if I become ill?
What happens when I die?
What if there is nothing afterwards?
What if I'm left alone?
You might tell yourself to stop thinking about it, distract yourself, search for reassurance or try to reason your way out of the fear.
And still the thoughts come back.
What if overthinking isn't the problem?
Sometimes repeatedly thinking about something is the mind's attempt to find certainty where certainty simply isn't available.
And when the subject is death, loss or someone we love, the mind can become particularly determined to find an answer.
Rather than fighting those thoughts or telling you that they're irrational, we can become curious about what keeps bringing your attention back to them.
What does your mind believe it needs to know?
What is it trying to prevent?
What would happen if it stopped thinking about it?
Using Clean Language and Advanced Conversational Hypnosis, we can explore the particular pattern your mind has created and begin discovering what might allow that pattern to change.
The aim isn't to stop you thinking.
It's to help you think without fear doing all the thinking for you.