I am so excited to now be licensed to serve clients in the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado and Utah. All services are done remotely using Psychology Today's HIPPA approved secure video platform.
I am looking forward to talking with you in Provo, Fort Collins, Denver, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, Aurora, and even Telluride! Here is my contact page and here is a picture of a rock:
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“I believe that death anxiety is the mother of all religions, the mainspring of human creativity, and the ultimate therapeutic issue. Almost every session, at its deepest level, addresses death anxiety.” - Irv Yalom, ‘Staring at the Sun’
Yes, every session is at deepest about death anxiety. Our DNA is screaming up at us at all times, “stay alive, stay alive, keep your family alive, stay alive.” Of course it would hijack your brain to serve its sole purpose. I am not one to confuse correlation with causation, but I can’t help but notice a connection: rates among Americans, young adults in particular, who do not believe in an after-life are on the rise, and so are rates of crippling anxiety. An ever greater amount of people are concluding that Nothingness is what follows death. This is a thought that prevents people from falling asleep again when unknown forces jerk them awake at 3 am. My argument is that this is a snake eating its tail problem. That the anxiety creates the belief in Nothingness, which furthers the anxiety, which furthers the terror of the Nothingness. This makes sense when we understand anxiety. Anxiety is the fear of open-endedness. The fear of possibility. It’s a very stupid but well-intentioned part of the brain trying to protect us. Imagine you are sitting in an ordinary room in an ordinary house. Some thought rises up inside you that says “there is someone else in the room.” If we are using logic alone we tell ourselves that is absurd and go back to our activity. But we are not. So we glance around to reassure ourselves there is no one else. We take an action, so we can reach a conclusion. Anxiety soothed. With death we do not have such an option. We do not know what lies beyond. We want to know, but we are reasonably sure we cannot just die and come back to find out. Our anxiety will not be satisfied with that. It puts us in the bind of needing to draw a conclusion on the inconcludable. Whether the decline of religion in the West is good or bad is a separate debate. But surely we can agree that it has led to a decline in belief in the afterlife. Misguided or well-guided, religion gave an answer to this awful question. Into this void steps Nothingness. Nothingness, lights-out darkness, is solid. It is a conclusion you can hang your hat on. It removes the unknowness that anxiety hates. We can say to ourselves ‘that’s settled.’ Except it is not, because now you have to live your life with Nothingness looming over you. Your DNA wants only to exist but your conclusion is telling you existence is futile. The out here is embracing the mystery. Those who swear by Nothingness will say it is a scientific conclusion. But it cannot be theory if it cannot be measured. If there are no measurements, then there is no way of knowing what alternatives are plausible. Which means they are equally plausible. Which means anything is possible. We do not get to know what lies beyond. We do not know for sure it is Nothingness that lies beyond, but we know for sure a Mystery does. Nothingness is awful, but mysteries can be fun. Do not let anxiety run your life. Do not let it force conclusions. Especially unsupported ones that do you no good. Embrace the uncertainty. In the end it is the only thing we’ve got. |
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