Dying and the Near-Death Experience

							Preparing for Death and Dying:
 Anxieties, Issues, and Tasks
         Dusana Rybarova
            Chapter 10
          2007 Psyc 456
      How to face the anxiety about
                 death?
 Avoid-or-confront approach
 Floating perspective
   – Examining the issues of death continuously throughout our life
 Viewing death confrontation as a part of the process of
  searching for life’s meanings
 Thoughts of death reduce us to our essence (Jean Paul
  Sartre)
 Meditation on personal death as ‘a precondition for
  achieving meaning and freedom of fear in everyday life’
  (Victor Frankl)
 Anxiety of death as a wellspring of creativity and self-
  actualization
          When are we death?
   Whole-brain death
   Cerebral death
   Neocortical death
   Dissolution of energies of the body
          Preparing for Death
 The living will
  – Easier for your family to make decisions about
    your death
  – Written instructions about health care in the
    event of terminal illness
 Durable power of attorney for health care
  – Appointing another person to make medical and
    health care decisions in the event that you
    become unable to participate in decision making
    about your medical care
Fascinated and fearful, we open our eyes to find
  ourselves face to face with death, with the fact of
  our own mortality, with our own impermanence,
  with the transient existence of those we love, and
  with the mourning after. And in that moment we
  experience, not numbing fear or anxiety, but
  humility, dignity, and a certain groundedness in
  who we truly are, not who we think we are.
                               (Marone, 1997:393)