Fear of death

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For as long as I can remember, I've had no fear of dying or killing humans. Is this because I have autism? This is very rare, most people are scared of these things, how come I'm not. Things like dead bodies don't bother me at all and I don't see the difference between a human dying and an animal dying.

I do not think this is that unusual, and I can some what relate to it; I look upon the life of a human as fairly equal too an animal and do not think it's any worse to see a picture of a slaughtered pig than that of a random person. One hypothesis maybe that those NTs that have it the same way are "smart" enough not to tell anyone since they know how our society reacts to it, while more autistics say it?

I do not know, maybe it is unusual and I just lack theory of mind. One things for sure though, there are a huge amounts of gore pictures on the Internet, so somebody has to enjoy watching them.

I have no fear of dying but killing an animal makes me sick. I think there's no real difference between animal and human dying. I don't think your feelings are rare anyway.

I have met more autistics who are unusually aware of death than most NTs, than the other way around. I'm in this category myself.

It could be that because we do not have part of our identity invested in the groups we belong to, we know that all of who we are will die with us. This makes death scarier because nothing "lives on" after we're gone.

That is a really interesting hypothesis! But, I think that can work the other way around to possibly.
In my clinical group they talked about a task in which we should reflect upon what we wanted to be written on our gravestone (meaning how do we want people to remember us after we are dead), and this struck me as possibly a "NT-type" of task. As you said, I do not have a part of my identity invested in a group. I would hate to leave my partner "behind" so to speak If I died first, but except from that I do not have any thoughts related to that task. What people think about me after my death, why should I care? - I'll be gone anyway! I'm thinking this can give less fear of dying since you do not have to worry about that as well! Thoughts?

I think psychegots got the truth in his first post in this topic, about the NTs not telling it because they know how society will react. The ways people view the death of others and the potential death of oneself are numerous and I don't think it's got very much to do with being NT or AS. It can be influenced by psychological factors such as depressions. Still, if you don't really care about the deaths of others it is indeed best to not say so as society may quickly put the label psychopath on you even though you aren't. Saying you wouldn't care if you yourself died is to an NT probably the same as stating that you're going to kill yourself in an hour.

I'm the polar opposite. I used to lie awake at night when a child and try to calculate how many years/days I had left to live, based on an estimated age of death. No matter how long I had left, it was never enough time, and I'd imagine the idea of not existing and not having a mind and not being aware of the world, and I'd break down and cry myself to sleep.

I am still terrified of death, but do not think about it like I did back then.

Well--just because we don't think of ourselves as part of a group, doesn't mean we don't care about other people. Here at WP we have the full range of compassion, all the way from "Meh, other people can go do their own thing, I don't care about them and won't bother to help them," to, "If I so much as hear about someone on the other side of the world suffering, I feel an intense need to help them." That's true of autistic people and NTs both; there are NTs who care and NTs who don't care, just like there are autistics who care and who don't.

Those people who care about others even when the other person's situation doesn't impact theirs will probably care about what happens to others after their death. Those who don't, may just be indifferent.

On the other hand, you could have someone who cares very much about others, and who is not strongly afraid of death, because while he doesn't feel like he's leaving a part of himself behind the way an NT would, he does know that the effects of his actions will last beyond his death.

And of course there's the idea of leaving information behind--your discoveries, ideas, innovations, and art. That needn't connect to other people, either.

The lack of an identity as part of a group is significant, though. I'm pretty sure that that's how NTs deal with the fear of death--the idea that their kids will go on after them and their country will keep existing, that kind of thing. It's harder to feel that if you don't have that mirroring-style tendency to go with the emotional flow of a group.

I wouldn't mind being immortal, the risk of there being no afterlife is still too great.

I'm sad I'll only get to see 30-80 years of history. Hopefully closer to 80 than 30...

That is a major part in my motivation for not wanting to die, yet if there were to be such a thing as reincarnation or whatnot, it'd be a moot point.

I do that too, particularly when I have health concerns.

I've also a similar view to Callista, the fear of nothing, rather than death is the scariest. What's worse is that can lead me to quite depressive thoughts, as in what is the point of a finite life, when death is infinite.

Jason

That's pretty much the main question of human existence is it not? "What's the point"

If there is something that I fear, it is being dead.

Real corpses do not bother me which I assume is because I do not intuitively feel as if that person's life being over has something to do with me. Death itself as a theoretical topic doesn't unnerve me as well, either from a biological point of view or a philosophical one. It can be fascinating to learn about actually.

Dying a painful bloody death isn't a nice thing but I'm not worried about that. I know others are because they talked about how imagining being dead does not scare them nearly as much as dying during an accident does. I admit I don't understand that. I wonder if that means these people are afraid of the pain they expect when they imagine it?

I connect pain with life which is why I have such a hard time understanding this. Pain is a part of life and to experience pain is a very simple distinct proof that I'm still alive. Pain and every other sensation very much make me feel alive. That makes it good thing to me.

It's just me dying and being erased from existence that has instilled me with fear since I first learnt of what death is and how I'll be delivered to that same fate with no power to avoid it. That must have been some time around my 6th birthday as that is when I started being afraid of stopping to exist by losing my concious mind by dying.

Death is the ultimate loss of power, not a good thing at all.

I've recently started to fear it during the past few weeks, while I'm not scared of death itself exactly, it's the fact that nobody knows, as Homer Simpson once said, "You could wake up dead tomorrow."

I exactly relate to this.

I actually used to watch 'Faces of Death' and other types of videos like that when I was a bit younger...I could even eat while watching and it wouldn't bother me. I'm fascinated by illness and disease, and always imagined it would be quite easy for me to work as a mortician's assistant or something like that. Dead bodies don't bother me, nor do images of death.

Exactly as you said, though, the idea of me no longer existing is overwhelmingly terrifying. It's interesting that you said it's "the ultimate loss of control," because my all of my phobias are ultimately related to a fear of death, but the phobias are lesser or even alleviated when I'm in control. For instance, I'm not afraid to drive, and in fact drive quite well, but I panic while riding in a car that I'm NOT driving. Same with airplanes...I panic and cry and basically freak out any time there is turbulence, even though I know all the statistics about likelihood of dying in a plane crash and know that turbulence isn't dangerous. It's just that, I don't know what's going on...I can't see the pilots, much less am I in control, so I just can't get the fear of crashing a dying out of my head. If I'm high up in a building and go out on the balcony, I'm fine, but if someone else is ANYWHERE near me, I will be terrified, because then I begin to fear that the other person will somehow bump into me or knock me over.

Interesting to think about.