Yes. Terror management theory.

Wondering if others, here, have any knowledge of TMT being used in clinical settings?

I’m a fan of Rank-through-Becker and beyond, and I am certain of these things:

1) my anxiety is a product of my inability to deal with my overarching fear of death;

2) my most natural course to participating in living would be the ‘creative;’

3) I lack the self-esteem and I doubt my creative abilities sufficient to the task of creating realities;

4) I remain in terror, outside of any reality; manifested by anxiety and panic attacks.

I have not been able, on my own, to practice any kind of Becker-TMT methods of coping. My bipolar mania is my only defense mechanism. Hypersexuality - not risky sexual indiscretions! - allows me a life-affirming preoccupation to avoid my terror of death.

We death-obsessed know the “feeling of dying” as experienced in panic attacks. Feelings that I guess the TMT fellows would say is within the period of mortality salience? (I really need to re-read Worm at the Core.)

So, TMT, anyone? Thoughts about Becker, etc.? Death - in any aspect?

[Skeezyks]

Well... I don't know anything about Terror Management Theory or Rank-through-Becker. I'm afraid this is all way beyond my limited mental capacity at this point. What little bit of reading I do nowadays is limited mostly to classical Chinese & Zen poetry; plus I've been trying, on-&-off, to work my way through some of the Buddhist sutras... although these sorely tax my poor mental capacity as well. I'm not really a Buddhist though either. I guess you might say I'm a "fellow traveler", so to speak.

I don't believe in a god or in any life after death. I accept the explanation for the existence of life on earth that is provided by the theory of evolution. So, for me, when you're dead... you're dead. End of story. And I've made a couple of strong bids in that direction. The most recent one not all that many years ago now.

I've read that previous suicide attempts put one at greater risk of making further attempts. It tends to "break down" a person's innate fear of it. And I believe that's true based on my own experience. However, at this point, I have no plans to try dispatching myself again. I'm content to just wait it out & let mother nature take her course. I just hope mother nature doesn't wait too long. Otherwise it may come to a point where I'll have to give her another little nudge.

Well, now. The Final Exit by one’s own hand.

I cannot, could not, do it. Last night, sometime yesterday, I was in an hours-long panic attack. Death was certain. I smoked some weed and calmed down.

I think (I know nothing for certain - does anyone?) that my fear of nothingness is so severe, so critical, that I cannot conceive of sending myself into that void; it will be someone else’s job to see me so dispatched. Or ‘nature.’ The natural world being Darwin’s.

I, sometimes, poke fun at Eastern, um, stuff. I am far too ignorant of Western civilization to make an attempt at the Eastern! I fear that time really is running ‘out’ (and it is!) and although I do not have a bucket list I am so distracted by living, now, that I am like the moth larvae in a Mexican jumping bean - when heated. I fly from New York to Tokyo, non-stop, right over the Artic. Back to London for my bespoke clothing.

Well, of course. ‘Practice makes perfect,’ you know. I watched Harold and Maude some months back. Bud Cort and his suicides. I think that the very best suicides are, as in the movie, those that you can walk away from.

I was supposed to die at 58. Wasn’t I told in 2003 that check-out was imminent? I was! My father died at 58, I had my first panic attack on the one-year anniversary of his death! I was supposed to die, then, in 1985!

I am late. Late for my own death. Isn’t there a joke in that?

No, there’s not. Death isn’t the joke, the joke is in the living with death ever looming, cutting off heads at the next car crash. Me? I am only still moving because others rub up against me, now. I started young and only stopped rubbing when I was madder than now.

Not a lot out there on TMT, but I’ll keep looking. If I could only check it, like a hatbox, at the terminal. I have to keep running, I have to stay in motion, until I’m brought down.

Once brought down, I will sleep without dreaming or ever waking again.

Boxing Day.