• Being afraid of dying is a normal and universally shared feeling, according to our partner The Conversation.
• However, there are "recipes" for understanding this event, whether near or far away, in a more serene manner.
• The analysis of this phenomenon was carried out by Caroline Cuny, professor in psychology and Yannick Chatelain, associate professor, expert in Digital and GEMinsights content manager (both at Grenoble École de Management).

You are afraid of dying and this is normal, even adults are afraid of death, afraid of dying, or afraid of the death of people they love. If being afraid is normal, death is part of life: we are born, we grow up, we become grown-up and all this time… we get old.

As you put it very well in your question, "you are afraid, yet this is what will happen to you" and this is what will happen to everyone. Besides, nobody can know when they are going to die, so it's like knowing that something is going to happen, but not knowing when, and that too can be scary.  You should know that in general, except for a serious accident or a very serious illness, we die when we are very old.

Why is death scary?

We are all attached to people, the ones we particularly love. We have forged strong bonds of love throughout our lives. As these bonds of love are themselves associated with people, when people die these bonds could therefore be severed. Realizing this is very scary because we can ask ourselves how we are going to continue to live without them. Dying can also hurt people who love us and it can also be scary. It is also normal to be afraid because no one knows what is "after death". It can be worrying not knowing what will happen, for yourself and for the people you care about. We can imagine all kinds of more or less scary things, sometimes associated with movies or books. Our imagination will also sometimes manifest itself in a very creative way and make us think of perspectives that can really scare or on the contrary reassure us, like becoming an angel.

How to stop being afraid?

We are born, we grow ... and all the while, we age © Intueri / Shutterstock (via The Conversation) To come back to your question, you have to try to tame this fear and for that several things can help: understand. Talk about. And above all: enjoy life.

Understand that the fear of death is a normal feeling. Understanding that it can cause great sadness, we have a lot of grief when a person we love dies. Grief and cry is normal and it always takes time for the pain to go away, it takes time, but after the tears and sadness comes a time when you remember all the good times that you have. spent with the person who disappeared. Thanks to your memories, she's a little part of you forever.

Talk about possible death rituals, what people do in different countries and what you would personally like for yourself. We do not treat death and the deceased in the same way depending on the country, in Ghana which is a country in West Africa, funerals are a celebration. Knowing all this is taming, and it helps to be less afraid.

Enjoy life: since I am going to die, I take advantage of the present moment, I appreciate what I have there and I nourish myself with all these bonds of love.

As your life progresses, you will also build other bonds of love and you will realize - and maybe you have already lived it - that sometimes, in life we ​​make friends with girlfriends , then sometimes we get angry, or they move, sometimes we see them less or we no longer see them, but we have other friends, other girlfriends, that's life. This is not why we forget them. For death, it's a bit the same, the people who died continue to be present in the hearts of those who remain with beautiful and less beautiful memories.

So you have to enjoy life, have fun, laugh, in order, in a very long time, to leave to the people who loved you, whom you loved, to your children if you have any, a wonderful bouquet of pretty things. they will keep preciously and which they will in turn tell their children.

And you know a great French writer, Alexandre Dumas, whom you perhaps know wrote: "I am not afraid of death, I will tell him a story" and, all his life he wrote beautiful stories, like "The three Musketeers", for example. Perhaps and even surely, he wrote all his stories, because he was a little afraid of death too ...

Article original en français sur The Conversation France

Photo credit: jean louis mazieres on VisualHunt