One 50-page chapter in this book is devoted to Yalom’s own struggles to come to grips with the fact of death. Later in the book, he adds: “We all face the same terror, the wound of mortality, the worm at the core of existence.” And he means “all.” Hidden and disguised, leaking out in a variety of symptoms, it is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts. It itches all the time it is always with us, scratching at some inner door, whirring softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness. Made far-reaching changes in himself: he stopped drinking cold turkey (without reliance on a recovery program), vastly improved his relationship with his wife, quit his job and entered the business of training seeing-eye dogs - a profession that offered meaning by providing something useful to the world.Ī prominent psychiatrist once advised therapists to avoid discussing death in most cases: “Don’t scratch where it doesn’t itch.” But Yalom argues:ĭeath, however, does itch. But, in facing that memory and facing his own eventual demise, the client Instead, it’s possible to employ this greater awareness of death “as an awakening experience, a profoundly useful catalyst for major life changes.”įor instance, he relates that, because of suppressed death fear, one client had long ignored his feelings about his brother’s death as a teen. What these milestones have in common is that they are reminders that we are moving along the road of life, and the end of that journey is death.Īs a therapist, Yalom works with clients to recognize the reality of death, but not to wallow in fear. He writes that, often, psychological problems can arise at the time a person is approaching or passing a life milestone - going to a school reunion, for instance, or sitting down to do estate planning, or turning 50 (or some other major age signpost). Yalom notes that, at times, clients come to him with very overt death anxiety, but even more common are those whose complaints don’t seem at first to have anything to do with death. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world….And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. He can change it - and, Dickens writes, he does. Waking up, Scrooge realizes that the future he’s seen is not set. Scrooge observes his neglected corpse, sees strangers pawning his belongings (even his bed sheets and nightdress), and overhears members of his community discuss his death and dismiss it lightly. The Ghost of the Future (The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) visits Scrooge and delivers a powerful dose of shock therapy by offering him a preview of the future. After leading a long life as an emotionally gnarled skinflint, Scrooge endures three dreams during the night of Christmas Eve, and wakes up vowing to turn over a new leaf.Ī form of existential shock therapy or, as I shall refer to it in this book, an awakening experience. Is it relatively happy? Relatively fulfilling? Or dry and frustrating?Īlong these lines, Yalom also recalls the story of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. This scenario is like shock therapy, he writes, because it makes a person look at what his or her life is like at the moment. It often serves as a sobering thought experiment, leading you to consider seriously how you are really living. The idea of living your identical life again and again for all eternity can be jarring, a sort of petite existential shock therapy. Yalom includes it in his 2008 book Staring at the Sun - Overcoming the Terror of Death. This will not only happen once, but again and again and again on into eternity.ĭo you wail and gnash your teeth? Or do you think that would be just fine?įriedrich Nietzsche laid out this “mightiest thought” in his late 19th-century book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. You will make the same choices, suffer the same pains, say the same words. This being tells you that you are going to have to live your life again - exactly as you have already lived it. You wake up in the middle of the night, and standing next to your bed is an angel or a devil or a genii or some spirit of some kind.
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