Major Life Transition and Death Anxiety: A Personal Reflection

The Transition Experience

One of the most important changes that I experienced was high school graduation and preparing to leave home to attend college in another state. This achievement, as exciting as it was, involved a feeling of considerable loss that was not expected. I grieved the loss of childhood home life, the ready presence of family members, and the routine schedules that had controlled my life for eighteen years: Major Life Transition and Death Anxiety: A Personal Reflection.

Emotional and Cognitive Responses

The days leading up to my departure were filled with an intense level of nervousness and homesickness. I was unable to sleep, found myself snapping photographs of the seemingly mundane rooms in my home, and ached with an overwhelming urge to catch up with childhood friends. There was a persistent sense that something essential was coming to an end forever, mixed with fear about whether or not I could handle being independent.

Connection to Death Anxiety

In retrospect, the experience aligns with Becker’s (1973) theory of death anxiety—a latent fear of non-being that is beneath human functioning. The change was a symbolic death of my previous self and familiar world. Terror Management Theory suggests that people cope with mortality salience via cultural worldviews and self-esteem buffers (Li & Guan, 2024; Vinney, 2024). My intense clinging to familiar environments and relationships during this period was an attempt to maintain continuity in the face of doubt about existence.

The sadness I felt was not so much about physical apartness but about losing a particular version of myself and my known universe. This change forced me to confront fundamental questions about identity, continuity, and change—fundamental issues under death anxiety. Seeing this connection has allowed me to realize how profound personal transformations have a way of triggering deeper existential terrors about death and meaning.

References

Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. Free Press.

Li, W., & Guan, L. (2024). Self-control buffers the mortality salience effect on fairness-related decision-making. Behavioral Sciences, 14(12), 1121. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14121121

Vinney, C. (2024, January 17). Terror management theory: How humans cope with the awareness of their own death. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/terror-management-theory-7693307

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Create a discussion post that addresses the prompt below:

• Think of a situation where you experienced a major transition that resulted in a feeling of loss. Briefly describe the situation, what thoughts or feelings it evoked, how it might, in retrospect, interrelate with the concept of death anxiety.
  

  Major Life Transition and Death Anxiety: A Personal Reflection