I told my therapist this last week and she didn't look at me like I have two heads and honestly just telling another human this - literally the darkest skeleton in my closet - was therapeutic almost beyond belief.

Context is that I have bad anxiety, possibly the product of growing up in a broken home with an alcoholic parent. I unquestionably also have health anxiety.

My death anxiety goes something likely this. I'll be lying in bed with my wife and then a really dark thought hits - one day we're both going to be dead. Sometimes I even picture our tombstones as I presume we'll be buried next to one another.

Another time I'll have a horrible picture of me dying and it makes me so sad and worried about my wife. I don't think I've ever loved somebody so much and I worry about how she will manage without me and I don't want her to ever have to deal with the grief of losing a spouse (but statistically.... women tend to outlive men and my wife comes from a family of people living into their 90s and.. in my 30s I already have issues!) 

I'll also sometimes think about the fact that my therapist - who I think is an amazing and skilful person - is one day also going to die and again I'll have these horrible mental images of her dying in a hospice or something. Likely sometime in their next two decades unless she lives freakishly long. 

I think the commonality is that it upsets me that even the most wonderful and righteous people I know ultimately... meet their end. That thought makes me a little depressed. 

The stuff about my wife might sound narcissistic (worrying about how she'll live without me) but it's really not. It's more anxiety because... anxious people have a hard time handling uncertainty and I guess death is the one thing that's an absolute certainty.

Just thought I'd put that out there. I lost a grandparent and my dad unexpectedly and am pretty sure this is connected... and also what underlies my more day to day health anxiety.