Treating death anxiety. A practical guide for psychologists and psychoterapists

This book explores the therapeutic work of addressing death anxiety—one of the most profound and universal human experiences. It helps readers understand how fear of death can emerge in thoughts, emotions, relationships, bodily symptoms, and everyday behavior, while offering a compassionate, practical framework for working with it in therapy.

Book Description

Death anxiety is not presented here as a "wrong" feeling to be eliminated, but as a meaningful inner experience connected to vulnerability, uncertainty, loss of control, isolation, grief, and the search for meaning. The book examines how this fear may be concealed beneath panic attacks, health anxiety, intrusive thoughts, excessive worry about loved ones, avoidance of illness- or death-related topics, or repeated attempts to obtain reassurance about one’s safety.

The author offers a sensitive, clinically grounded approach to therapy: how to recognize existential anxiety, establish a safe therapeutic relationship, explore the personal meaning of a client’s fear, and help them reconnect with life. Rather than promising an impossible state of complete safety, the book emphasizes the development of psychological flexibility—the capacity to tolerate uncertainty, remain present, recognize what matters, and make choices guided by one’s values.

Written for psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors, and other helping professionals, the book will also speak to readers who want to better understand their own relationship with death, anxiety, life, and personal meaning.