Accepting mortality reduces destructive unconscious death fears

Evidence

In his Notebooks, Albert Camus wrote: “Come to terms with death. Thereafter anything is possible.” Since antiquity, theologians and philosophers (and more recently psychologists) have emphasized the importance of accepting our mortality as a means to diminish the destructive effects of unconscious death fears and to enhance appreciation of everyday life. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 786

Related

• Accepting mortality can make life more meaningful and compassionate (similarity 0.90)
• People are generally oblivious to death yet it shapes their experience (similarity 0.85)
• Knowing how death awareness drives defenses enables more self-determined choices (similarity 0.84)
• Death’s most powerful influence operates unseen in normal life (similarity 0.83)
• Prolonged death contemplation keeps mortality thoughts conscious and suppresses defensive reactions (similarity 0.81)
• People unaware of their death fears are nonetheless governed by layered psychological defenses (similarity 0.81)
• Death awareness would have been lethal without simultaneous cultural adaptations to deny it (similarity 0.80)
• No account of human behavior is complete without the awareness of death (similarity 0.80)
• Mortality reminders uniquely trigger worldview defense unlike other threats (similarity 0.80)
• Conscious death thoughts require delay to trigger worldview defenses (similarity 0.80)
• Interiorizing death makes it a personal, responsible feature of a unique life (similarity 0.80)
• Conscious and unconscious death thoughts trigger different defense systems (similarity 0.79)
• Death rituals dampen one’s own mortality dread enough to sustain daily routines (similarity 0.78)