#13 Mortality and Wellbeing: Embracing the Full Spectrum of Life and Love

In today's episode, we dive deep into the enigma of death anxiety with esteemed clinical psychologist and author, Matteo Zuccala. We come to see it not just as a daunting aspect of our psyche but also as a natural and, at times, even enriching dimension of our mental fabric. Matteo artfully combines compassion, wit, and unparalleled insights as he sheds light on how we grapple with this potent existential theme. He underscores the pivotal role of human connections, the magic of genuine interactions, and the transformative power of therapeutic guidance.

As our conversation unfolds, we explore the profound connections intertwining death, love, and life. Matteo fervently advocates for deepening our human bonds and for the open exploration of death and its surrounding narratives. Join us for this illuminating conversation, as we traverse the intricate dance of life, love, and mortality.

More information about Matteo:
https://stpsych.com.au/matteo-zuccala/

Matteo's Book Recommendations:

Mortals How the Fear of Death Shaped Human Society

Attached The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love

Attachment in Psychotherapy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

And I know I'm going to mess up, so this isn't for real. I just want to read through it to get going and will you say what? Would you like me to call you? Matt Theo Doctor?

Speaker 2: 0:13

Zucca, I think. I think Matteo is fine OK.

Speaker 1: 0:17

And could you say your last name for me?

Speaker 2: 0:20

Last name is Zucca.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Zucca. Ok, so here's what I'm planning to say. Let me know if you want anything different here. Matteo Zuccola, is that right?

Speaker 1: 0:30

Zucca Just forgot it, Zucca. Matteo Zuccola, Thank you Is a distinguished clinical psychologist with a PhD specializing in death anxiety, attachment theory and evolutionary psychology. Gosh, I love that. I wish I could say that about myself. With the trauma informed and relational therapeutic approach, he empowers individuals and families to navigate challenges such as depression, anxiety, grief, trauma and complex family dynamics. Matteo's expertise extends to evidence-based treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. As a registered clinical psychologist, he has contributed significantly to the field through his experience and has a significant publications on the topic of death anxiety. So welcome to the show, Matteo. So great, so glad you're here, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Yeah, could you start by giving our audience some insight into your background and how you became interested in death anxiety?

Speaker 2: 1:26

Sure, so I'm a clinical psychologist by trade all the way in Australia. My research, though, as part of my postgraduate training, is I did a PhD as well, so I became interested in death anxiety. Many years ago I started a PhD looking at the fear of death, the fear of mortality. I thought it was very interesting thinking about how, as extensional people there are, fears like that influence human psychology. But what I found is that over the course of my PhD it became much broader and we started. There were many unexpected twists and turns along the way and, as you mentioned, so we had to think about attachment theory, evolutionary theory. I thought that made it much more interesting as well. Nowadays I'm largely a clinical psychologist by trade, so, practicing psychotherapist, I work with people all across the lifespan, but largely work with families with very complex and severe mental health issues Families that I think your listeners would be interested to know. Families when people think about therapists that work with families, I think we're working with children. Actually, we're working mostly with people that are in midlife.

Speaker 2: 2:40

We're working with parents who are really the agents for change in families, and so I work with people all across the different lifespan in my own work in Australia.

Speaker 1: 2:52

So fascinating, such great work. Could you start going a little bit more in depth about death anxiety and how that relates to our human experience, especially for those that are in midlife?

Speaker 2: 3:04

Sure. So I think there's many different ways to look at death anxiety. I think, on the one hand, death anxiety is what it says. It is the fear of death, and a healthy dose of death anxiety is really normal. It's really practical. Actually, I think it does some good things for us. It means that we're not jumping off cliffs or jumping out of planes without parachute structure.

Speaker 2: 3:27

I think the more interesting perspective when to think about death anxiety is from an evolutionary perspective, so death anxiety isn't just normal for us as humans, but I believe at least that, to some extent, all animals have some level of death anxiety. I mean, this is what has driven natural selection for thousands upon thousands, upon millions of years Is that animals have to have some level of not wanting to die, of wanting to continue surviving, of wanting to avoid things that are a threat to their continued survival, and, if you think about it, I think that this drive to survive can be considered death anxiety, for you would put in human terms, I guess. So, when we're talking about how does death anxiety affect humans, I think the first point is that, if we aren't alone, that death anxiety affects all animals. What makes humans special, though, is the way that we express our death anxiety, the way that we relate to it, the way that we manifest it, the way that we control it, the way that we try to temper entertainment, which I do think is quite different to the rest of the animal kingdom. So humans, if you think about it, humans are terrorized by the prospect of death Much more than other animals. It sounds weird because we are at the top of the animal kingdom in some ways, but a single human alone is a very vulnerable animal. A single human is much more vulnerable than the vast majority of animals out in the animal kingdom. A single human alone can't fend for itself. We can't protect ourselves. We can barely hunt. We wouldn't be able to, you know, we'd barely be able to build shelters for ourselves, etc. Etc. Etc.

Speaker 2: 5:07

And I think that the particularly interesting point is the human child, especially so if you think about the human child. The human child is the most vulnerable specimen across the entirety of the planet Earth. There is no specimen on planet Earth that is as vulnerable as a human child. I'm sure many of you listeners in their midlife would have had children themselves. When a human child comes out of the womb, it can't protect itself, it can't look after itself, it can't feed itself, it can't even move around. Evidence shows that you can barely see a couple of centimetres past its face. So humans, and human children, are a very vulnerable species. We have to, we have had to come up with some way of managing our survival, of managing our death anxiety. That's different to other animals. And this is this is where I think, where things get interesting, because yeah you know.

Speaker 2: 6:03

You ask what is death anxiety? I think the more interesting question is how do we manage our death anxiety? Death anxiety is normal, we all have it. How we manage our death anxiety as humans is the more interesting question. And how we manage our death anxiety is by relying on others. So, as humans, throughout ancestral history, we couldn't do things ourselves, so we formed tribes, we formed cooperative groups, families, social units, etc. And we looked after us each other.

Speaker 2: 6:31

And, in particular, you mentioned that I've a PhD in attachment theory. The reason why my PhD straight into attachment theory is that you know you've, we're faced with the theoretical Conundrum of how does a human child face its own death anxiety? Because a human child, more so than any other animal in the animal kingdom, is faced with death every day. No, it's I, anybody that's had a kid. I don't have kids, but I've heard from people that have kids I work for lots of parents that say every day is a struggle just to keep this kid alive. It feels, after the kid be throwing themselves off ledgers, they'd be eating things they shouldn't be eating.

Speaker 2: 7:10

The human child manages its death anxiety by forming bonds with its parents.

Speaker 2: 7:16

It's quite ingenious tactic, actually, that it manages, manages this as existential threat by saying to its parents obviously you know not saying, but you know metaphorically saying to his parents you do it for me, I can't survive myself, I need you to do it for me. And this is an incredible tactic and in my opinion, this is one of one of the most important reasons why humans see that the top of the animal kingdom, because what this means is that we get to have children that are incredibly vulnerable. Yeah, decades and decades. Nowadays kids don't move out their parents home, so that 20 or 30 years old, but what, what we get to do during that time is that we get to spend time growing, we spend time socializing, learning to such an extent that no other animal can afford to do that. Every other animal is so encumbered by the threat of death, by their own death anxiety, that they have to grow up with the age of five or six or seven, even the great ages and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Yeah whereas we get to have this beautiful time period of growth when we're younger, because we rely on our parents to manage our death anxiety and manage our death for us, and, of course, I don't imagine there's many children listening to this podcast. But what's important to note is that the this process where we rely on other people To support us, to help us survive, this process remains relevant throughout our entire lifespan. So that's what my research was looking at this. What other research has shown that? Wow, these attachment processes, these attachment bonds that facilitate survival, that temper is Accidental, anxiety about dying these psychological processes remain all the way until the time that we die.

Speaker 1: 9:02

Really, Wow, that is such a fascinating way to look at it. I've never heard it put that way, where we put attachment theory and evolutionary psychology and death and existential psychology together. That is incredibly interesting. I'm guessing in your work you see a lot of coping strategies from that death anxiety. Can you talk a little bit about how people kind of cope with that in a healthy and unhealthy way?

Speaker 2: 9:28

Yeah, sure, I want to go back because I think I didn't answer your question, because you asked how does death anxiety affect people in midlife? Do you mind if I talk to?

Speaker 1: 9:36

that You're right. I was so fascinated that I didn't. I lost track of the entire focus of the podcast. So please do talk about midlife and death anxiety.

Speaker 2: 9:45

It's my fault, I just started on a ranch, but I think that's a really important question as well, because you know, I was just talking about the importance of the attachment bond with parents. Right, and An important part of midlife is a lot of people in midlife are parents, and so this is one way that death anxiety affects us in midlife is that we're not. It's not about tempering our own death anxiety. We're tempering the anxiety of the children that are relying on us as well. But I think what's interesting, kyle, was I'd be interested to hear Do you think people that are younger or people that are older have more death anxiety or more fee for death?

Speaker 1: 10:23

What do you think the answer is oh, that is a good question. Common wisdom would say that people that are older May have more because they're in that time where they're aging and it may be bringing about kind of those physical Signals of death, and we think of teenagers as just kind of living in the moment. So that would be my conventional wisdom, but I'm fearing that there might be something else I'm missing.

Speaker 2: 10:48

That is conventional wisdom, and there's a reason that's conventional wisdom, because you think about other things that we're scared of. If you're scared of spiders and you're about to walk into a room of the spider, you're fearful of it. If you're scared of flying and you're sitting in the airplane seat and you're about to take off, you're scared. But for some reason, the research shows that People the elderly people, so people that are on the verge of death, that have lived the longest are about to die, that are facing death. They're the least scared of death out of all of us.

Speaker 2: 11:17

That actually there's a gradual trend downwards from about the age of 20 is when you are the most fearful of death, and it slowly goes down over time, with one exception. This is an interesting exception for your listeners that there's one exception. So this trend, that it trends downwards from the age of 20 and so you're least fearful about death when you're in your old age, but for women in their midlife, at around the exact age of about 50 or 51, there is a spike in death anxiety, and their death anxiety spikes to the level that it was at when they were 20. Wow, and this is really interesting because from a conventional wisdom perspective, it's very hard to explain this. But if I can draw us back to a Darwinian perspective, something else happens for women at the age of 50, and what that is is menopause. And menopause is a really interesting phenomenon in the natural sciences because it's only us and killer whales have menopause. No other animals have menopause, and so there has to have been a very unique and interesting reason for us to have this biological phenomenon that is so incredibly impactful.

Speaker 2: 12:26

Yes, and the reason that has been hypothesized I think is really interesting and links back to the idea of death anxiety Is the idea that humans, much more so than other animals, like I talked about, for rely on being looked after and looking after others. So humans rely on grandparenting, and so the theory is that menopause comes around because it's essentially an indicator to say look, the time of your life when you should be having kids is over. You can't have kids anymore. Now start focusing on your grant, on your grandkids. Now it's time to look after your grandkids and also to help your kids look after their kids as well.

Speaker 2: 13:05

And I think this tells us something about death anxiety the fact that death anxiety goes up the exact same age that menopause happens for women and this doesn't happen in men. We don't see this phenomenon. I think what this tells us about death anxiety set when we feel fearful of death, when we anxious about death, this is telling us there's a biological imperative or a human imperative. I should say that we need to meet. So this makes sense if you, if you broaden the scope out to what I said before, that I do things I decide. When we're young, we have tons of imperatives that we need to meet.

Speaker 2: 13:43

We have entire lives ahead of, ahead of us that we need to feel From a very biological perspective with meant to have kids, look after our kids and see them be raised and then have grandkids. From a human perspective, we have other stuff we have to establish ourselves, we have to establish yourself in social hierarchy, we have to figure out who we are, we have to contribute to society in some way, to culture, etc. So I think the the notion of death anxiety is very relevant to your listeners because For the especially for the women, your female listeners they're gonna be experienced, or the research says that they're probably gonna be experiencing it all over again, just like they do when they were younger, although fortunately for them, it will start to go down again once again.

Speaker 1: 14:33

Okay, I have to do a cut. This is incredibly fascinating. This is incredible. So it's just really really beyond mind blowing, beyond what I expected. So, thank you. Oh gosh, I've lost track. Okay, let's get back on track.

Speaker 2: 14:52

Sorry, sorry. I kind of answered one question when answering the other and I think it's great.

Speaker 1: 14:58

You know, I think it's kind of good to have some humaneness in there too. We can talk about how we want to handle that later in the final edit, but that is really interesting. So I think I'll come back to that and kind of build on that. So menopause and aging relate to death anxiety. Are there other factors that contribute to having a higher awareness of death anxiety?

Speaker 2: 15:21

Yes. So there's a number of different factors. So the stuff you would expect I mean the research is ongoing, this relatively new field, so Having experiences with death, of course you know they find that if you have a couple of experience with experiences with death You're more fearful about death. But if you have lots and lots of experiences with death for example, if you're a sky jumper and you've jumped out of the plane 50 times become less fearful.

Speaker 2: 15:46

I think the one that's perhaps most interesting to me is in my own research.

Speaker 2: 15:50

Part of what I was looking at was the relationship between social connectedness and death anxiety and what I found is that if you feel socially isolated, if you have less, if you feel like your sense of connection to others is lower, you don't have many close connections in your life, then you actually more fearful of death.

Speaker 2: 16:09

And again, that makes sense from the perspective we're talking about, that we manage, we temporary as extents angst through our connections to others, and so if you don't feel connected, then you're going to be more fearful death and that makes sense. You know, if you look at Jane Goodall, of course, incredible researcher, and what I thought really stuck out of her the original book that she wrote the chimpanzees of Gombe, where she follows the chimpanzees around Gombe in Africa incredible book. What she points out in that book is that the chimpanzees that ostracize from their tribes, that are rejected for their tribe for whatever reason, they don't survive for very long, even the ones that are fully grown adult males. Give them a couple weeks. They can't survive with a tribe. And I would say humans throughout our ancestral history have Undergone the same evolutionary processes, even to an even greater extent, chimpanzees able to survive a couple weeks.

Speaker 1: 17:04

I reckon we go a couple days and we'd be gone as you know, I was surprised by that too, because a lot of times I think we think of people that are socially isolated as more at risk for suicide. Does that, how does that relationship work? I don't know, I'm just kind of throwing a curveball at you there, mateo, but you know, if they have a higher awareness of death anxiety, does that, is there a relationship there with suicide, suicide, social, social isolation, you know?

Speaker 2: 17:38

If I can be completely honest, the problem of suicide is a great mystery, for death anxiety research is up until now, I think we don't have a clear understanding of how Death anxiety relates to people that try to attempt suicide or do attempt suicide or do Do suicide. I think part of the reason is the reasons why people in their lives or in their own lives are varied, and so I don't think we can attribute people ending their lives to whether they're fearful of death or not. I think.

Speaker 2: 18:15

To even consider ending your life. You obviously have to be suffering to such an immense extent that, regardless of whether you feel for death or not, you'd see that as the only way out. Yeah, that makes that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 18:29

Let's let's now talk about some of the coping strategies that people employ. I'm sure they. There are negative, unhealthy coping strategies, and there are also healthy ways to adapt. Can you start talking a little bit about that, please? Sure, so.

Speaker 2: 18:43

I think some people that are very fearful of death. Yeah they can go a bit over the top. I think that's when what you're talking about me talk about negative coping strategies.

Speaker 2: 18:56

So I think, we've all met someone that can be so fearful of dying that they're so over controlled in their lives that they might as well not be living. It's ironic, and so you know, you can see, there's various types of research that show that, for example, death anxiety is related to obsessive compulsive disorder, that people so scared of dying that they're constantly checking the stove, they're constantly checking the locks in the doors, etc. They're so anxious that it completely takes over their lives. And of course, there's a great irony there that in their fear of death, they're not living. Yeah, and so? Well then, how should you cope with death? Well, firstly, it's not my decision to tell you everyone's different.

Speaker 2: 19:41

That's the problem with being a psychologist, it's very hard to give vague advice. I think you know the first piece of advice is, if you're really grappling with this, that you should do your best to see a psychologist or a psychotherapist if you can. But if I had to give vague advice, what I want people to think about is again what does it mean when we have these sensations, when we have these emotions, when we're grappling with existential angst? What are these feelings or emotions trying to tell us? And I think I alluded to this before that all of us are fearful of death to an extent. But if we are overly fearful of death, if it's something that's really on our minds, it's probably trying to tell us something. And so what might it be trying to tell us?

Speaker 2: 20:28

Well, maybe we don't feel very connected to the people around us, maybe we do feel socially isolated, and so maybe it's a sign that we should be trying to foster our human connections, our social connections. I think you know, in some ways it's ironic, because I talked about earlier that when we're kids we had faced the terror of death much more so than when we are adults, but also we're much better at managing that when we're kids as well that we turn to our parents, we turn to older adults. We have these biological instincts that drive us towards the adults around us, but when we're fearful of anything and I think in some ways we need to relearn those instincts when we're adults I think in many ways society and culture in this day and age has driven us into social isolation. It's alienated us in so many different ways and we need to be turning to each other rather than turning to consumerism, rather than turning to drugs, rather than turning to TV, rather than turning to all that rubbish that doesn't actually help.

Speaker 1: 21:38

Yeah, that is a fascinating way to look at it. It seems to me, too, that it is a catalyst for clarifying what's important or what you want to do with your days. Do you see that as well in your clients and your research?

Speaker 2: 21:54

Absolutely. I think you've touched on a great point. That again, what is death anxiety? If we overcome with the dread of our impending death, regardless of what age we're at? I think another thing that it might be trying to tell us is that, up until this point, we don't feel like we've lived life according to the values and the meaning that we want to live life to, and so I think, when we experience this death, anxiety is trying to drive us to live life in a more fulfilling way, live life according to our values.

Speaker 2: 23:02

I think one of the best ways you can try and cope with the idea that you're going to die because I'm sorry to break it to you, but you are, we are Is this idea that perhaps you want to leave something behind even after you pass.

Speaker 2: 23:15

And so, if you're in combat with death anxiety, you need to think about you know, one day, biologically, I'm going to die. You know, socially, how can I live on after my death? What can I leave behind for the generations after me, whether that's passing on lessons, ideals, values to your children or your grandchildren, or whether it's making a more meaningful contribution to the society that's given so much to you All. Human history is a history of humans giving to each other. Now, at the moment, we are allowed to make this podcast today because of thousands of years of humans working their butts off to try and make sure that the next generation has a better life than they do, and so I think it's both our duty but also our great honor to try and ensure that generations after us have a better life than we do, and I think that, to bring it back to death anxiety, it's very hard to be fearful of death when you feel like you've lived life to its fullest and that you're leaving behind something after you pass.

Speaker 1: 24:24

Yeah, that is incredibly well said and it's incredible. It's really impactful to me that the themes that keep coming up across these episodes are confronting reality, having self-compassion for your reaction to that reality and confronting it and changing it and intentionally changing it is something meaningful and positive. I wonder, I'm thinking, about how that might work in your work with families intergenerational. I have kids, I have kids that are adolescents and emerging adults and, as we discussed this, I think it's healthy to wrestle with that, make that an open discussion when those fears come about, so we can adapt and confront them in a psychologically healthy way. Can you talk a little bit about how midlifers might approach this across generations?

Speaker 2: 25:25

I think it's so astute that you mentioned my own work working with families, because I think a lot of therapy with families is just putting words to the unspoken. It's just giving people permission to talk about things that they haven't felt they have had permission to talk about and really, in some ways it's incredibly difficult job. In other ways it's the easiest job in the world because you don't do any of the work yourself. You're just asking people to talk about things that have been on their minds for a long time. So if we think about death, I think or going back to death.

Speaker 2: 26:00

Death, of course, is an incredibly touchy subject for some people. I think it's very hard for some people to talk about death. But let's think about the generational differences that we talked about earlier Children, not children. I should take that back. Children don't really understand the concept of death fully, but young adults, emerging adults, are the ones that are most fearful of death. They're the ones that find it hardest to speak about death. Parents are probably somewhere in the middle, and then grandparents.

Speaker 2: 26:28

I don't know what your experience has been like, but I think a lot of young adults are surprised by how openly and honestly their grandparents want to talk about death and want to plan for their own death and want to plan their funeral and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 26:39

It's incredibly hard for kids or children and grandchildren to talk to their grandparents about death, but I think if these intergenerational discussions are going to happen, we have to recognize that death means different things for different people. So people in midlife have to recognize that for their kids or for the younger generation, death means missing out on a lot, whereas being in midlife, death is missing out on a lot. Sure, but you've also done a lot as well, and so it's easier for you to grapple with that. I think as well for the younger generations, they need to recognize that for the older generations, talking about death isn't what it is for them, for the younger people, that actually they want to talk about death, they want to bring light to this, they want to plan for it, they want to feel like they know what's going to happen and that people are going to feel okay when they pass as well. I hope I answered your question there. I'm not sure you definitely did.

Speaker 1: 27:38

That's what I was shooting for in terms of having things, having this subject be open, normalized and allowing it to be again confronting the reality of it and using it in a positive way. I think some people may have, for example, parents that, like you said, I think older adults a lot of times have cope, but I've seen two older adults that are still wrestling with this and it's something that it's a topic that's avoided and I think that can be difficult.

Speaker 2: 28:10

Yeah, I think another issue is that sometimes we think we're talking about death or we're thinking about death or we're not thinking about death, or talking about death, we're talking about loss, and loss is different to death, and loss is incredibly difficult to think about sometimes, or to process or to manage, but it's something else that needs to be talked about. But we have to make sure that we're talking about the right thing, that, yes, sometimes we can talk about death, but often what's stopping us talking about death is the fear of loss, the fear of losing those that we love, the fear of being lost to ourselves, to those that we love as well.

Speaker 1: 28:47

That makes perfect sense. That's a really helpful way to look at it. So thank you for that. You know, as we kind of. As, before we move on to the next section, I think it's important to talk about professional help. You've touched on that before, but I love it if you would kind of share with us some of those cues that we may need professional help, that others around us, either younger or older, might need to see professional help about this.

Speaker 2: 29:12

So tell us a little bit about that please.

Speaker 2: 29:14

That's a great question because I think, like I mentioned before, you know, just because you're fearful of death doesn't mean that you need professional help. All of us are fearful of death to some extent, regardless of whether you think you are or not. We all are. We're all humans. If you weren't, you wouldn't be alive right now. We're all just animals driven by natural selection and evolution. We are fearful of death to some extent.

Speaker 2: 29:42

But if you fear of death gets in the way of you living, then of course that's when you need to seek help. So if it causes interference in your everyday activities, if it stops you doing the things that, if you're important to you, the things that you want to do, if it's causing a lot of distress, then you do need to consider professional help. And you also need to consider what type of professional help as well. So I'm a psychologist, so I can just prove my own profession. So I think psychotherapy is great. I think everyone should be in psychotherapy, regardless of whether they're thinking about their own death or not. But you know, you might be going to psychotherapy thinking that you need help with death anxiety, but you should be open to talking about other things as well, because your therapist will guide you through the process of what death actually means to you and what's underlying this view, what's making it worse and perhaps you know most people might have.

Speaker 1: 30:42

I just want to completely endorse that view too. I'm 1,000% pro psychotherapy. Something I just shared with Mateo, but I haven't shared with my audience, is that I'm chipping away part time at my clinical mental health licensure too, because I wholeheartedly believe in that. It's been a big part of kind of the background of this podcast. So as we kind of move towards the closing section of this interview, mateo, how would you boil it down? What advice, what encouragement do you have for people as it relates to this topic Death anxiety, what are some key takeaways you would want us to have?

Speaker 2: 31:23

I think the most important takeaway is that you're not alone. Again, all of us are fearful of death to some extent. All of us don't want to think about it. All of us don't want to talk about it. Your dog and your cat don't want to think about it either.

Speaker 2: 31:36

I don't know how they would think about it or what that looks like there we are, dog and cat dreams about running away from people and falling off cliffs and stuff like that, but that's us being fearful of death. You're not in this alone, but what I would encourage people to think about, as with any, as existential angst, since we're talking about death today. What is this emotion, what is this experience? What is this suffering trying to tell us? What is it trying to make us do? We are all driven by our emotions. Our emotions were designed by thousands of years of evolution to encourage us to do things that are good for us. To bring that into a more human, complex domain. Things that are good for us aren't just eating, surviving, reproducing. The things that are good for us are living, fulfilling lives, meaningful lives, connected lives, lives where you feel like you have some social agency or society and culture around you, but you feel like you can make some contribution to society and do something that you can leave behind as well, well said.

Speaker 1: 32:45

That's something I'll put on repeat and try to integrate into my life repeatedly, so I appreciate that very much. Now, this has been a fascinating conversation and I'm sure people want to learn more. Are there resources that you could recommend for people that want to explore this topic more deeply?

Speaker 2: 33:06

Yes, I think there's some great resources on death and death anxiety. There's a book that came out recently called Mortality. There's also a great psychotherapist named Irvin Yalom that writes these amazing case studies, and within those case studies, these existential themes come up quite a lot, and he's a brilliant writer, so now many of his books are on my bookshelf. Again, I want to encourage people, though, to think about what death means to us as humans, compared to just this abstract concept of death. What it means to us is loss. What it means is love, connection. This is how we manage death anxiety.

Speaker 2: 33:41

So don't just read about death, read about attachment theory. There's brilliant books and resources out there about attachment. There's a brilliant book called Detached, which is really good, and then, finally I mean I don't want to sound too facetious, but I do think that you will learn much more about this, about death, about loss, about love, what it means to love, what it means to be loved, what it means to fear dying, what it means to be human. You learn a lot more about this from the people around you than you will through any book or self-help resource or any internet webinar or whatever. So now, if you really want to learn about death anxiety. If you really want to talk about death, you want to really learn about love and talk about love. Call your mom, talk to your kids, visit your grandma, talk to your work colleagues about it why not? And, of course, listen to the Gen X Mindscape podcast, because that's where you learn the most about life. The rest of you have to do great.

Speaker 1: 34:44

All right, Sled shirt, t-shirt and everything else coming your way. Mattel, Big shipping cost down to sitting there. Oh, this has been just a fascinating way to look at life and to grow and to think about really the important things of living fully. And so, Mattel, I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for your time and your expertise and for joining us on the podcast.

Speaker 2: 35:14

Thank you, kyle, it's been a great experience.