Scared to Death: Exploring Death Anxiety and the Wounded Healer

Abstract

The following manuscript is an autoethnographic study in which the author explores her struggles with death anxiety throughout her life. In order to gain a deeper understanding of her experiences, the author connects her personal narrative to scholarly data on death anxiety, bereavement, cancer diagnosis and recovery, and “wounded healers.” The author offers a detailed account of her personal experiences with death including the death of her grandfather as a child, her own thyroid cancer diagnosis as a young adult, and how her diagnosis interacted with her fears of death post-recovery. Within the manuscript, the author seeks to comprehend how her fears of death, cancer diagnosis, and recovery will influence her work as a therapist. By offering her personal narrative, the researcher’s aim is to be a companion to others who endure similar struggles with death anxiety or an illness and to help others gain a more in-depth understanding of what it feels like to live through death anxiety and a cancer diagnosis. Through the writing process, the author has begun to examine her experiences from a new lens and has learned to embrace her vulnerabilities.