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Constant fear of my dad dying, please help?


I'm a very typical 16 year old girl in high school. I do well academically, am very involved, and have many friends. However when I was 8 years old my mother passed away from a rare heart condition that no one knew she had. I had been the one to find her body and at the time thought she was merely in a deep sleep..I have many awful memories from those few weeks but especially that day. As I've been growing up, the hurt without her is still there but I've accepted it. My father had put me into therapy immediately after so I could talk about it and those sessions helped. In my family, we're really bad at keeping up with things like that so I've been attending on and off sporadically throughout the years. The last time I attended, she brought up the touchy subject of my mother. There are times when thinking about it becomes too much and I cry, this particular session had me bawling my eyes out to the point where I couldn't breathe. I haven't gone since and that was last year. Everything in my life has seemingly gotten better this year, but for some reason I've become more paranoid. For example, one morning I had to wake my dad up for something and he didn't answer me right away. I called out "DAD!" many times and after a few times he answered. I began to cry very hard, it reminded me of being a child and screaming for my mom to wake up, and she never did. Today, he was supposed to pick me up from school early and never did. I called him 50+ times and began to cry at school in fear that something had happened. I came home from school eventually to find out that he had fallen asleep. Once I knew he was okay, I fell to the floor sobbing. I don't know why I've become so scared recently, but every time something similar to this occurs I begin to see my father in the same condition as I found my mother. I begin to shake and cry uncontrollably as well. I hate this because it makes me feel like I'm insane! Nothing like this has happened until now..any help or advice would be much appreciated.
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Avatar universal
Hi hxppysxd
I am a lot older than you and lost my father last year...
nothing could have prepared me for it even though I felt the grief a long time before he passed as he was very ill for a long time and i knew the inevitable...
firstly, you are not insane, far from it, you are a human life form who has feelings and with grief it can last a lifetime...
it is how we consciously handle it to how we cope with it...
everyone has a different way of doing this but I chose to carry him with me in my heart in my everyday life and keep loving him till I'm gone...  I realized he lived within me after all I am of him and the similarities shock my husband:)))
Grief can be like depression only very emotional so I can tell you...   go sit somewhere nice by the ocean,  take deep breaths and don't think for some time...  do this for some time...  it will only help but it will free your headspace up so you can deal with the grief more easily
Eckhart Tolle has some wonderful books to read and youtube has his talks which you can listing to...   you will not only find this helpful but healing...  
Keep moving on and make the most of your life its how both your parents want you to live your life whether they are here or not     xoxo  
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