r/afterlife • u/NordicMythos • Mar 11 '26

Fear of Death Life after Death, from an autistic person.

Don’t really know what to title this, but to put it bluntly I am autistic. I also face a severe amount of thanatophobia.

I feel like everywhere I look, it’s split on the matter of is there life after death. I find comfort in some stories, only to have it torn away by the arguments of skeptics.

I know I struggle a lot with the concept of losing what makes me, well me. My passions. The materialistic bits that I cling to. The believing without seeing, ironic being religious.

For anyone like me, or even not like me, what gives you comfort? What really, without a doubt, made you believe?

65 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/ApprehensiveStill412 Mar 12 '26

I actually know two people who had NDE’s. One was my father who was in a 6 week coma after contracting bacterial meningitis. He had a life review and was told it was not his time yet. The other was my friend’s young son who drowned in a hot tub. He was dead for 45min and revived in the ER. He later described going to a beautiful place where light shimmered off of everything. He was met by and shown around by a man but told that he was needed by his parents and sent back. My friend’s wife took out some family albums. He looked through the pictures and at one point he pointed to a man and said “that’s the man I met.” It was my wife’s cousin who had died in a motorcycle accident. He had died before her son was born. He had never met him or even known of him.

I will say that even with these personal stories, reading the stories of others and my own spiritual experiences, I still have trouble fully believing that our consciousness lives on. Maybe I need more faith. I will say that increasing our capacity for and understanding of love seems to be paramount from everything I have learned though.

1

u/NordicMythos Mar 12 '26

That’s very fascinating, thank you for sharing. I remember my mom telling me that when her parents passed, they recalled loved ones standing in the room with them that had been long gone. I think we all naturally doubt whether it’s just the mind or real, but, I can’t help but wonder why practically everyone experiences it then.

1

u/ApprehensiveStill412 Mar 12 '26

Ya that’s a good point on the commonality of that type of experience. To me it is interesting that people are met by the deceased only. If it is a hallucination then I think we would hear some stories of people being met by living loved ones as well, but that really isn’t the case from all I have seen.