Worried there might be an afterlife

[dyresand]

Hi, I'm new. I don't feel up to giving myself a proper introduction, for reasons that will become clear. I'm just hoping to settle a doubt in my mind and hope you'll be able to help. I've tried posting this elsewhere online, just trying to get as many thoughts and as much information as I can.

I don't "believe" as such in an afterlife but I am worried by doubts there might be one. Not the afterlife of any particular religion, which I see no good evidence for, but something like becoming a ghost or reincarnation. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (currently not one of the subtypes most people are familiar with) and it torments me. My main comfort has been knowing it won't last forever, one day I'll die. I have absolutely no fear of non-existence and find it strange that most people are afraid of the idea. When I thought I was dying a few weeks ago (panic attack I mistook for a heart attack) I wasn't scared of dying, I just thought - well I've been wishing that something would kill me so that I don't have to hurt my family by killing myself, and I'm getting my wish. I was hoping it wouldn't hurt too much and concerned for my family (I have no children or dependents but the relatives I do have would be devastated emotionally) but death itself I didn't care about.

Recently I've been thinking - what if this torment DOES go on forever? I know whole groups of people who are convinced they work in or live in haunted buildings, people I trust and don't gain anything from lying. Some of the stories I've heard about ghosts make me question - if the pattern of conscious activity called the mind, after being created by the brain, sometimes, somehow continues to exist after the thing that set in motion is no more, presumably it would be pretty much as it was when the brain died. In life I get these obsessive fears, and compulsions, so why would it be any different after death? The difference is I won't have any medication to help dampen it down. And anecdotally it seems the people who apparently hang around after death are those who had miserable deaths or have unfinished business, some kind of conflict that was never resolved. OCD is basically caused by the brain inappropriately generating an irrational feeling of unfinished business, of a major threat that must be dealt with, even after the threat has been dealt with and the intellectual part of the brain knows this. Once you've got an obsession, it just takes weeks, months or years for it to stop FEELING like it still needs to be addressed. Then you get another obsession about something else. So if anyone's going to become a ghost, it would be someone like me. And if reincarnation is real - what if I come back and suffer even more?

Can anyone help reassure me that when you're dead you STAY dead, lights out, good night Irene?

Thanks in advance,

Raz

I made a whole forum post as too why a afterlife wouldn't and cannot exist. Don't worry about it.