Normally we deny, evade, cover-up, and repress
the deeper dimensions of death.
Drawing on insights provided by Martin Heidegger,
the next chapter creates the new concept
‘ontological anxiety’,
which differs both from
the physical-biological-medical fact of death
and from our emotional-subjective-personal
fear of ceasing-to-be.
We begin by discussing 8 common ways
in which we turn away from our fear of ceasing-to-be
and our even deeper ontological anxiety.

     This existential-phenomenological approach
requires a paradigm shift in our thinking about death,
but we can hope that the new model will make better sense
of what we already ‘know’ at our deepest levels of being.

     First we distinguish these three phenomena:
 

FACT OF DEATH	FEAR OF CEASING-TO-BE	ONTOLOGICAL ANXIETY
intellectual construct	emotional response	inner state-of-being
empirical fact	arises from empirical fact	arises from my internal ‘nothing’
observable occurrence	personal apprehension	existential disclosure
finitude	awareness of my finitude	constant internal threat
objective-external	subjective-deep	arises from the core of my self
abstract-general	specific-personal	more mine than my death
unowned	owned	lays claim to my self

     Then we distinguish the two deeper dimensions of death:
the fear of ceasing-to-be and ontological anxiety.
The five fundamental differences between these two
is fully explored in the first half of the chapter.
And the distinction is  summarized in a chart on page 210.

180      OUR EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT: LONELINESS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, & DEATH