Sharing your near-death experience (or “NDE”) with others is an important step toward better understanding this profound experience you’ve had. You’re likely navigating a sea of powerful feelings, thoughts, and insights. And opening up about your NDE can help you process all of that.
But the idea of talking about your near-death experience can also feel challenging—maybe even daunting. Many people find it difficult to put their experience into words. The vividness, the realness, the complexity of the ideas … It’s a lot to try and explain to others.
So let’s take a few moments to talk about sharing your near-death experience with others. We’ll look at your NDE objectively and view this process from a bird’s eye perspective. And in doing so, you’ll be better equipped to talk about your near-death experience—and identify the right people to share it with, too.
Near-death experience and social stigmas
There’s an 800-pound gorilla in the room that we need to talk about here—stigma. It can make the idea of sharing your near-death experience feel overwhelming. And it’s quite common for experiencers to feel the weight of that stigma, too. Because the experience itself was sort of crazy, right?
It’s important to remember that you’re not alone and that no, you’re not losing your mind. There are countless examples of first-hand NDE accounts reporting the same sorts of pleasurable or distressing NDEs that you yourself had. And chances are, they’re more similar to your own experience than you might realize.
Still, those stigmas are very much real, and they present significant challenges when sharing your near-death experience with others. They’ll affect the list of people you can trust. They’ll weigh on how you want to approach these topics and which elements of your NDE you’re willing to share.
Having said all of that, you don’t want these stigmas to stand in your way when sharing your near-death experience story with others. And that’s something we should try to keep in mind as we move forward with this process of talking about your NDE with family and friends.
Goals when sharing your near-death experience
As we discuss sharing your near death experience, it’s important to set a few mission-critical goals here. And we should also take a moment to understand that sharing your near-death experience isn’t about convincing others to believe you, inspiring them to make changes in their own lives, or converting others to your way of thinking.
Your primary goal should be getting this experience off your chest. This is about sharing your near-death experience in a safe environment with someone you can genuinely trust. And the goal of this other person isn’t to believe you. It’s to understand you. To listen to you. To appreciate your feelings and provide you with emotional support.
You’re sharing your near-death experience so you can process it, understand it, and potentially integrate it into your life. So as we move into the next step—figuring out who to talk to about all of this—you should keep these goals in mind as well.
Who can you trust when sharing your near-death experience?
Let’s start this process of sharing your near-death experience by creating a list of people you personally believe you can trust. People with whom you can open up about your NDE and discuss this subject with at length.
What sorts of people make good candidates for this important job of hearing about your experience?
- A trustworthy, honest person who can respect your privacy needs. This person should listen to your story in confidence. You should be able to trust them to not tell others about your experience—this is your story to share, not theirs.
- A non-judgmental person. It’s important you discuss this with someone who won’t judge you, criticize you, or attempt to dismiss your account out of hand.
- Someone who is patient and a great listener. Articulating a near-death experience—describing what it was like and detailing what you experienced—is never easy. This person needs to be patient, and it’s important they give you time to think things through and put them into words.
- Someone invested in your wellbeing. This person should be interested in your story, protective of you and your experience, and focused on helping you through it.
Tip: If you’re unsure whether someone is the right person to talk with, consider putting out “feelers”—bring up near-death experiences and see if they’re dismissive, argumentative, or highly opinionated one way or another. Is this someone you’ll be comfortable sharing your near-death experience with?
Need someone else to talk to about your NDE?
For many of us, finding someone who matches all of that criteria can be a tall order. If that’s the case, you may want to consider seeking outside guidance—someone with professional experience who can listen and let you talk through your experience without biases or judgment.
Therapists, clergy, and trusted healthcare providers are usually willing to listen. And their services can be invaluable when you need someone to talk to about anything, including sharing your near-death experience.
Having said that, it’s important to remember that these individuals, as well-intentioned as they might be, will have their own professional, ethical, and moral considerations when hearing about your near-death experience. And that means they’ll define helping you in different ways.
Their help may feel dismissive, critical, or even judgmental. But you have to remember that most people know very little about NDEs before encountering or experiencing them. And it harkens back to those stigmas we talked about earlier.
So always remember to remain focused on those goals we talked about earlier. This conversation is about you, not them. Their biases, accidental or otherwise, are less important than the simple act of you expressing yourself and talking about your experience in a way that’s therapeutic to you.
Advice for sharing your near-death experience
Once you’ve figured out who you can talk to about your NDE, the next step probably seems exciting—or maybe terrifying. In either case, here’s some useful advice for sharing your near-death experience with someone:
- Stay focused on your own goals. And by that, we mean the goals we established earlier in this guide—expressing yourself about your NDE itself and discussing that.
- Don’t attempt to convert people, however compelled you may feel to do so. Again, that’s not a part of your goals here. You don’t need to transform this person into a believer, a researcher, or an apostle.
- NDEs are complicated and difficult to understand. It’s okay for people to have a healthy skepticism. You need to be understanding of the fact that most people won’t understand what an NDE is or what you experienced, so constructive skepticism and feedback should be reasonably expected. But having said that …
- End conversations if they turn hostile or don’t feel beneficial. If the discussion starts getting ugly, there’s little to gain from it and it can’t be therapeutic.
- You may not want direction or guidance, and that’s okay. People who love you often want to help you with advice. Don’t be dismissive of their advice, but it’s okay to gently remind them that your goal is just to talk about it.
- Point them toward informative and educational resources. It helps for them to understand that you’re not alone and that there’s information out there. We have information here at IANDS.org that they may want to read.
- Don’t let the experience sour a relationship. If someone isn’t particularly helpful while sharing your near-death experience with them, try to remember their own difficulty with understanding this complex subject matter. It’s okay if they don’t understand it.
Sharing your near-death experience is an invaluable early step
Many of the people who’ve had an NDE will be quick to tell you that this was the most profound experience of their lifetimes. You might agree or disagree with that sentiment. But one thing we know for certain is that learning about near-death experiences and sharing your near-death experience with someone you trust are important early steps toward better understanding them.
At IANDS—The International Association for Near-Death Studies—our goal is to provide you with information, education, support, and other resources so you can navigate the complexities of your NDE. We also help researchers find invaluable information, data, and the reports and accounts of those who’ve gone through an NDE.
Our website has information you’ll find valuable. But we also have resources for those people you share your story with. We encourage you to share these resources and articles with them, too. It helps if they understand that you’re not alone in having these experiences.
When you’re feeling up to it, you can also share your NDE account with us. Researchers find these first-hand accounts invaluable as they study the science and health behind near-death experiences. Your contribution can help tremendously!