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Constant fear of my dad dying, 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
This is grief.  This isn't mental illness.  But grief, if held onto too long, can show you are prone to being a worrier about certain things that hit you hard enough.  If you've been in therapy for 8 years because of unresolved grief, you've had the wrong therapist -- that should have been a few sessions.  If you're still seeing one, no problem, but we never totally get over losing someone close.  We don't even get over losing our favorite dog.  It's just the way some people are.  You're fine, but you do need to move on.  You don't ever forget, your don't ever feel good about the loss, but you do move on.  If you look at your life, you have moved on.  Having lost one parent, it's natural to cling more closely to the other one.  But if it's still this scary to you, again, you need a different therapist, because the one you're seeing isn't helping.  Sometimes they don't.  It's more an art than a science.  And don't judge yourself so harshly -- you lost your Mom at a young age.  It's okay to feel sad or alone sometimes.  Just don't dwell on it.  Peace.
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Arlington, VA
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Arlington, WA
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