Just wondering if anyone else has fears about the world ending, or dooms day type stuff that would in all honesty probably never happen; like asteroids, alien invasion, nuclear war, government take over, science fiction stuff. These are constant intrusive thoughts of mine after I heard about conspiracy theories about aliens and other science fiction stuff earlier this year.

Sure. First, the brain has a job it takes pretty seriously: making sure you don’t die. That’s like its first priority. 90% of what it does is dedicated to that. The other 10% is just us doing stuff we like or looking at cat videos on the internet. Because it takes its job seriously, it looks for threats. World ending threats could happen, right? It’s within the realm of possibility. All of humanity knows this, but not as many spend their days absorbed in questions about it. So why do you? Well, you’ve got a structural difference in your amygdala that infuses this information with an intense fight/flight/freeze response. As far as your brain is concerned, knowing this information is no different than running into a bear in the woods. And what does the brain do when there’s a bear in front of you? It freaks the fuck out. Then it tries to figure out how to get away. That’s what your brain is doing now. What helps is realizing ALL of those processes happen independent of your conscious choose. What you DO get to choose is taking those signals seriously.

Following because when I was younger (23 now) i used to CRY AND PANIC over any idea of how the world could end. I would be shaking after watching Deep Impact. 2012 urked me. And the movie The Road, i still can't watch cause its wayyy to realistic. Should have seen the signs for OCD but alas, i only got a diagnosis a couple months ago.

omg yes I used to have those exact same fears as a kid! Both about doomsday and aliens. They used to keep me up at night, and it was like I watched every alien or 2012 related video on YouTube. I had no idea this could even be ocd related. They faded for me surprisingly with the ‘maybe, maybe not’ response! My parents used to tell me that all the time. Like maybe it’ll happen but we can’t know, so are you gonna let your life stop now?