Is there help at all for people with Doomsday Phobia?

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I just read something about some controversial experiment about making bird flu EASIER to spread in some stupid attempt to make it more curable, and about how all antibiotics will lose their effectiveness because of climate change or whatever. Every week someone or something new wants to horribly kill me or people I care about. Is there any way at all I can learn not to be upset and anxious for days or even months whenever I read or hear about something disturbing. Sure, one way is to avoid such things whenever possible, but that doesn't make the world's problems go away. And people can't just tell me things will be all right. When they do it's ten to one that they WON'T be. Turning to religion is completely out of the question, it just makes me more upset and very angry, too. I've told therapists and shrinks the same thing over and over: "If you can't change the world, you can't change how I feel." My mother told me yesterday that I should spend less time on the Internet or social networking or whatever. Yeah, as if I don't hide from the world enough as it is. Lately I've been napping or sleeping more during the day than usual even after getting a decent amount of sleep at night, could it be because of this?

I have found a good healthy dose of Fatalism always helps.

I can sympathize with people who are phobic about doomsday scenarios and, having emetophobia myself (phobia of vomiting), I know how debilitating these fears can be. I read that same article and did panic to a certain extent but not because I fear for the world's well-being, but because I fear illness. You should have seen me during the Swine Flu outrbreak, ha. Anyway, my best advice would have been to seek therapy but you've already mentioned that it wasn't helpful in the past. Are you on any kind of medication? I actually felt quite a bit better about my phobia while I was on SSRIs back in '09 and even when I got off of them, I still slightly improved until now, where my emetophobia is bad but not suffocatingly intense. The only other thing that REALLY curbs my fear, is keeping busy. Tons of free time really lends itself to those negative thought cycles. In the past, when I've been able to work, go to school and live in dorms with people, I almost didn't have the time or energy left to care about anything else which, while difficulty, was a pretty fair trade-off. Anyway, I do remember my therapist explicitly telling me not to go on internet search binges on things that scare me (you know, spending hours learning about how insanely viral Norovirus is) because they always led to heightened anxiety.

There was a website called "2012 Hoax", that has since morphed into a new website called "Cosmophobia". I suggest that you read through all of their articles, as they explain why "Doomsday Prophesies" are not to be feared.

Mostly, their explanations come down to one, simple fact: The so-called "Doomsday Prophets" are ignorant, delusional hacks.

CBT is supposedly very good for phobias

I look at the food supply and population figures and all the other doomsday prophecies fade away and do not matter any more.
Here is how I see the differences in Buddhism, Taoism, and Judaism.

Plenty, religion says man is his own worst enemy and work for inner peace. Find your path and follow it.

Cooperation, everything will be fine if we all work together to tame the world. Hard effort is rewarded in this life.

Caprice, life is tough and even hard work does not always help, pray for forgiveness for being born and life will be better when you are dead.

The three major religions were based on availability of food.
Now the world is running out of food, simple numbers without emotional attachment. In 2050 the numbers match, with perfect cooperation the food supply will exactly match the number of hungry people.
2051 there is not enough and famine will not be stopped.
Actually I cannot see people sharing their last bite of food just to be fair. I expect war over the last bites.

This is my cure for doomday silliness, I just look at the real problem.

Educate yourself and take simple precautions.

An overwhelming fear of your house burning down is good motivation for checking your insurance policy and fire extinguishers, assembling a grab-and-go emergency kit, and having a fire response plan for your family.

Conquer your fears, don't run from them.

I'm preparing for doomsday so I not be phobic to it anymore

Once you actually educate yourself on the doomsday/conspiracy theories, they become a lot less scary. Of course, by educate, I mean from a reputable source, not some guy named "Bulletproof Skeeter", who lives in an abandoned missle silo and wears combat boots. There's plenty of people out there, particularly on the internet, who will latch on to some obscure fact or half-truth and blow it way out of proportion, of course citing all sorts of dubious "evidence" and "research" in the process.

That said, yeah there are quite a lot of serious problems out there in the world today that do need to be solved. But the world isn't likely going to end any time soon...we've been here over 100,000 years now, and still going strong .

Best way to deal with this phobia is to accept it and using it to empower you. Study the main ones that mostly come down to resource depletion, climate change and increased population. Consider what it means in terms of impact on yourself (food scarcity, violence, etc), and read about ways to deal with it. In this way you can gain control over your world, gain confidence, learn skills and knowledge.

Google The Archdruid Report. The author of this blog is intelligent and takes a long decline view, and debunks the apocalyptic approach. It will help with establishing a less-stressful paradigm, without denying the reality of what is coming.

When I was younger, I was terrified by doomsday prophecies but as I became cynical over the years, I blow off these prophecies and the doomsayers who I believe do it for personal gain. I say ignore them because they are blown out of per portion (How many ways did people say the world is going to end last year?). Humanity is fascinated by it's own demise and talk is cheap. Do not trust what anybody says about doomsday, especially on the internet.

I don't know how to explain how not to fear death or the end of the world, other than to say that worrying about it is a waste of energy. Live with a clear conscience, so that if the end comes in 15 minutes, we will die knowing we have done our best. As far as fear of death, I have felt it in the past, but I realize that I'm having too much fun to worry about it. I might die sooner than I'd like to, because I have a defective heart valve, but I do everything I can to keep it working as best it can, and I'm doing a good job. I don't think I'll die of it next year, or even in 20 years or anything, but I know it could be earlier than "normal lifespan". I guess that fear could take over my whole life, but when I think about that, I realize that I would still die the same day, and the only difference is that I would maybe have lived miserably in fear, in stead of living well and having fun. Once I think about it that way, it's easier . Same goes for worrying (or not) about the end of the world.

Charles

I know people who have dealt with resource depletion by becoming homesteaders, living on farms and growing their own food. I plan to do the same. Fnord is right, most doomsday prophesies are garbage. The one that really scared me was the Y2K bug, since many people who were smarter than I am said the computers would shut down. There is good reason to believe that the 1918 flu was an isolated incident and not "inevitable" nor a regular feature of nature. Some people have a phobia of disease, sometimes this phobia is comorbid with OCD and the need to clean.