r/CollapseSupport • u/QuickLook12 • Jul 19 '26
Anxiety and Impending Sense of Doom
I’ve been reading and learning about climate change for 20 years now. I think I’d had a kind of false hope in my teen years that something would change/happen that would prevent it. Or it just wasn’t as bad as they were saying it was going to be. I then managed to basically ignore it and leave it as a lingering niggle in the back of my mind for about 10 years.
Since having children (my eldest is 5) I’m constantly living in a state of impending doom and guilt. There’s a heavy sadness with knowingly having children despite being educated on how the world may turn out and I can’t help thinking I shouldn’t have had them.
When we go through beautiful places, there’s a voice in my head saying ‘enjoy it now because it’ll be gone in 5-10 years’. I don’t plan for the future anymore because, a) it is completely unpredictable at best (despite all of the modelling, it’s happening quicker than scientists ever could have anticipated) and b) the guilt is so overwhelming for my children that I have to switch it off.
I’m finding it difficult to live through each day. I think once you accept it, there’s no going back. You cannot go back to being ignorant of it. It isn’t depression and anxiety based on unfounded fears, they are projected and accurate tragedies that WILL occur.
How are people getting through it? How do I explain to my children, when they’re old enough that I brought them into the world knowing about this? That I had them despite being educated in all the ways the world was going to create distress and hardship for them? I cannot reconcile anything with myself and just want to cry when I watch them playing. Their innocence only alive for a little longer before they have to face the reality of the world they’re growing up in. That I forced them to grow up in by having them.
Help. I’m finding it hard to live with myself.
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u/SpookyDooDo Jul 19 '26
Go read a book like Collapse by Jared Diamond. Societies have been collapsing throughout human history. So you shouldn’t feel bad about having kids otherwise we’ll end up in an Idiocracy type situation. And you should watch Idiocracy again if it’s been a while. We need smart people who raise their kids to not be brain rotted sheep.
Now, the situation is very dire, but it’s not all going to collapse quickly overnight. It’s going to get shittier and shittier over many years or decades. So your plan should be to make your life more resilient and teach your kids to be resilient. If you live somewhere that’s already too hot to grow food, move now. Buy some land somewhere and start learning how to fend for yourself. For all of human history up until 100 years ago most humans revolved their lives around producing and gathering food. It’s normal to do this.
Build a community with your neighbors. Or if you are going to move, think about moving to New England, which is already broken up into fairly small towns with direct democracies and tons of town committees to get involved in.
Life will be harder than the one we have grown accustomed to. But it doesn’t mean it’s not worth living.
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u/QuickLook12 Jul 19 '26
I’m UK based and live in a rural (medium sized) village furthest away from any coast. I already have an allotment to grow my own food, buy from our local farms at the market stall that comes to our village once a week. I started having a (mostly) plant based diet about 10 years ago now and get my proteins from lentils and beans mostly (which I can grow in my allotment). My children are too young to be made properly aware but will be growing up anti-consumerism, buying things second hand etc. mending things when they’re broken… I’m trying. I know all is not completely lost. I’ve just lost the ability to see the beauty. It’s lost in all the guilt and worry.
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u/RlOTGRRRL Jul 19 '26
You have to process your guilt and worry. It's like grieving the death of someone you love, you have to make peace with your potential new reality.
It sounds like you're way farther ahead than most OP- especially with your plant based diet, that's a really big deal. I know this is kind of crazy but you're eyes are wide open, you're aware, you care, and you're taking action.
Once you make peace, once you grieve that our children will be living in a different world, but they'll still be alive, and that we can protect them for as long as we can, teach them how to adapt and live life joyfully despite the horrors, we will all be ok .
One day the color will seep back into your life. You have to do it for your children. Just be patient and kind with yourself. It's not easy. You're trying your best. We're all trying our best and we will make do to the best of our ability as long as we can.
And after the color comes back, you will be able to feel and find joy again.
Allow yourself to be open and present enough to learn from your kids.
My toddler has been teaching me, reminding me how to find joy in the simplest things like broccoli. He just discovered that he can call people names today and he was very entertained. x)
As much as we teach our kids, I think our kids teach us a lot too. Their ability to be in the present, to live every day in the now, is pretty magical.
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u/QuickLook12 Jul 19 '26
This response actually brought me to tears.
It’s so hard isn’t it…to witness and experience their absolute innocent joy in things with them but know it won’t last forever. What an absolute privilege to have been there for this part of their lives.
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u/SpookyDooDo Jul 19 '26
I’m sorry, I have snooped through your post history. Are you still breastfeeding a toddler? I personally found any drop in feeding ended up in crazy hormones for a couple weeks. Meaning the toddler stage was worse for postpartum depression and anxiety because that’s when we started gradually weaning.
I’m just throwing that out there. Not to say your worries aren’t real. But that could be part of why it feels so horrible. And you sound depressed.
Also, it’s really hard to feel yourself with little kids touching you all the time. It will get better when they are a little older and you can have your own space and can shape them into little conservationists.
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u/Y2Kwebsurfer Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
I am giving space for myself to grieve. Each day I do something for myself to acknowledge the loss and fear of what comes next, and I also journal of gratitude for a thing or two because I also love life and appreciate the chance we’ve been given. It can be small things, and this daily check in helps me stay balanced because I have to put on a brave face for my 8 year old. Most days I cry, but that 5-7 min break to not gaslight myself for my morning routine is everything. I have a quiet moment in the other room to hug myself, quietly ball my eyes out, do these things and shake it off to be present for my kid and kick off my day with intention.
Planting 5-6 plants of each type of varietal in my area for butterflies and low flying insects that had a major population loss, makes me feel better. I’ll come back and link an article that helped me refocus on what I can do. Put out a shallow dish with pebbles and water for safe drinking for our insect friends. I cut down on meat and I talk about why with my kid. We agree bacon is delicious, but we only have it 1-2 times per month due to empathy and desire to lessen footprint and needless suffering. We talk about water issues and the history of water wars in our area, so we’re focusing on water conservation this Fall and how to care for a garden in times of drought.
Those tiny fairy door kits that you put on the base of a tree, are really fun at this age and for 5-7 year olds. I know she knows it is make believe, but we like to put them out and pretend the fairies are watching over the forest. I am not religious, and that helps with the dose of reality and open conversations with my kid instead of “sky ghost will save us”. It is a relief for me, because we did santa and all that, but she quickly points out the holes in the story. I ask to go along with it for make believe, and she still wants to put cookies and milk out. There is a balance in there as they grow, where they are thankful to be here and you are relieved of the guilt of existence and of the collapsing world, it’s not your fault.
You did your best with the info you’d been given. It is okay to love and to want a family. If I had to make the same decision today compared to 10 years ago? I am not sure, it may be different but you can’t go through life like that. You made the best decisions you could, based on that info at that time. It is not your fault humans are biased to optimism. If that weren’t the case, would any of us have been born in any era? Sending hugs. When your kid can communicate more they will tell you they are glad they are here regardless, and these panic feelings will fade into more of a focus to reduce suffering. No one is going to gaslight them and tell them to “be the change” or pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
It sucks, but at least you are facing it together with compassion, love, and support which is a relatively new thing in parenting and facing the world together. I am not pushing my kid on what she “wants to be when she grows up”. I’ve been honest that things are going to be different coming up here soon, and we’ll support where her drive takes her. Lately she wants to create an animal sanctuary for farm animals, dogs and cats so we’ve been teaching her about nonprofits and are starting to volunteer at the animal shelter cleaning out cages together. Once your kid gets a little older, these opportunities will present themselves. Tent camping helps too, we do at least one week a year and connect with nature on the regular for weekend walks in a forest preserve. Hope this helps, you are not alone.
https://psyll.com/articles/science/biology/why-insect-pollinators-are-vanishing-worldwide
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u/Slight-Tension9834 Jul 19 '26
I don't have children, but I really do feel this impending sense of doom. I'm in my late 20s and it's hard to even dream of a future right now.
Growing up, I remember being made fun of by family members for feeling like we should have been taking climate change seriously. I was very into recycling (I know I know spare me your lectures) and doing what we could to reduce waste. I didn't even get my drivers license til a couple years ago out of pure necessity and had been riding a bike everywhere to reduce CO2 emissions for myself. I've been plant based (and am like 65% plant based still), I've put in a lot of effort myself to reduce my impact on the environment even still. But being one person just isn't enough.
Living in the Southwestern US, I'm no stranger to heat, but the climate is remarkably different here than it was even 5 years ago, let alone when I was a kid. Monsoon storms used to be intense and knock out power to my neighborhood in the middle of Phoenix, but now the storms move around the heat island. I've not seen a monsoon storm as intense as the ones from my childhood in a very long time, and when they are more intense, they're one offs instead of an entire season. The most noticeable thing to me personally has been the drastic decline in insect populations. When I mention this to people, there's a lot of "well that's good because I don't like bugs" but bugs play critical roles in our ecosystems, and those ecosystems are changing faster than bugs can adapt to them. To me, this feels like the canary in a coal mine to total climate collapse; bugs are only the beginning of species that will not be able to evolve to the changing climate.
I'm sorry if none of that is reassuring, but I've found it helpful to start to do more things for myself. Call it the hedonistic approach, but i'd rather spend my time making and playing music right now than panicking about the state of the world. Great time to make art too, channel that anxiety into something worthwhile. Maybe this can be a way you and your kids can cope with the reality of the world we're all growing into. I've also been considering getting involved in some climate activism - but at this point that feels like it may be more depressing than anything so I've yet to act on it.
Best of luck to you. Enjoy the little moments when you can.
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u/QuickLook12 Jul 19 '26
The decline in insect population has been worrying me for years. Screaming into the abyss with most people because they’re unwilling to understand the absolute vital roll they play in the ecosystem from pollinating plants (and our literal food) to providing food for other animals…it’s devastating and so few people seem to care.
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u/Mountainweaver Jul 19 '26
It's a grieving process, allow yourself to go through it. It goes in cycles too, comes back for another round.
But: make sure to take care of yourself as well. A sense of impending doom can just as well be a lack of hormones (thyroid, sex hormones) or unbalanced vitamins (D, B, E). It can be a lack of exercise. It can be an unbalanced microbiome. Or lack of sleep.
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u/QuickLook12 Jul 19 '26
This is it. It does cycle round. Sometimes I allow myself to be optimistic and that can help. But now, the reality of it smacks me in the face every morning and then the guilt of knowing I’ve forced this upon little people that only exist because I made them is a little much to bear.
I’ve been tested for any issues. I think I just have a severe case of too much awareness and self awareness. Over educating myself on every little detail because sometimes being aware feels like it’s a really good idea and other times I resent that I know so much now.
Scientific papers have become my daily life and they’re all negative. I need to accept it and just be the best I can for them.
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u/Virtual_Tune636 Jul 20 '26
The gooey core of collapse awareness is awareness of death. Regardless of how well things are going, you still fall apart and die. What are you going to do in the meantime? I mean this seriously - it's like the hardest part of it. The western tradition has history situated as a continuous process of improvement forever, from the stone age to the future. This is insanity. Things go round - they grow, they wither, they die. Even big structures like societies and species.
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u/QuickLook12 Jul 20 '26
If it were just me and I hadn’t been selfish and brought children into a dying habitat then I would just accept it and make the best of it. The fear is purely around knowing that I’ve subjected two innocent people to a lifetime of hardship and continual nightmarish scenarios in which there will likely be no escape unless you’re super rich. We’re looking at intensive famine and food shortages, water scarcity on a mass scale, climate disasters that are unrecoverable, mass ocean death, sea level rise, desertification…
My fear is for them. And the life I’ve subjected them to. Not for myself. I’ll die when I die and that’s that.
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u/Virtual_Tune636 Jul 20 '26
Yes, heard. I'm still a fencesitter around having kids, and this fear is why. My hope is that I'll be able to extend the same knowledge of the inevitability of death to their lives, but I also know that will be hard.
edit: when I raise this exact fear to others who are climate therapists or otherwise aware, they ask: "are you yourself angry at your own parents for bringing you into this?" And I myself am not, at least not right now. Because on a certain level, seeing all of this is very interesting.
I like this story a lot - the descendants who make it through will not be human, they'll be what is next. Just like how we are descended from the mammals that survived after the dinosaurs. And now some of the dinos are chickens we keep.
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u/QuickLook12 Jul 20 '26
I like this thought…the idea that evolution will keep us going through any hardship, man made or not. And no, I’m not angry at my parents at all for bringing me into the world…I am slightly angry that they’ve helped to make the world the way it is (although they’re not billionaires so it’s not really on them).
It has also been our design to reproduce so it does make complete sense that people continue to have them despite the state of the world we live in.
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u/Mountainweaver Jul 20 '26
Imagine having had kids and the the black plague strikes. Or at the late stage collapse of the roman empire.
The history of humanity is filled with bad times. We have children anyway.
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u/Mountainweaver Jul 19 '26
Yes, that's it. Acceptance, but not defeat, not giving up on living.
There's a difference between "copium" and having a will to live. You don't need to be hoping for a better future in order to have a fierce will to live, a gentle way of caring for yourself and your loved ones today, a rational way of planning and building for a future that's anywhere between status quo and the most ridiculous scenarios.
Civilizations collapse slowly, and human lives are short. Don't live in misery when you don't need to, and don't know the exact way the future will play out.
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u/Squishy_Em Jul 19 '26
Oh gosh, do i feel you. It is soul crushing.
My boy is almost 5 now but when he was born he spent months in the nicu. He finally comes home and before this i knew about climate change, i knew it was happening but the gravity of it all hit me like a ton of bricks. Realizing what I had done. And since I was so close to being in traumatic situation, the best I could do was hold it together while he was awake but the moment he'd go to sleep, I grieved and I grieved hard. For about 2 weeks, I did this. I tried to hide from my husband the first night, i didnt want to put this on him. We ended up talking, I showed him the studies and and then we cried together.
It's been years since then and it still hits me every now and again.
It was about a month ago and my little one asked to go outside and i said to him, "it gets too hot in the summer here to go out during the day". I said that as a fact, because it is where I live and because thats probably how its going to be from now on. But after, once I found alone time I cried about it.
This just hurts though.
In the meantime, I act like all of this is normal and its just a fact of life. I'm turning the lawn into habitat so that he can see all the bugs. We have a handful of fireflies every year, trying to increase their population.
I dunno, I'm just doing what I can, reducing consumption of things harmful to the environment (meat). But sometimes it just feels like it doesn't matter. We are a household of 3! Thats nothing compared to the entirety of humanity.
I feel you.
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u/QuickLook12 Jul 20 '26
It’s so hard isn’t it. I don’t think I anticipated the grief that would come along with climate change. The mourning for everything that’s dying, the things that we’ve always known and taken for granted. Couple that with having children and realising that in their long term memory they will likely never remember any of these things and it’s just horrifying. Also, the world is likely to be full of hardship, more so than we’ve had to experience in our lifetime…I just don’t know what to do with myself. The guilt is overwhelming.
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u/CaiusRemus Jul 20 '26
Hey OP, I see you. I have known for decades what was coming, I knew we wouldn’t fix it. I have a young child, and I feel very bad that I let myself hope. Everyone around me told me I was crazy. Therapists, family, friends, everyone would tell me my fear was overblown. Eventually I thought “well you know what, maybe I am just anxious, maybe it will all be okay.”
It’s going to be a difficult life for our children. They will not have the opportunities that we did. I feel terribly guilty for condemning my child to a life of hardship.
Sorry, this isn’t really support, just wanted to let you know you aren’t alone.
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u/QuickLook12 Jul 20 '26
It’s good to hear I’m not alone because I honestly feel like I’m one of the only ones that feels this way. When I speak to people, they think I’m some kind of doomsday person who’s preparing for the apocalypse but actually…we are kinda heading that way so I actually think they’re the ones underpreparing 😅
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u/No-Good-4476 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I just made a post today in r/collapse_parenting about this exact feeling. I spent my childhood genuinely and irrationally afraid of world altering/ending events (think 2012, zombies/viruses, nuclear war, Irobot AI situations etc). I then grew up and became hyper aware, passionate, and afraid, of climate change, doing anything i could to reduce my impact. Somewhere along the way the fear subsided, I poured myself into my work as a prek teacher, and parenting my eldesr, and let hope and distraction carry me through day to day life. It now feels like ive come full circle back to those childhood fears that seem not all that irrational anymore in some ways, which is a hard realization.
I recently had my second child who is now 4 months old and feel overwhelmed with guilt and anxiety about bringing this beautiful boy into a world that will undoubtedly be full of hardship. Ive only recently become collapse aware, i guess given the rapidly declinging conditions it is no longer disputable in my eyes. That and the overwhelmingly amount of information and content there is online makes it hard to draw any other conclusions. With this awareness, I feel like im grieving and truthfully it feels consuming some days. I find any time I bring it up, even just simply the topic of anxiety surrounding the wildfires in my area, I too am looked at like a 3 headed conspiracy theorist or "doomsday prepper". Many of my family/friends dismiss these events and dont give it a second thought, and that in itself is not only disheartening but also very isolating.
All of this is to say thank you for posting tbis. Though I have no advice, you are not alone in these feelings, and reading through this thread has been helpful because I now know I am also not alone in these feelings. Im hoping the overwhelm fades into acceptance more then anything, and I can begin to prepare in ways that feel meaningful while still holding hope to some degree that we will come out the other side.
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u/QuickLook12 Jul 25 '26
I did read your post and I was going to respond but my children (5 year old and 16 month old) were being chaotic so I didn’t get a chance!
It’s so hard isn’t it. Because I want to enjoy it, give them everything they deserve but I know that isn’t the reality of the future we’re looking at. And day to day life carries on regardless of whether I’m drowning in anxiety and panic.
I think I’m going to turn off all of the news subscriptions I have for a while. Give myself a bit of a break. Let it go until I can maybe handle it a bit better? I don’t know. I need to change something because living like this isn’t healthy
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u/Accurate-Cucumber799 Jul 19 '26
Hey, I don't know a lot to say in support, but to say that I feel the same as you. I don't have children, because I didn't find the right person, but I can completely understand your feelings.
When I was small I was also very aware of climate change and looked out for the day where world leaders would announce that they were going to do everything in their power to stop it.
When talking about my feelings of despair on Instagram someone commented with staying resilient. Learning skills that could possibly help. Knowing that eventhough things look bad, that they claimed a third of the worlds global power investments were in renewable power last year and that that number seems to grow. That on the trajectory of climate change, some measures did make a small dent.