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Most people have experienced the feeling of impending doom at least once. That deep, gut knowledge that something bad is about to happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
Impending doom is more than feeling like something bad might happen; it’s a belief that it will happen. Some researchers call it a minor delusion. When we feel impending doom, we truly believe, if only for a moment, that something bad is about to happen, even if there is no obvious danger around.
When felt chronically, impending doom can be exhausting. It goes hand in hand with anxiety, burnout, insomnia, and depression. When felt in excess, a sense of impending doom can be a sign of a mental health disorder.
Treating the feeling of impending doom requires treating the underlying disorder. This article covers what impending doom feels like, the causes of the feeling, and how to get rid of the dread once and for all.
Impending Doom Meaning
Anxiety, dread, and a sense of foreboding are all close synonyms of a sense of impending doom, but they don’t quite capture the severity that doom encapsulates.
A feeling of impending doom is the whisper in the back of your mind that something is about to go catastrophically wrong and that there is no stopping the bad thing from happening. It can be incapacitating and debilitating.
Some symptoms of impending doom include:
- A sense of urgency, like your window to fix whatever is wrong is rapidly shrinking,
- Feeling restless and unable to relax. Even common leisure activities like TV or reading a book aren’t able to provide an escape.
- The feeling that you need medical assistance right away.
- Extreme anxiety, sometimes culminating in a panic attack.
- Feeling like something bad is about to happen
- Thinking that you can predict the future, a premonition of something bad about to happen.
- Depersonalization or derealization
- Heart palpitations and chest pain
- Hot flashes, feeling sweaty
- Feeling short of breath or shaky
Impending doom feels a lot like anxiety and can lead to panic attacks.
Why Do I Have a Feeling of Impending Doom?
Although there are cases in which a feeling of impending doom is an intuitive feeling and ends up being somewhat right, these cases are not the norm. Usually, they’re in the context of a medical disorder. For example, some people who have seizures are able to sense a seizure coming on and may feel a sense of impending doom when they do.
More often than not, a feeling of impending doom is a symptom of a deeper mental health disorder, including:
- Anxiety: Could be specific or general. For example, a sense of impending doom as you’re walking to school when you have social anxiety. Or a general sense that something is very, very wrong, but you’re unable to put your finger on what.
- PTSD: Trauma can make people hypervigilant and paranoid, both common symptoms of impending doom. It can feel like something life-threatening is going to happen whenever you leave the house.
- Stress: It can feel like something is going to go wrong the second you take your eyes off the goal. Like the sense that you’ll get fired the second you stop working hard at work or like your children will get hurt if you take your eyes off them.
- Panic Attacks: Panic attacks can make you feel like you’re dying or going mad, even though you can’t die from a panic attack. The feeling of impending doom can happen right before a panic attack, as the anxiety is rising.
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: You might know it’s illogical, but you can’t shake the feeling of impending doom when you don’t double-check that the door is locked before you leave. You just know that someone will break in or your dog will get out. That feeling of doom is closely connected to the obsessions and compulsions associated with OCD.
Certain medical conditions might involve a sense of impending doom before an episode. You might feel an episode coming on, and the doom that comes with it. This can include disorders such as:
- Seizure disorders
- Anaphhylaxis
- Exposure to poisons
- Heart attacks
In these cases, the sense of impending doom is your body’s attempt to warn you that something bad is coming.
Not everyone with these disorders will be able to sense an episode coming on or have that feeling of impending doom that comes with it.
How to Get Rid of Feelings of Impending Doom
If you have a sense of impending doom along with medical symptoms like seizures or allergic reactions, talk to your doctor as soon as possible. There might be a lurking medical disease that your body is warning you of.
If your sense of impending doom is caused by a mental health issue, then talking to a therapist is a good first step, especially if the feeling is chronic or debilitating. There are medications and therapies that can help lower the intensity while you work with a therapist on the cause.
Other ways to get rid of feelings of impending doom involve coping mechanisms and lifestyle changes. This can include:
- Get daily exercise
- Work on your sleep hygiene and get quality sleep
- Practice breathing exercises or progressive muscle relaxation when you’re stressed
- Reduce sources of stress in your life
- Talk to a friend about what’s been bothering you
- Make a list of your triggers. What makes your sense of impending doom worse? How can you prepare for those situations in the future?
Check out these anxiety coping mechanisms for more thoughtful techniques.
A feeling of impending doom rarely stands on its own. It’s more often part of a larger web of mental health or physical health issues. If you chronically feel a sense of impending doom, your body is trying to tell you something. Listen to it by talking with a doctor or a therapist near you today.
