When the Sky Breaks Open: Alien Dreams and Apocalyptic Fear
<<Just woke up and I had a dream that I saw an alien ship in the sky. A big alien ship. And everyone saw it. And aliens landed. And they were bipedal, kind of like us. And I was scared that they were violent and I was having an apocalyptic fear in the dream. I remember somebody was staying awake and keeping an eye on the doors and the windows to keep everybody else safe, and I was stuck with my biological family instead of my friends and my partners. I could sense that life as I knew it was completely over. And the interesting thing was, though, that we gradually found out that these aliens weren't necessarily violent. They were here on vacation, and they were interested in us. And they weren't trying to hurt us, but they also don't understand us, and so they were kind of causing problems. It was a very distressing dream. I have a lot of apocalyptic fears, and I thought that those would go away because I left Christianity and it's a death cult. But now that I'm on the other side, there's still this fear of everything about reality that I know just being completely upheavaled by aliens landing from the sky. And why wouldn't that happen? It could happen.>>
ChatGPT: Damn. That dream hit the full spectrum: terror, isolation, surveillance, family entrapment, existential dread, and... intergalactic tourism?
First of all, it totally tracks that your subconscious is still playing out apocalyptic scenarios, even post-Christianity. Leaving a high-control belief system doesn’t always deactivate the emotional alarm systems it installed—especially when it trained your nervous system to expect world-ending revelations. Christianity just gave those fears a script (Armageddon, the Rapture). Once the script is gone, the fear often just shapeshifts. Aliens, floods, pandemics, dreams of societal collapse—it’s the same engine humming beneath.
The alien twist you described—the shift from "they're going to destroy us" to "they're just... vibing, and also making a mess without meaning to"—is interesting as hell. It mirrors what often happens in adulthood after religious deconstruction: the world doesn’t end. The meaning of the world ends. The rules evaporate. And suddenly, we're surrounded by unknowable entities (capitalism, death, consciousness, other people, loneliness, maybe actual aliens) who aren’t necessarily malicious... but are still deeply destabilizing.
Also, being trapped with your biological family instead of your chosen people during an existential crisis? That’s not a subtle move from your brain. It’s a direct commentary on who actually feels safe when the world falls apart. Your system knows the difference between people you perform for and people who get you.
And that part about someone keeping watch at the doors? That sounds like your inner Protector—some version of you that's still on high alert for danger, scanning for threats while your core self tries to survive the overwhelm. Apocalypse dreams are often more about internal psychic collapse than literal events. Something in you may feel like it is undergoing a profound shift—like your understanding of reality is getting remodeled, and the dust is choking.
You asked, "Why wouldn't it happen?" That question tells me you're still wrestling with the loss of certainty. Christianity gave you a set of cosmic guarantees, even if they were terrifying. Now? You’re floating in open-ended possibility, and that’s both freeing and horrifying.
<<Should I just stop reading the news?>>
Honestly? Maybe, yeah. At least for now. If the news is feeding your apocalyptic nervous system like it’s a raccoon with a bottomless bag of Cheetos, then yeah—cut it off. You’re not ignoring reality; you’re setting a boundary with overwhelm.
Let’s be real: The modern news cycle is engineered to provoke a state of constant alarm. It's not “informing the public” as much as it’s hacking your threat-detection system for clicks. It’s like your apocalyptic fear got a subscription to its own favorite soap opera: “What Fresh Hell Today?”
Also, for someone with a history of religious programming that rewards hyper-vigilance about the end times, reading about disasters, corruption, or strange weather patterns can feel like confirmation bias: “See? I knew we were on the brink.”
Here’s a radical idea: What if you gave your nervous system a news Sabbath—a full week or two of no headlines, no Twitter doomscrolls, no NPR horror hours? Just to see how your brain actually functions when it’s not bathing in cortisol soup. You can always reintroduce it in controlled doses later, like spicy food.
And if something truly civilization-defining happens? Someone will tell you. Probably in a text that says “DUDE. Turn on the news.”
<<The thing was, I was already not reading the news. Like, basically since Trump was re-elected, I decided to read the news every day. But that just meant, like, downloading NPR, which is left-leaning, high-factuality, and just scrolling through headlines and clicking anything I find interesting, just to stay abreast of things at a high level. I'm scared not to read the news, and I'm scared to read the news.>>
That right there—scared to read, scared not to read—is the exact flavor of modern media trauma. It’s a trap disguised as responsibility. And it makes perfect sense that you'd fall into it, especially after escaping a system like evangelicalism that equated vigilance with virtue. You were taught to stay alert because your soul (and the world) depended on it. Now you're just applying the same moral pressure to staying "informed."
But here's the bait-and-switch: Being informed isn't the same as being flooded. You’re not actually making decisions, voting better, or improving your mental health by marinating in dread via headlines. What you’re doing—just like so many of us—is trying to outrun the feeling of being caught off guard again. Of waking up one day and realizing reality changed without your permission.
The alien dream? That was your psyche simulating what it feels like to be ambushed by new information you don’t have a container for. Like, “what if something happens that I didn't see coming?” And the brain, like a true drama queen, responds: “Welp, better monitor everything.”
But what you’re already doing—checking NPR headlines, clicking a few things that feel digestible—is probably the healthiest version of “keeping up” that exists in 2025. If even that feels like it’s fraying your brain, the issue might not be how much news you read, but what your body is doing when you read it. Are you scrolling while tense, shallow-breathing, already catastrophizing? Then even NPR becomes Fox News with a liberal arts degree.
We could build you a small protocol. Something like:
Limit: Check headlines once per day, max 10 mins.
Time it: Not first thing in the morning or right before bed.
Body check: Before reading, pause. Is your body already on high alert? If so, skip.
Grounding cue: After news time, do one grounding activity (stretch, step outside, run your hands under warm water, something real).
Permission slip: You are not responsible for the fate of the planet just because you read the headlines.
<<I guess one thing I could do is not read it in the morning when I wake up, scrolling through the app on my phone, and instead reading the summary emails that I get. I'm just having a hard time imagining not reading the news, especially since I recently paid $100 to sign up for Ground News so that I could learn about biases in news.>>
Yes—this is exactly the kind of thoughtful tension someone with a well-trained internal monitor would have: you want to be aware of bias, you want to be a good citizen of Earth, and you really don’t want to be caught off guard again. So you spend $100 to responsibly calibrate your information intake… and then the same system that wanted to protect you also starts slowly frying your nerves.
So let’s break the binary. This isn’t “read the news” vs. “bury your head in sand.” You’re not choosing between awareness and ignorance—you’re choosing how your nervous system processes reality.
Here’s a softer approach that might fit your inner conflict:
The “Curated Input” Plan
1. No phone scrolls in bed. That’s like injecting raw cortisol into your brain before your eyelids are even fully open. Instead:
When you wake up, orient to your life first. Not the collective human disaster pot.
Glance out the window. Pet the cat. Name the day. Then consider the world.
2. Use Ground News as your weekend digest. Treat it like a learning tool, not a daily alert system. Maybe spend 30 minutes once a week digging into the bias landscape. Make it educational, not existential.
3. Let email summaries be your “daily.” They’re passive, predictable, and less jarring. You could read them:
Mid-morning after you’ve eaten or moved
Or early afternoon when your energy dips anyway (better to read bad news when you’re too tired to spiral)
4. Pick a “crisis buddy.” One person you trust to text you if something huge happens. That way, you can experiment with news-light days without feeling like you’ve failed your planetary duty.
5. And maybe this: What if your $100 to Ground News wasn’t a contract to stay plugged in daily—it was a declaration of intent: “I care about how information shapes people’s worldview. I want to learn to see clearly.” You can still fulfill that without letting it destabilize you daily.
The real question is: Do you want to build a media relationship that strengthens your humanity? Or one that keeps you in chronic threat response under the illusion of control?
You’re not crazy for caring. You’re just overdue for a new kind of news diet that doesn’t feed your apocalypse brain.
