What is the word for this feeling?

Doom, having long been expected, has been averted, and you’re left with the question of “Now what?”, since you kinda planned on dying and didn’t have a backup. It hit me when the Soviet Union went down, as I had been expecting a global thermonuclear war, and when I got a diagnosis whose three year survival rate is 50% and four months later was told that if I was compliant I’d be more or less okay. Somebody, probably the Germans or a mad Classicist, has a word for this. What is it?

Anticlimax? (Look at the “real world” examples at the bottom.)

Don’t know a word for it, but you might be interested in a thread from a few years ago started by a cancer survivor who expressed similar emotions about her status.

Isn’t a similar feeling to those of survivors of accidents or incidences where others die? Survivors guilt, maybe?

A phrase for it might be, “Waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

I think survivor guilt is different from the feeling that comes from having not made long-term plans for a long life because you were sure you were not going to live a long life.

Yes, I see that. The survivors were not expecting a life or death situation. The OP is talking about something they are given to believe, and then it doesn’t come to be. So, yes, I understand the difference now.

Does this have anything to do with the new show on CW?

Very helpful in clarifying my thoughts. Thanks.

Discombobulation?

I don’t know if there’s an existing word, but John Koenig may have a word for it.

Some sort of ‘existential crisis’? (Ok, that’s two words)