I can hardly look at the sky (at night) without getting a panic attack, for that exact reason: the enormity of it all. It scares me to death thinking about the time and the distances. And I never met people who have that too.
I alt-F4'd Space Engine in panic when I told it to zoom to a black hole and I saw this circle of emptyness rapidly opening in my screen and distorting the infinity of stars in the background. I swear I found a dozen other people on forums mentioning their phobia of black holes caused by Space Engine.
Space is scary. Everything outside Earth's atmosphere is by definition alien and unnatural. Yet so fascinating.
1: https://store.steampowered.com/app/773370/Exo_One/ (it's actually pretty good)
(I was today years old that that's a Dr. Strange quote, sigh. I thought it was more profound, lovecraftian or something).
Also anytime there’s an article about the sheer size of the universe, trying to get you to understand the enormity, I feel my grip on reality start to lessen and have to pull myself back and stop thinking about it.
I’ve noticed the moon doesn’t cause similar anxiety, maybe because it’s so close and tangible compared to everything else?
I’ve never met a fellow astrophobe, either. Hang in there.
At least know that in that vast universe you're not alone in your fears!
Once we become less rocks-banging-on-rocks primitive, the first order of business will be to get the hell out of the galaxy.
(Unless you mean to move outside the Solar system. I've seen plenty people confuse the two.)
Just moving out of the solar system would be pointless, except to obtain a ready supply of cold. We may expect cold to remain essential to anybody still bound by laws of thermodynamics.
The whole "Kardashev" business, anyway, comes from an extremely primitive outlook. Once a culture gets a handle on mass/energy conversion, relying on stars to provide process energy gets left behind, and other resource limits become important instead. Safety from nearby magnetar quakes and merging black holes, for example.