Climate Anxiety is naturally overwhelming, increasingly for us all, but it is through healing this anxiety that we may do our greatest work to heal the planet.
Many of us, myself included, have been active and concerned environmentalists for decades. As someone raised in indigenous and environmentally-conscious communities, I personally resonate with a lifetime of awareness of environmental and climate issues, but in spite of years of knowing, nothing could have exactly prepared me for the emotional pitfall while reading the book “From an Ecological Consciousness” by Edward O’Sullevin as a young adult. –A fairly dry, academic and heady read, but one that from the jump left me absolutely emotionally devastated.
In it, O’Sullevin describes an ecological global breakdown of monumental proportions– forests gone, habitats destroyed, a churning so monstrous we begun to feel the gravity of a biome that will never return, the fleeting nature of life, and our monumental human follies.
Humanity’s impact on the world’s ecosystems and climate has been extremely disturbing, to say the least. And this book was written decades ago– we as a species have known for decades our way of life is too destructive to sustain, yet we carry on. Many of us who think deeply about these systems at scale trace our roots to ecological destruction, most definitely at the Industrial Revolution, and likely the Agricultural Revolution before it. Our willingness and propensity over time to “master” nature has wholly separated us from it, now to our detriment.
And I tell you this to keep you up at night, help you reach for that emotionally-soothing sugar snack when your weight loss plan is failing, and to make sure you know you’re a very bad, bad human who should bed rot into a depression because we all know you can’t actually afford to buy those biodegradable sponges this week, right?
Right.
Sarcasm emphasized, as an ecopsychologist, it’s my job to get people to LISTEN and act with intention, not to shut down, and climate collapse and ecological destruction is a “shutting down” kind of topic for many. I think a majority of humans are scared, aware, or at least feeling this doom on a visceral, subliminal level. It’s impossible for organisms not to feel at some point when they are in peril.
So, at age 19, a seasoned “born activist”, I had my first brush will real climate anxiety (thanks Ed) one that would lead me to feel very betrayed by adults who had taught us to care (cue Fern Gully and Captain Planet TV shows and the three Rs chant in school) but had not actually empowered us or a world to DO anything about it at the life-saving scale this change warranted.
Green washing, slow, optional UN SDG goals, and words, thoughts, and prayers, were not, and are not going to cut it. We are logically failing this test of time. And from existential nuclear threats, to climate, to asteroids, we collectively don’t seem to be getting the full memo.
And meanwhile, you and I presumably cannot sleep. We feel alien in our knowledge that the climate-collapsing systems of our world churn on like the brooms in Fantasia’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, that people around us seem to carry on and not care like it’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We wish UFOs or the Christ or a masked vigilante might come down here and save us. And the scariest part is to consider that no one is coming, and we, in fact, must act now to save ourselves.
And ultimately, the systems that churn on which are harmful are primarily controlled and stewarded by a wealthy few. We generally don’t feel in control of this snowball, and I wonder some days if they do or do not themselves.
Ecological and climate anxiety will only increase as time goes on. When I completed my grad program years ago, it was often repeated in ecopsychology classrooms that our goal was to get people to be able to talk about this anxiety, to not continue to dismiss it as was done in therapists’ offices in the past, attributing all trauma to “whatever happened in your childhood” and never considering ecosystems lost.
Today, I think this is an antiquated view that I’m sure is taught less in modern ecopsychology classrooms– we know a majority of us can see with our own eyes, or already know someone who has been evacuated as a climate refugee. The anxiety has been normalized, and we have more work to do developing what to do with it (and deprogramming a minority of holdout climate deniers) than acknowledging its existence.
In my courses and programs, I often teach a “dual principle” of “transmuting” climate anxiety into safety and action. On the one hand, this anxiety is normal. If you see something that’s a danger to you, you are typically driven to fight or run (or freeze and fawn); all of these responses are meant to protect your life. If you are feeling climate and environmental anxiety, it’s because you are evolved as an organism to survive, and that capacity you have to understand scaled needs is the extent to which you will feel that awareness of life’s fragility, and the gravity of the moment we are now in during the Earth’s 6th Mass Extinction event.
Feeling stress from a psychological perspective can be a productive thing– it is, in fact, the only route to productivity. In Psych 101 classes we call this “eustress” or healthy happy stress (for example, this article is currently being written because of the eustress I feel over having placeholder AI written articles that I thought would only be up for a couple of days, and I’m now motivated to create out of a sense of light shame and fear of social exile should someone notice).
Thus, the lesson of embracing eustress is that the pain we feel from stress is meant to MOVE us, not freeze us, ideally. So that is the first part in digesting climate stress. Where will you get to work? How will you act on this sacred pressure to get moving and solve problems that threaten so much life?
And the second one, the Buddhisty one, is how will you know peace? After every stressful sprint, you need a treat, a retreat, or a reprieve, even from eustress (which in a utopia would be the only stress we ever feel). When the world feels too big, too broken, or too chaotic, what do you do to feel small in a healthy way, to let go, and enjoy life in the moment?
These are the two energies I most recommend in balance when beginning your journey into healing and transmuting inevitable climate anxiety.