Climate Anxiety: What to Do When You Feel At A Loss

Another ‘Earth Day’ passed recently, and with it, the usual influx of targeted emails and articles about reducing single use plastic, recycling more, switching off unused lights, and generally being more sustainable. Not a bad message in theory. The problem is that for me, the emails that come with events like Earth Day, rather than prompting motivation and hope for the difference I can make, usually instead result in a blend of anxious hopelessness. Turns out, I’m someone who suffers from ‘Climate Anxiety’.

What is Climate Anxiety, and who suffers from it?

Climate anxiety, also called ‘Eco-anxiety’, is a term that has been gaining traction over the last few years, in the media, academic, and psychology circles. It refers to a specific blend of emotions that arise when considering the state of our planet and the future we are facing, staring down the barrel of climate change. Those who suffer from climate anxiety usually report feelings of anxiety, sadness, anger, powerlessness, helplessness and guilt, coupled with a sense of betrayal by governments for what is often perceived as a failure to act more appropriately or quickly. These feelings are often prompted by stories in the news (such as the release of the IPCC’s latest report on climate change earlier this year), the release of relevant films (such as Netflix’s ‘Don’t Look Up’), and severe weather events which serve as a reminder of our changing climate. These feelings can also be experienced in conjunction with worry thoughts about the future that can intrude at any time.

Research has shown that younger generations tend to feel more climate anxiety than older generations (though older people certainly can feel it as well), and it’s not an uncommon experience. A particularly high-powered 2021 study published in the Lancet surveyed 10 000 young people aged 16 to 25 years old across the world, finding that of those 10 000, 59% were ‘very or extremely worried’, and 84% were at least ‘moderately worried’, about climate change. On top of this, 45% of those surveyed said that their feelings about climate change negatively impacted their life and functioning on a daily basis. Remember, this was in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, where you could be forgiven for thinking that many of these young people might have had more pressing concerns. Another 2018 survey, this time surveying exclusively Australian women, found that just over one in five (22%) of women aged 30-39 were so worried about climate change they were even reconsidering having children (this figure was even higher for women aged under 30).

Am I just worrying too much?

Unlike other forms of anxiety, which are often characterised by a degree of irrationality (either in what you’re afraid of, its likelihood, or the severity of the feared outcome; read more here, here and here), climate anxiety is considered to be largely rational. A very useful skill found in several types of cognitive therapy is the ability to check your worries against objective facts or reality, as much of the time they will prove to be out of proportion and you can see your brain is worrying unnecessarily. However, when applying worries about a changing climate to the most recent scientific data on climate change, unfortunately for many of us our thoughts seem to line up pretty neatly with the facts (unless your worries look more like a clip from The Day After Tomorrow, in which case you might be engaging in some catastrophising!). As I say to my clients; if you’ve checked the facts, and your worries line up with reality, then your brain isn’t overreacting. You have a genuine problem to solve.

But how do I solve this problem? I’m just one person!

When we are anxious about a genuine problem, the best way to reduce the anxiety is to take steps to solve said problem. However, a core part of climate anxiety is a sense of powerlessness. This often looks like the thought “but I’m just one person! I’m not in national policy, government, or the CEO of a giant corporation! What possible difference can I make to improve things?” Thinking this way can lead us to feel lost, isolated, and that any gesture is pointless and futile. To this I respond with a quote that I heard many years ago by Margaret Mead, an anthropologist in the 1960s remembered for consistently challenging America’s restrictive culture and gender expectations:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Each of us has the power to change how we live our day-to-day life. If each of one us reading this commits to changing even just one or two things in our behaviour, cumulatively that adds up to very significant action. And when we feel we’re taking action, that’s when we feel less helpless, and more capable – in short, less anxious.

So how do I deal with it?

Before you panic and decide you need to sell all your worldly possessions and set up an off the grid tiny house, consider incorporating some of these tips into your day to day:

Don’t ‘doom-scroll’

First off, a really good thing to remember for coping with any type of anxiety is that searching for more information is not necessarily the answer. Often, seeking out more information ends up fuelling our worries, as we go down a veritable rabbit hole of all the different things that could possibly go wrong. If you’re like me, this looks like sitting at the computer screen, blankly and despairingly scrolling through articles with increasingly bleak predictions about the future.

Even if all of these predictions actually come true in a Mad Max-style apocalypse, reading about them until I’m a paralysed ball of helplessness isn’t going to stop that from happening (nor is it doing me any favours psychologically). We need to be able to get out of the chair and face the day, in order to enact any small changes that might contribute to a future in which we want to live. So when you see a new headline crop up, before clicking, think about whether you really need to know this new information to be able to do something helpful about the bigger problem.

Make Tiny Changes to Earth

To quote a line from a favourite song of mine, when confronted with uncertainty about how to go on in the face of bigger limitations, “I’ll make tiny changes to earth”. Don’t try and change your entire lifestyle all at once, as this will feel overwhelming and impossible. Think about the small changes that you can readily incorporate into your daily life, and start there.

There are a thousand articles out there about what little changes might be possible for you to take steps against climate change so I won’t repeat them here. But I encourage you to think about what would be both doable for you, and meaningfully help address the source of your specific worries. For example, if you worry specifically about the health of the oceans, reducing single use plastic in your bathroom might feel like a good thing to do first off. Or, if you worry about coal emissions, switching to a renewable energy provider might seem like a good first step. Whatever it is, start with ONE thing, and build from there if you feel it helps – and remember, small steps add up.

Be a role model to encourage others

You can be a role model for others without needing to do anything drastic or stereotypically ‘activist’. Respectfully and without being pushy, show other people that it’s not expensive or difficult to make changes in their own lives. This might mean keeping your Keep Cup at work so others will see it, talking about the cool new product you found, or picking up a piece of rubbish till you pass a bin on a walk with a friend.

One way I try to do this is to post once a year on social media with a summary of companies that I’ve switched to that are in some way contributing to the solution. People can scroll on past if they’re not interested, but the feeling I had when a friend reached out a few weeks after a post, saying they’d been inspired and wanted to ask if I knew a good washing liquid that didn’t use single use plastic, was sheer and unadulterated happiness (incidentally, I did – try Tirtyl or Zero Co!).

Do things that are generally supportive of mental wellbeing

As a final point, make sure you are incorporating factors that are generally supportive of wellbeing more broadly. This can include:

• Regular exercise and doing pleasant or fun things
• Looking after your sleep
• Switching off from technology occasionally
• Having a solid routine
• Practicing being in the moment/mindfulness
• And sharing your feelings with a trusted person

If you find that you are pre-occupied with your worries more often than not and they’re interfering with your ability to enjoy things, or you’re starting to be worried about other things as well, it might be time to consider seeking professional help.

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You can read more on how to manage climate anxiety here, and find four great podcasts that share tips and hope on managing the worries here. If you’re looking to take action in your own home now, these are some great Aussie companies that might help get you started.