The rise and rise of eco-anxiety 😔

Anxious about climate change? Of course you are. We all are (I hope). Last month, the University of Bath published the results of its 2023 Climate Action Surveyand the results were bleak.

Out of nearly 5,000 respondents, 19% of students and 25% of staff said they were “extremely worried” about climate change, while 36% and 33% stated they were “very worried”.

In 2021, a global survey of how children and young people felt about climate change found similarly high levels of worry. Most of the 10,000 participants reported feelings of sadness, anxiety, anger, powerlessness, helplessness and guilt.

In a different survey that same year, 56% agreed that “humanity is doomed.” Welcome to the world of eco-anxiety. In this week’s newsletter I’m going to explore a bit more about the phenomenon, but perhaps more importantly, offer up ways you can deal with it.

Sidenote: “Ways of dealing with it” is not about finding a way of living in denial. It’s more about helping people deal with their distress, and turn that distress into things they can control.

What is eco-anxiety? 🌲

Eco-anxiety is not considered a disease (yet). But the American Psychology Association (APA) has deemed it noteworthy to give it some serious thought.

The APA describes eco-anxiety as “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change and the associated concern for one's future and that of next generations”.

The APA believes that all this bad news can and is having psychological consequences of varying seriousness in some people.

Now, again, this is another time to point out that for the people that are directly being influenced by climate change - typically those contributing the least to climate change - the effects are very real. This experience has been solastalgiaand is described as the distress caused by environmental change.

According to a report by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) among survivors of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, people who have suffered a natural disaster are 4% more likely to have a mental illness, in addition to suffering from post-traumatic stress or depression.

For the purposes of this newsletter, I’m going to be talking about those of us who have largely not been affected by the impacts of climate change.

What is it doing to us? 😟

The symptoms of eco-anxiety are anxiety, stress, sleep disturbances, and nervousness. In more serious cases, eco-anxiety can cause a sensation of suffocation or even depression.

While that might sound like general anxiety, many therapists argue climate anxiety differs from many forms of anxiety a person might discuss in therapy. Anxiety about crowds, public speaking, or insufficiently washing one’s hands are different because the goal is not to resolve the intrusive feeling and put it away.

“It’s not a keep-calm-and-carry-on approach,” says Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist.  When it comes to climate change, the brain’s desire to resolve anxiety and distress often leads either to denial or fatalism: some people convince themselves that climate change is not something they can fight or change, so they settle into apathy.

Increasing levels of “eco-anxiety” are starting to weigh on public health experts have warned.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Mala Rao and Richard Powell, of Imperial College London’s Department of Primary Care and Public Health, said eco-anxiety “risks exacerbating health and social inequalities between those more or less vulnerable to these psychological impacts”.

So what can we do? 🤔

“We have come to believe we are entitled to be spared the hassle of caring at this detailed level,” psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe writes in a recent book, “Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis.”

She argues that many of us struggle with the idea that for the economy to work, we have to keep consuming. Weintrobe is a founding member of the Climate Psychology Alliance, which is dedicated to the idea that therapy and other disciplines like it, can help us not only to understand the climate crisis but also to do something about it.

While it can feel totally futile in the face of the enormous global forces that shape and influence the climate, the trick is to focus on things you can control.

Some of the best outcomes therapists have found to help clients struggling with eco-anxiety is to help them concentrate their attention on local issues, that they can have a part in. While climate change is a global phenomenon, our ability to mitigate it starts in our own neighbourhood.

Things we learned this week 🤓

• 😴 We now understand why we can only remember fragments of our dreams.
• 👾 Fans of conspiracy theories are also more likely to be ok with a despot for a leader.
• 🧠 Want a better brain? Get to the gym say scientists.
• 🤳 Once again, instagram is terrible for teenage girls.

If you would be so kind 🙏

I’m building out my content on video and podcasts, and I’d love your support.

🤜 Hit that subscribe button over on YouTube.

🤜 Tune into my podcast every week.

I love you all. 💋