In mid July our nations smallest national capital, Montpelier VT, experienced catastrophic flooding. An article in The Atlantic spells out why many people saw Vermont as a “climate haven” ~ a locale that wasn’t going to be affected by climate instability. Unlikely to have hurricanes, coastal flooding, tornados, heat waves, or droughts people have moved to Vermont in record numbers believing it made them safe.
Then the water came.
Climate change is not only real, it’s here. If we take the pragmatic optimism approach, we’ll want to be 100% honest with ourselves about the situation we’re in, feel our feelings, and then decide what to do about it. But our feelings about climate can be overwhelming. The problem has all the hallmarks of something pessimistic: it feels pervasive (affecting everything), permanent (it’s going to continue), and very personal (“we” did this).
So what do we do about it?
Have to stay strong if we’re gana fight.
The American Psychological Association1 defines ecoanxiety as:
‘a chronic fear of environmental doom’, ranging from mild stress to clinical disorders like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, and maladaptive coping strategies such as intimate partner violence and substance misuse
Which is a doozy to read and absorb. But the same position paper makes something else abundantly clear: climate anxiety is not a mental health problem. It is an appropriate response to a overwhelming issue facing all of humanity.
Which means the challenge is not how to “treat” or “fix” climate anxiety, it’s learning to cope when it happens. In fact, climate anxiety might even be necessary to spark action. See, while pleasant emotions broaden our horizons and spark creative and divergent thinking; challenging emotions get us to focus on problems and find solutions. We may need to get uncomfortable to be willing to make the necessary changes to turn this all around.
If we’re going to get out of this we’re going to need smart, capable, resilient people who can handle the stress of looking directly at the eye of the storm and still looking for problems.
Healthy Coping
Most of us know what unhealthy coping looks like. When we’re numbing or detaching from reality or our “coping” is affecting our ability to meet our responsibilities to ourselves and others. Drinking, drug use, sexual addictions - you get the idea.
Climate anxiety isn’t new, and neither is the research on it. There’s a 20 year foundation about effective ecoanxiety coping and the best practices (out of Harvard) go something like this:
Live in alignment with your values. If you’re not sure what that means or what that looks like, start educating yourself about the climate crisis and get real with yourself about what meaningful action looks like for you. Then, live it to the best of your abilities.
No one is going to be perfect in that. Do the best you can with what you’ve got right now.Talk about it. Talking about your feelings of anxiety about the climate crisis does three things:
it gives others the opportunity to support you emotionally
you share ideas, resources, and information
you normalize that climate anxiety isn’t a mental illness but an appropriate response that many of us have
Collective Action is More Effective Than Singular. The research shows when we work together to solve climate challenges we better cope due to the collective efforts and the feeling that we are not trying to solve it all alone.
One more important note: research has also shown (again, Harvard link above) that those who choose collective action are more likely to burn out and do so more quickly. That means taking care of yourself to keep your resilience up is essential.
So balance whatever action you do take with effective, meaningful self care strategies (you know, the ones that actually meet your needs).
We have to stay strong if we want to fight. Meaning we need foundational resilience and the skills to effectively cope and keep ourselves in it.
(Need a little help figuring that out? I’ve got a workshop coming up and paid members get free access):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8499625/