How Climate Change is Affecting Mental Health
There’s a diverse set of mental health problems arising as the devastation caused by climate change increases. Superstorms, floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires and other extreme climate events have disastrous consequences on people’s lives. Individuals are being killed, injured, or forced to leave their homes, devastating families and communities. Mass migrations are disrupting lives at a larger scale. Post-Traumatic Stress following extreme climate events is becoming more common, as are spikes in fear, anxiety, depression, and irritability. It is worth noting that climate change events are more likely to affect the lives of the vulnerable, such as the poor, and therefore these populations are more susceptible to the acute impact on mental health.
The Definition of Ecoanxiety
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines ecoanxiety as “a chronic fear of environmental doom” (report). As the definition suggests, ecoanxiety not a response to an acute event, but a state of mind that arises gradually as we watch the slow and frightening consequences of climate change unfold. Ecoanxiety can manifest in intense worry and rumination, generalized anxiety, insomnia, panic attacks, feelings of sadness, loss, guilt, hopelessness, and irritability – in other words, symptoms of anxiety and depression. The term has not made it into the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (2013), but it will surely be considered in future editions as the magnitude of the problem becomes clear. A 2018 Yale survey estimated that 70% of Americans are “worried” and 29% are “very worried” about climate change, while 51% feel “helpless.” While little data is available, ecoanxiety appears to affect younger generations (e.g. Millennials, Gen Z) more than older (e.g. Gen X, Baby boomers). The mental health community is increasingly engaged with the impacts of climate change: The APA assembled a task force in 2008 and published this 70 page report in 2017 to build awareness and educate professionals. The emergence of the term ecoanxiety has been met with some resistance. Some skeptics roll their eyes at yet another buzzword for navel-gazing complainers. Others object to medicalizing a very real and appropriate feeling. As someone who counsels clients with ecoanxiety, let me tell you that it is real and causing a lot of suffering. I also believe that—whether there is a diagnostic term for it or not—anxiety is a perfectly rational response to a real threat to our way of life on this planet. And labeling the response with a diagnostic term should not invalidate or diminish the scope of the problem nor the person suffering. All of that said, we need to learn how to cope with it and get on with the job of finding solutions. Fundamentally, ecoanxiety is a form of anxiety like any other. It is a psychophysiological response to a threat to our safety or well-being. While fear involves a specific reaction to an imminent threat, anxiety is a diffuse response to a non-specific or uncertain threat. So if you’re an antelope in Africa and a lion jumps out at you from the bush, you feel fear. If you have health anxiety (aka hypochondriasis), you worry about aches and pains being signs of serious or fatal health problems. In ecoanxiety, the threat is broad and abstract and therefore hard to contain and resolve. It is somewhat similar to the anxiety many people felt in the 60s when they believed the world was on the brink of nuclear war. The content of anxious thoughts may vary, but the underlying mechanisms and emotions are the same. And that’s good news because many of the same coping strategies are helpful.
Three Ways Mindfulness Can Help You Cope with EcoAnxiety
The key to coping with ecoanxiety is to build psychological resilience. That is to say climate change is happening right now and it is affecting people all over the world. We all need to find a way to be with the difficult emotions that arise in consequence and continue to be engaged with the process of finding a solution. Here’s a suggestion for how to get there:
1. Learn how to unhook from a “worry loop”
Because climate change is an abstract threat, whether you experience ecoanxiety or not will depend on how you think about it. Unfortunately, it is also complex, multi-faceted, and highly technical, which means it’s difficult to get your thoughts straight about it. Our brains prefer information that is packaged in simple, concrete narratives and therefore rely on heuristics and shortcuts to cope with complexity. This pragmatic bias can be helpful – necessary even – for surviving and getting things done. But it can also create biases and distortions in our thinking, especially in the face of threat. People fall victim to a number of classic Cognitive Distortions when stuck in an ecoanxiety worry loop, such as catastrophizing, black and white thinking, and emotional reasoning. For example, I worked with a client who became very preoccupied with death following the release of a major climate change report last year. We were able to get him unstuck by unpacking all of the automatic appraisals he made of the danger. It’s not that there isn’t any danger, it just that the danger needs to be appropriately contextualized. Unfortunately, the news and social media are not necessarily helping in this respect. Our screens are perpetually showing us provocative content about climate change. Sometimes the information is accurate, but often it is distorted – one way or another – by some hidden agenda and designed to hijack our attention. So it’s important to manage your “information diet,” by assuring an intake of high-quality, nourishing content. Climate change is stressful enough; you don’t need your brain piling on exaggerated or false beliefs about what’s actually going on in the world. So, you need to become an expert at catching and correcting these cognitive errors. If books such as “Mind Over Mood” and “Cognitive Behavior Therapy” aren’t sufficient, a direct plan of action with a Cognitive Behaviour Therapist can help. Once these patterns of negative thoughts become familiar to you, mindfulness can be a useful tool for letting go of the unhelpful ruminations churning in the background of awareness. Mindfulness can also help with cultivating the clarity and focus required to make sense of all the news, social media, and chatter on the topic and then engage actively with what matters most to you. Check out The Mindful Way Through Anxiety or attend a Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy workshop near you.
2. Notice (and shift out of) the urge to isolate yourself
Humans are social animals. We don’t have big teeth, strong muscles, or speedy legs. It’s our capacity to cooperate with others at a large scale that allowed us to adapt to basically every niche on the planet. As such, evolution has made us highly dependent on one-another for a sense of safety and well-being. This is especially true when we are upset. Nothing helps calm our nervous system more reliably and sustainably than a safe and secure connection with another human. Unfortunately, withdrawal and avoidance are common features of anxiety and mood disorders. This is one of the cruel realities of the mood feedback loop. When we feel down or worried, we often turn our attention inward and seek refuge, rather than searching for a solution outside of ourselves. This internal shift pulls us away from others and we spend more time alone in our heads, ruminating and worrying. Overtime, our energy and motivation decline and the whole thing snowballs. Coping effectively with ecoanxiety requires that we reach out to others for support. Do not suffer alone. The emergence of ecoanxiety in public discourse is raising awareness and helping people build a common vocabulary, which should make it that much easier to support one another. The appearance of support groups all over the world and the internet is a really good sign.
3. Align your actions with your values
Recall that anxiety is our body’s reaction to a threat. It’s essential to understand that all that uncomfortable activity that arises in our bodies and minds in the face of threat – increased heart-rate, muscle tension, surge of energy, hyperfocus, etc. – actually serves an important function: to help us rise to the challenge. If we stay home and worry all day, we just stew in our own restlessness. On the other hand, if we can find a way to leverage that energy and actively meet the threat, we’ll feel much better. This effect is not just about releasing some pent up energy. We may actually be able to solve some problems and enjoy a greater sense of self-efficacy. The benefits of taking action can go even deeper than that. When our actions are aligned with our emotions and our core values and sense of purpose, we gain access to a profound sense of meaning, wholeness, and peace. Purpose-based coping is an ideal fit for ecoanxiety. In addition to reducing anxiety nerves, it also nurtures more prosocial values. Many of us feel compelled to help with climate change out of compassion. Taking action in this way aligns our nervous and compassionate energies, which really charges up our motivation. All of that said, it is important to balance a desire to do good in the world, with self-care and equanimity. There is only so much we can accomplish in any given day and a burnt-out activist is not going to be much help. So, in addition to getting your thoughts straight and staying connected to others, here are some things you can actively do that most climate experts agree will contribute to our collective effort to combat climate change – and mitigate eco-anxiety.
Vote in elections and make your voice heard at the local and national level Reduce your consumption in whatever ways make sense to you: refuse, re-use, repair, revalue, and recycleDo more physical commuting (walking, biking, jogging, etc.) when you canChoose public transit over your car when you canEducate yourself on the many different ways you can help combat climate change. (And remember that no one can do them all!)
Do your best to channel all of the energy stimulated by ecoanxiety into solution-oriented action. In this way, we can feel empowered and aligned and together, as a global community, we will be on our way to righting the climate ship. That outcome is incredibly inspiring to me and I hope you share my excitement.
