by Matthew Adams, Principal Lecturer in Psychology, University of Brighton
As a psychologist, I have been researching, writing, and talking about psychological and social responses to climate change for over ten years. An increasingly common response appears to be an excessive concern. The University of Bath recently published the results of its 2023 Climate Action Survey. Of the nearly 5,000 respondents, 19% of students and 25% of staff said they were “extremely concerned” about climate change, while 36% and 33% said they were “very concerned”. Climate concern was higher than in the previous year’s survey results.
In 2021, a global survey of how children and young people felt about climate change found equally high levels of concern. Most of the 10,000 participants reported feelings of sadness, anxiety, anger, powerlessness, helplessness and guilt. This phenomenon is called eco-anxiety, and it’s no wonder that so many people suffer from it. Wherever we are, more of us are now starting to experience the effects of the climate crisis in one way or another, whether it’s drought, food shortages, floods or extreme weather.
Even calling the climate crisis a crisis has gone mainstream after years of marginalization, and is now the focus and center of wildlife documentaries, films, news media, and celebrity culture.
Environmental concerns can’t be ‘fixed’
Being concerned or concerned about the climate and ecological crisis is a reasonable and predictable response to a threatening situation. We should expect an increase in distress and complex emotional responses. This is an important point for me and many other psychologists and psychotherapists who engage with the climate crisis as a profound social and psychological challenge. This means that we should be wary of trying to accurately measure distress-related responses, such as environmental anxiety, as individual traits.
When we do, the problem very easily becomes about the person and the solution to fix them. This is often done by helping them adapt to reality through therapy and even medication. But in framing the problem this way, we engage in a form of collective denial. Can we in good conscience come up with “suggestions” for dealing with eco-anxiety if their purpose is only to find ways to ward off bad feelings and ignore their source? I think we can. The crisis can be overwhelming and debilitating. We need to find ways to manage this individually and collectively, while recognizing that eco-concern is in many ways a “healthy” response.
Here are some tips for dealing with eco-anxiety whenever the frustration becomes too much.
1. Acknowledge Difficult Feelings
Remind yourself that worry and other emotions reflect a healthy psychological response to the fact that we live in a time when we take for granted the nature of a good life, progress, and whatever the future holds. , that’s settling in. By acknowledging these difficult feelings in yourself and others, you are less likely to engage in denial and defense mechanisms. These mechanisms include minimizing the scale of the problem, blaming others, and deepening support for opposing viewpoints. The unproductive nature of these mechanisms in our ability to collectively tackle social problems is well documented. For example, if everyone redirects responsibility for climate action to others, climate solutions are unlikely to gain much traction.
2. Recognize that it’s normal to feel overwhelmed
Doing things to reduce your carbon footprint is a common response to eco-concern. This could include recycling more or buying goods with less packaging. It can also be a stepping stone to other important lifestyle changes like eating less meat or avoiding flying. Much of this behavior occurs socially, so it can interact with others and change social norms. The more we break the collective silence around the reality of the climate crisis, the more likely we are to see it as a shared problem. This in turn is the basis for political engagement and imagining a different kind of future.
But it’s important to recognize that it’s normal to feel overwhelmed by both the difficulty of weaning yourself off current carbon-intensive lifestyle choices, such as shopping, vacations, driving, flying and buying stuff, and the lack of visible results on one. On a grander scale that follows on from the changes we’re already making. There is a long history of vested interests insisting on the mantra of individual responsibility in maintaining the status quo. From tobacco promotion to fossil fuel companies, a significant strategic emphasis has been placed on “blaming the consumer”, such as the endorsement of ‘tips’ to reduce personal consumption. This focus distracts from the need for major economic, social and structural change. After all, a structural problem requires a structural solution, not a single person.
3. You are not alone
It is best to think of an eco-concern as something we share collectively and culturally. We are in the midst of a planetary problem, with an emotional charge of a planetary scale. You are tapping into the feelings of millions of other people, no matter how hard it is to express it. In fact, as the American climatologist Michael E. Mann has long argued, if you want to think about effective individual behavior change, contributing to collective pressure for major policy changes is the most useful thing you can do. can do. It starts with sharing our concerns and connecting with others.
One last tip. Never mind why you care so much in the first place. Eco-concern stems from biophilia – the love of all life.
So slow down, keep paying attention to nature and say what you like. Whatever losses we are already mourning, whatever we fear losing, there is still a world out there to care for.