Climate Anxiety

It’s not about you.

Photo: Isaac Cordal's Berlin installation, 'Follow the Leaders', 2018.

Recent extreme weather events here in Aotearoa New Zealand are leading to an increasingly public narrative about ‘climate anxiety’. There has been a steady uptick in media stories over the last couple of years around the world. Last week, an article on the topic was published by Radio New Zealand, and today there’s a live interview on The Platform.

This is an affirmation to those of us who have been working (largely unnoticed) with these issues for, in some cases, over 30 years! But when I read or hear these stories, I feel frustrated that something essential is missing from the discourse.

Climate anxiety, like most media topics, has been simplified and culturally filtered to such an extent that it has become meaningless. Now it is just yet another human psychopathology — with a stepwise list of ‘things you can do’ for relief. From this stems the usual range of psychological treatments — all centred on the suffering human, and all basically the same as every other treatment or response to every other manifestation of anxiety.

As I have been ranting about here on Substack — and in the book I co-authored in 2023, and in every professional development training course, conference presentation, and public lecture I have led or given since 1996 — what’s missing is ecology. I am so tired of this rant that I no longer have the energy to repeat it — but you can read all about it elsewhere on the ecoSelf blog, and in my book.

Human beings are animals in ecosystems. We are anxious because those ecosystems are losing their ability to keep us alive, which is existentially terrifying. When we are exposed to stories describing ecosystem collapse, experience it for ourselves, or see hard evidence confirming it, we naturally feel anxious.

However, treating this type of anxiety as if it’s some kind of personal psychological illness is not the solution — it’s a short-term palliation that ultimately makes things worse.

The only real cure is to do something about the state of our ecosystems. Let me repeat that:

The only real cure is to do something about the state of our ecosystems.

I’m not sure what’s complicated about this statement, but you would not believe how hard it is to get people to understand it.

So, the last thing we need in response to climate anxiety (and other forms of eco-anxiety) is conventional psychotherapists and counsellors making us feel better, without any implication that we must fundamentally change the way we live.

What we need is to feel the fear and to delve into the anxiety. We need to do this without triggering unhealthy coping mechanisms and in a ‘cognitive frame’ where our experiences can lead to meaningful ecological change. An effective way of doing this is to work in supportive groups outdoors. Here we can directly feel and experience our interconnections with the rest of nature, which, when done in a conducive social context and with skilful facilitation, can lead to profound personal, social, and ecological change.

This type of approach is now well evidenced and compels us to take action to protect and restore the ecosystems on which we depend for everything, including our own personal mental health and wellbeing.

We can only really heal ourselves by healing the ecological systems that contain us. Please help give this aspect of the ‘climate anxiety’ story a breath of fresh air.