Summary: How to Channel Eco-Anxiety: Learning to live between despair and hope by Renée Lertzman and Sam Mowe

• Between confusion and despair around ecological crises lies hope and solutions—as explored in this article.
• Learn about channeling eco-anxiety to build resilience and drive action for the world

Recommendation

Eco-anxiety – worry and fear of climate change impacts – is growing. In her emotionally intelligent interview with the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, climate psychologist Renée Lertzman offers empathy and a fresh, hopeful perspective on harnessing eco-anxiety to enable positive change. She also discusses the benefits of turning to Buddhist teachings to stay grounded amid difficult emotions and uncertainty.

Take-Aways

• It’s normal and healthy to experience difficult emotions regarding climate change.
• Eco-anxiety can provide the energy you need to take climate action.
• Buddhism can help you stay present, grounded and compassionate in the face of climate distress.

Summary

It’s normal and healthy to experience difficult emotions regarding climate change.

Many people, especially young people, feel anxiety regarding climate change – sometimes called eco-anxiety or climate distress. People also experience a raft of other emotions, such as sadness, anger, powerlessness, despair, rage, betrayal and guilt. Eco-anxiety differs from generalized anxiety; it represents a healthy and normal response to the reality of climate change. It means you’re “picking up the signal”: You’re taking part in a feedback loop, registering the changes in the world and thereby able to take action in response.

“Eco-anxiety is really a healthy and normal response to what’s happening in the world. It means you’re picking up the signal.”

When people seem apathetic to climate change, this doesn’t mean they’re unaware or not having a response. When humans feel threatened, it’s a normal defense mechanism to detach from the situation and discount or minimize the threat in order to restore a sense of safety. The psychology of apathy explains why providing more information doesn’t necessarily suffice to spur people to action. To face the trauma of climate change, people need support to feel their difficult emotions. Taking these natural psychological reactions into account could go a long way toward increasing acceptance of the climate reality – and spurring people to action.

Eco-anxiety can provide the energy you need to take climate action.

If you’re feeling difficult emotions around climate change, it’s important to acknowledge and name your emotions in all their complexity. This principal step enables you to participate in the feedback loop of registering and responding to the crisis. Bring compassion, curiosity and even appreciation to your emotions: They don’t reflect any weakness or oversensitivity on your part; instead, they enable you to act and feel compassion for others who are experiencing their own emotional responses.

A gratitude practice can be important in building resilience and changing your thinking patterns, but it shouldn’t substitute for working through pain and grief.

“We have the ability to channel our emotional responses in reparative ways, in ways that actually can help make things better. And our world is needing that from us, now.”

Once you’ve acknowledged your emotions, now you can channel them into action. Particularly if you’re a member of a privileged, affluent community and aren’t yet suffering the most dire impacts of climate change, you’re in a position to take reparative action. Channeling your emotions into action doesn’t mean avoiding or eliminating anxiety; instead, it means harnessing the energy generated by your anxiety to become an agent of change.

Buddhism can help you stay present, grounded and compassionate in the face of climate distress.

Buddhist teachings, especially its fundamental teachings of staying present, offer lessons for remaining grounded and connected in tumultuous times. You don’t need to follow Buddhism to benefit from its methodologies.

“Buddhist thought and practice seem uniquely situated at this moment in time to serve a really vital function.”

Buddhism offers wisdom for responding to complexity and bringing curiosity and openness to challenging situations. Its teachings can help you steer clear of the human tendencies toward binary thinking and “othering.” And Buddhist practices can help you build your compassion and equanimity – all capacities that the world needs now to address the climate crisis.

About the Authors

Renée Lertzman brings a background in psychology and environmental communications to her work as a climate psychologist and environmental strategist. She works with businesses, nonprofits and governments to support organizational transformation. Lertzman is the founder of Project InsideOut, a community of psychologists, researchers and activists seeking to engage communities on issues of climate and sustainability. Sam Mowe is Tricycle’s publisher.

Genres

environmental psychology, climate change, Buddhism, self-help, personal development, social change, sustainability, mindfulness, mental health, and wellness

Review

The article discusses the phenomenon of eco-anxiety, a complex psychological state of being that affects different people in different ways but comprises a mix of deep grief, rage, guilt, shame, and confusion stirred by ecological crises and environmental collapse. Important points are that eco-anxiety is not a mental health disorder but an appropriate response to existential environmental threats, and it isn’t limited to just those personally impacted by extreme weather events or climate change but is systemic, collective distress. The article provides key strategies to work with and temper eco-anxiety and move towards psychological adaptation, personal resilience, empowerment, and activism.

In summary, this is a thoughtful examination of an increasingly common psychological phenomenon and reaction to dire environmental crises, providing frameworks for coping, building resilience, and being part of the solution.

One weakness could be focusing too much on an individual response without adequately emphasizing needed systemic changes, though systemic concerns are noted. But overall it covers important ground in an emerging field.