[ad_1]
When psychotherapist Caroline Hickman was asked to help a child overcome his fear of dogs, she introduced him to her Labradoodle, Murphy. “You make the child feel confident about the dog and teach the child the skills to manage the dog,” she says. “You build skills, build competency, build confidence, and then they’re generally less afraid of dogs.” Climate concerns are a different animal, Hickman says. “We don’t know 100% how to deal with this. And it would be a big mistake to try to treat it like other concerns that we are familiar with and that have existed for decades. This is very, very bad.”
In the most severe cases, climate-related anxiety impairs the ability to function day-to-day. According to Hickman’s research, children and youth in this category feel isolated from friends and family, have trouble thinking about the future, and have intrusive thoughts about who will survive. Patients binge-watch the weather, read climate change studies, and pursue radical activism. Some people, devastatingly, view suicide as the only solution. And Hickman isn’t the only expert to see that. In her book A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, Sarah Ray describes a student who had such severe “self-loathing eco-guilt” that she stopped eating much of anything, including food. (Also read: Expert tips for Gen-Z to deal with anxiety, burnout and depression ,
Most people’s concerns about global warming are not that obvious. It can be difficult to determine what exactly a climate concern is and therefore what to do about it. Especially for adults, there is still a stigma to admit that it is seriously affecting your life. But therapists report that they are struggling with increasing demand from clients who say climate change is having a profound impact on their mental health, and studies show that anger is increasingly widespread. Existing professional methods for dealing with anxiety are not always appropriate in these situations. For the consulting community, the situation demands a new playbook.
In 2021, a study of 10,000 children and youth in 10 countries, co-authored by Hickman and published in The Lancet Planetary Health, found that 59% were very or extremely concerned about climate change and more than 45% said it Had a negative impact. Impact on their daily lives. A survey of mental health professionals in the UK, published last year in The Journal of Climate Change and Health, found that they were “significantly more likely” to describe climate change as a factor in their mental health or emotional distress. Patients were found, which was the increase expected by the participants. To continue. Disappointingly, climate anxiety can also overlap existing mental health problems, making it difficult to analyze in isolation.
Therapists told Bloomberg Green that they typically see an increase in patients struggling with climate anxiety when climate change is in the news; Often at the time of a United Nations climate conference, a major scientific report or a severe weather event. Doctors said scientists working on climate change were among the first groups they saw experiencing this type of anxiety, and those groups are still struggling. Of the nearly 300 people who responded to a Bloomberg Green Readers survey about climate concerns, only one in five said they discuss the issue with a mental health professional.
One respondent, Natalie Warren, a 42-year-old UK expat living in Sydney, Australia, told us that when she was not in therapy, she felt a strong desire to act. Climate anxiety feels different from previous mental health challenges, she says: It’s external rather than internal. “There’s nothing wrong with someone who suffers from climate anxiety,” she says. “It’s not them who needs to be fixed.”
How doctors diagnose and treat climate anxiety
So what are therapists actually doing in their treatment rooms? The first thing is that they are not making a diagnosis, because concern about climate change is not a disorder. “We regard it as an understandable response to a real and rational threat,” says Patrick Kennedy-Williams, a clinical psychologist based in Oxford, UK. Working with someone who has social anxiety or phobia is partly about “recalibrating their sense of risk and danger,” he says — re-aligning the fear with the level of actual danger. to do. That’s not usually the case with climate change, he says, because “the threat is real.”
Furthermore, there is no “classic case” of climate or eco-concern. Some patients may need to discuss direct experience of climate impacts, such as having a home destroyed by a flood or wildfire, while others, for example, may want to talk about their guilt at seeing others suffer. You may want to talk about conflict with friends or family who are dismissive or hostile. People may not even say they’re feeling “anxiety,” he says, instead using words like trauma, sadness, and depression. “It doesn’t neatly fit into the way we think about mental health,” says Kennedy-Williams, “perhaps because the climate crisis and our relationship with the climate crisis is much more multifaceted than that.”
Climate anxiety is often linked to many other dilemmas in the normal course of a person’s life, including major choices such as whether or not to have children, where to live, or what to do for work. Many of these questions are already highly stressful and emotional. The issue of whether or not to have children in particular is one around which Kennedy-Williams has seen “a huge amount of distress” in the therapy room, she says.
Kennedy-Williams compares her experience with patients struggling with climate anxiety to working with people struggling with activity-limiting illnesses or medical difficulties, where clear solutions are often not available. “You can’t just say, ‘Actually I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.’ ‘I’m sure everything will be OK,'” he says. Instead, he helps patients in “difficult situations.” “Tries to help you move forward and find happiness”.
Some concerns are linked to specific triggers that can be directly addressed and resolved. But climate change is more widespread. Global warming also cannot be solved by any one person, so it is impossible to regain trust and a sense of control over the problem. “You can’t solve it individually,” says Hickman. “You can go and do your recycling, and be an activist, or do X, Y, Z, but this is a global problem. It’s not personal.” Many patients also feel as if people in power are asleep at the wheel, she says, adding to the feeling that no one is in control.
Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of concern over climate change: it can also be linked to climate denial. Experts said that both can be understood as different expressions of the same emotion. “Conspiracy theorists are convincing,” says Hickman. “If you can’t tolerate worry, you’ll start believing someone who makes you false promises.”
Overcoming all these emotions is key to actually taking action to solve the climate crisis. Lewis Eddington, a British educational psychologist specializing in climate psychology, says fear and disempowerment lead people to focus on self-preservation and survivalism, rather than actually addressing climate change as an issue. More collective resources are required. School. “Well-being isn’t just about cuddling up and feeling good,” she says. “It’s an important part of really making the changes we need to make.”
So how to address this? Leslie Davenport, a Washington state-based therapist, has developed a curriculum for other professionals looking for ways to treat patients struggling with climate-related mental health problems. She highlights two broad types of coping strategies: internal and external.
She compares climate concerns to catching a ball underwater. Eventually, your hand will get tired, and it will pop – it can’t be held down forever. Internal strategies may include calming your nervous system, consciously taking breaks, and learning to focus on your mental narratives. External strategies include finding ways to take action in the most appropriate way, whether it’s donating money or joining a local community group for clean air.
“I would say half of our climate concern is tied to the feeling of not being effective enough to do something about it,” says Ray, who is also professor and chair of environmental studies at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. , It may be helpful to do something in a group instead of alone. “The thing that reduces climate anxiety is that part of the collective…where people care as much as you do. you’re not the only one.”
Airing concerns in this way can turn into serious action. Ray says the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline and groups like the Pacific Climate Warriors were partly inspired by his concern about doing something radical. It may also inspire others to contest elections for public office. Survey respondent Warren from Sydney, who has two young children and works in finance, ran for and represented the Greens on his local council between 2017 and 2021.
Warren, one of many parents who responded to Bloomberg Green’s survey, says what motivates her now are the inevitable conversations she’ll have with her boys one day. When they ask ‘How did you let it get so bad?’ and “Why weren’t people doing anything?” She wants something real to tell them: ‘I need to be able to tell them I tried.’
[ad_2]
