What Is Climate Grief?
Climate grief is the sense of loss experienced by anyone facing climate change impacts or environmental destruction. Climate grief is a normal response to witnessing the uncertainty, suffering, and damage brought about by the climate emergency.
You may be experiencing climate grief if you face any of the following:
- You tune into climate-related news and are aware of specific climate impacts
- You work for an environmental organization and face the facts of climate change daily
- You work in climate activism and political change around the climate or environment
- You are young and have been raised with the knowledge of climate change and environmental destruction for most or all of your life, along with witnessing climate inaction from those in power
- You are part of a marginalized community experiencing greater or more immediate impacts of climate change
- You work with animals or plants and have a deep knowledge of how they are experiencing climate change
- You are a climate refugee forced to leave your home to experience safety, or have experienced weather-related trauma due to climate impacts
How Climate Grief Differs From Climate Anxiety
Climate grief and anxiety are related because they are both emotional and mental responses and reactions to climate change. However, there are some distinctions.
Climate grief involves the sadness and mourning that comes from noticing past losses, current losses or anticipating future losses related to our warming planet. On the other hand, climate anxiety involves the fear, worrying, and panic that surrounds facing current or anticipated climate impacts.
Both relate to current and future impacts of climate change, and you may experience either or both at one time or another if you are aware of the climate crisis.
Common Signs of Climate Grief
Climate grief symptoms mirror general symptoms of grief – the ways we respond when we lose something important to us. Some signs of climate grief include:
- Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness
- Sadness, such as sadness around the pain and suffering you are witnessing or anticipate that you will witness in the future
- Anger, such as anger about climate inaction and apathy
- Guilt, such as feeling you haven’t done enough to prevent environmental loss
- Emotional exhaustion, particularly around ongoing upsetting news
- Numbness or feeling shut down
Why Climate Grief Can Feel So Isolating
Climate grief can be challenging to navigate if you feel isolated in your grief. Isolation comes from feeling like others do not share your concerns or understand your emotional responses. You may try to reach out to others only to feel misunderstood, disconnected, or overwhelmed by their response (or lack of response).
Many people are under-informed or misinformed about the climate crisis, or are simply too overwhelmed themselves to face their own climate emotions. This leads to a sense of feeling disconnected from others, or like something is wrong with you for having such a strong response. Even if you feel isolated in your grief, your grief is a valid and normal response to overwhelming loss.
Healthy Ways to Cope With Climate Grief
Coping with climate grief involves finding ways to express and feel your grief while remaining connected to others and to your climate-related values. Because climate grief can be so isolating, seeking community is an important factor in finding an avenue to express and understand your grief. Look for support groups, volunteer groups, and activist groups that offer a space to express yourself and help you move towards your climate-related values.
Coping with climate grief requires self-compassion, the process of offering kindness to yourself. Self-compassion allows you to tend to your suffering and find a healthy balance between attending to your own suffering and the suffering of others around you who are impacted by climate change, rather than getting overwhelmed by the suffering of others to the point that you are unable to show up for yourself or others.
Finally, explore your mindset and outlook to see if you might find a way to maintain hope without denying reality. As many activists say, hope is a muscle – it’s something that we cultivate by taking action to build the world we want to see. Having climate grief means that you care immensely about the world around you, and you can choose to use that care to fuel you into values-based action.
How Therapy Can Help
Therapy for climate grief provides you the space to process your grief, build resilience, and clarify your climate-related values. Climate-aware therapy recognizes that there are no individual solutions to the climate crisis – but working with a therapist individually can help you reconnect with collective actions by giving you the tools to get unstuck and to clarify where your place is in the climate movement.
If you’re in Texas, I’m a licensed professional counselor specializing in climate-aware therapy for climate grief and anxiety. I offer virtual sessions for people throughout Texas, and in-person sessions in my Houston office. If you’re interested in working with me, schedule a free consultation call at the link below.