Why Does Climate News Feel So Overwhelming?
You want to stay informed, and you care about what’s happening in the world, but when you hear climate news, you find yourself much more overwhelmed than when you typically check in on the news.
Recently, climate news seems to be getting more and more dire. With predictions about worsening storms, heat waves, water shortages, and more, climate change news can feel like it’s evoking an existential crisis – threatening your sense of safety and ability to imagine the future. This uncertainty often leads to feelings of anxiety, fear, grief, helplessness, and more.
What Climate Anxiety Can Feel Like in Daily Life
As a person who cares about the climate, you might find yourself experiencing daily or almost daily impacts that come from your awareness of the urgency of the climate crisis. You may get caught up in doomscrolling or endlessly seeking more information, or on the other hand, you may be stuck in avoidance and numbing out.
Daily impacts of climate distress include:
- Trouble sleeping
- Panic about the future
- Guilt about what sort of action you feel you should be taking
- Difficulty engaging in day-to-day life (like work, school, and time with family)
- Cynicism
When Overwhelm Turns Into Shutdown
Our nervous system is designed to protect us when stress becomes too much. If your engagement with climate news overwhelms you, you might experience signs of this nervous system shutdown.
This feels like numbness, avoidance, and disengagement. It’s important to bring compassion to these responses and to remember that these are signs of your body protecting you when stress or fear becomes too much.
Why Constant Exposure to Climate News Can Dysregulate the Nervous System
Our bodies have an internal alarm system that helps us watch out for danger. Often, we experience this alarm in dangerous situations, but once the threat has passed, we can return to our baseline feelings of calm and safety.
When your body’s internal alarm system stays on almost constantly by facing upsetting climate news, you can essentially get stuck in a state of constant alert. You become locked in a state of vigilance, anxiety, helplessness, and emotional overload. Returning to a state of calm becomes more and more difficult as your exposure to climate news increases.
Is It Better to Stay Informed or Take a Break?
If you’re concerned about the climate, there’s a good chance it’s because you care – you care about the environment, animals, ecosystems, and people affected by climate change. So it makes sense that you’d want to stay informed.
However, if your exposure to climate news overwhelms your ability to cope and be present with your life, you may need a break. If you care about the future of the planet, it’s important to find a sustainable way to manage your mental health for the long haul. This might mean taking periodic breaks from consuming climate news.
How to Set Limits Without Feeling Like You Are Ignoring the Problem
It’s difficult to step away from climate news when you feel your future is hanging in the balance, and when you care about the impacts of climate change on yourself and others. But there are a few practical steps you can take that balance your desire to stay informed and your need to protect your emotional well-being.
Setting limits on climate news can include:
- Turning off notifications so you are intentional about when you consume news
- Choosing reliable sources that are aimed at informing rather than shocking and gaining clicks
- Practice good sleep hygiene by staying off your phone before bed and right after waking up
- Build awareness about what you’re hoping to gain from compulsive news checking – and recognize when you actually have enough information and need to step away
How to Cope With Climate Anxiety in a More Grounded Way
Climate anxiety takes a toll on your mental health, but there are some strategies that can help you care for yourself throughout your climate worries. Coping with climate anxiety starts with validating yourself for having an understandable response to such an alarming issue and bringing self-compassion to your struggles. We typically cope better when we can name our feelings, so practice naming your sadness, anger, grief, outrage, guilt, and anxiety.
Climate worries feel more overwhelming when you feel stuck or hopeless, so practice identifying what your environmental-based values are so that you can start to find ways to get unstuck and move towards these values. Climate or environmental values could include caring for others, caring for animals, sustainability, exploration of nature, learning, and more. Then find ways to act on these values, which can also provide the powerful benefit of building community and feeling less alone in your struggles.
Why Small, Values-Aligned Actions Matter
Climate change will not be solved by one person alone, yet our individualistic culture leads us to feel like we have to carry the weight of change on our shoulders. Have you heard the saying, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now”? This saying encapsulates the value of moving past hopelessness and finding small ways to enact change.
Identify what type of climate change, environmental protection, disaster preparedness, or conservation work is being done in your community and see if there is an area of their work that interests you. Reflect on what strengths and interests you have, and whether these can be put to good use in combating climate change.
When Climate Distress Starts Affecting Mental Health
Climate distress can sometimes become overwhelming to the point that it’s difficult for you to navigate your way to a healthier place on your own. When this happens, therapy focused on climate distress can be a helpful resource. Signs that you may benefit from climate-aware therapy are:
- Persistent dread or hopelessness
- Panic attacks
- Depression
- Chronic guilt
- Difficulty functioning at work, school, or in relationships
- Trouble sleeping
- Struggles with substance abuse
Therapy for Climate Anxiety & Environmental Distress
Climate-aware therapy is an approach to therapy that is growing in availability as more people struggle with the overwhelm of the oncoming climate crisis. Therapy for climate anxiety and environmental distress helps you to process complex emotions, identify your values, and explore ways to get unstuck.
This therapy is focused on helping you to build climate resilience. Climate resilience recognizes that your feelings of overwhelm are valid, but finding a way forward can not only improve your own mental health but also allow you to re-engage with the people, animals, and planet that your climate anxiety indicates that you care about.
Support for People Struggling With Climate Anxiety
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or frozen by climate change, working with a climate-aware counselor can help you explore your emotions, build resilience, and reconnect with manageable steps towards living out your climate-related values.
I’m a licensed professional counselor, and I offer climate-aware therapy focused on validating the overwhelming feelings of climate change while assisting you with a path forward. If you’re in Texas, book a call at the link below to explore working with me in therapy.