Grieve, grow, and build resilience in the face of climate change.

Climate distress encompasses any mental or emotional struggle related to confronting the climate crisis. If you’re experiencing climate distress, you may be feeling anxious, depressed, traumatized, or burned out. Climate distress can affect anyone, although you may be more prone to it if you are younger, belong to a marginalized community, work in environmental causes, or engage in climate activism.

Climate distress is different from other mental health conditions, such as general anxiety, in that your distress is rooted in the very real issue of our changing climate. While treatment for generalized anxiety might involve learning to move on from unrealistic worries, treatment for climate distress involves validating your worries as understandable, while helping you to explore how you want to respond to these worries in a way that cares for both yourself and the environment.

Eco-anxiety is a very real mental health concern in that it affects many people. (A survey of people in the United States in 2020 found that 2/3rds of the respondents felt at least a little eco-anxiety and 1/4 said they felt a lot.) Yet despite these impacts, the mental health field is proving slow to keep up and recognize these concerns, which is why you may not have heard of eco-anxiety before. My hope is that by offering climate-aware therapy, I can help be a part of a movement to validate these concerns and help people find ways to move through their anxiety towards climate resilience and action.

Climate distress can vary from person to person. Some people experience trouble sleeping, anxiety symptoms, and panic attacks. Others experience symptoms of depression or grief, such as sadness, lack of motivation, or hopelessness. You may also experience symptoms of trauma, such as hypervigilance and flashbacks, particularly if you have experienced a climate-related weather event or climate-related displacement.

Climate distress is impacting your daily life if you find yourself experiencing lack of sleep, increased worry, difficulty concentrating, and difficulty staying motivated to complete daily tasks. Additional signs are losing interest in things you once enjoyed, having trouble finding satisfaction in daily moments, or becoming isolated and having difficulty connecting with others.

Absolutely. Climate distress can be fairly impactful on your mental health, and in some cases, leads to panic attacks or insomnia. Experiencing panic attacks or difficulty sleeping related to your feelings about the environment is a sign you may benefit from therapy with a climate-aware counselor.

Climate distress counseling is tailored to your unique needs and challenges. Often, we start with building emotional awareness so that you can better understand how you are responding to climate stress. We’ll then explore ways to be with these emotions in a more effective way. For many people, this involves a process of allowing grief, anger, and sadness to be present and processed. We will then identify your values and how you would like to envision your future.

This step of therapy may involve balancing acceptance of our present reality with a commitment to fight for a more just and environmentally-conscious future. We’ll explore how you can show up for your care for the environment in a sustainable, self-compassionate way.

A variety of approaches can be helpful for eco-anxiety and climate grief. A common element of eco-aware therapeutic approaches is that the immensity of the climate crisis is acknowledged and validated, and people’s responses to this are not pathologized or viewed as a problem to be fixed. Instead, we work compassionately to build resilience and acceptance for the reality of the climate crisis, and explore ways to move forward in a values-aligned way.

In my practice, I draw on acceptance and commitment therapy, compassion-focused therapy, anti-oppressive approaches, and trauma-informed approaches. Climate aware therapy is not one-size-fits-all, so we’ll work together to explore your unique path towards better emotional well-being in the face of climate distress.

If you struggle with climate distress, you are probably someone who cares a lot about the world, and you want to stay informed. As a therapist committed to values around justice and equality, I rarely encourage my clients to disconnect completely, as this can involve ignoring very real pain around us. However, many of us can see the negative impacts of overly consuming news, and so having limits and boundaries is essential.

Some climate news boundaries might involve:

• Reading news articles instead of viewing the news on social media or over video, which can be more distressing and sometimes less thoughtful or thorough in its coverage.
• Avoiding phone use or news consumption right after waking up or right before bed.
• Finding a like-minded community so that you can process the news together and explore how you want to act based on what you’re learning.
• Spend some time in nature or doing a creative activity after learning upsetting climate news.

Feelings of guilt, overwhelm, and hopelessness are understandable responses to facing the climate catastrophe and all of the possible suffering that can come with that. Your feelings are a sign that you care, and your feelings are designed to help alert you to danger. These feelings need a lot of self-compassion, which simply stated is treating yourself like you would treat a friend, child, or animal who was suffering.

It’s also important that you don’t navigate these feelings alone - seeking climate-aware counseling, finding a climate therapy or support group, or joining a climate justice organization are all ways to connect with others and find ways to feel less isolated in your overwhelm.

Therapy for climate distress can be helpful at many stages. You may be noticing early signs of climate distress and want to take a proactive approach to sort through your feelings about the climate. In cases like this, professional help can be very beneficial to help you better understand your feelings and how you’d like to move forward.

Or you may have been struggling for a long time, and are noticing significant symptoms such as panic attacks, insomnia, and trauma symptoms. In that case, professional help would be strongly recommended to take steps towards feeling better and addressing the roots of your distress.