How to overcome climate anxiety.
When we came back to our home in Myanmar, we had to change planes in Kuala Lumpur to get onto the special relief flight back to Yangon. In a weird attempt to show action against COVID, the crew gave all passengers a big bag of a disposable apron, hair net, gloves, shoe covers, and mask – 300x items of unnecessary waste used for 2 hours before being disposed of. Not to speak of the lack of evidence in preventing you from catching COVID. I felt sick to my stomach.
When I saw the wildfires in Australia, the floods in Germany or the longer than the usual dry season in my home country, I got that feeling of powerlessness.
I take my refillable water bottle pretty much everywhere I go. I use my reusable coffee cup to take my ice coffee to work in the morning. Still, I feel guilty when I 'allow' myself to buy a carbonated drink or buy a take-away coffee occasionally.
These are only a few personal examples when I feel a sense of worry or powerlessness wash over me.
Do you feel similar? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount there is to do to address the climate crisis?
You are not alone.
A recent study in Lancet [1] studied 10,000 (young) people in numerous countries. They found that "over 50% felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. Over 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning, and many reported a high number of negative thoughts about climate change."
As you listen to speeches at #COP26, feeling frustrated, anxious, worried, angry, powerless are reactions that many share. Me included.
Those feelings show that you care about the issues, understand them, and want to do something about them. This is what we need if we're going to turn this around!
But for you to give the best, you can remember to:
Focus on what is within your control. I know you do the best you can within your remit. Acknowledge the progress you make in reducing your footprint. Acknowledge the work you do (whether professionally or volunteering) to wake up politicians, corporations, and others to take the significant and necessary action to safeguard our future.
Take care of yourself. As with many things, we can only do our best when we feel at our best. So, take time out for yourself (incl. switching off social media or stopping reading the news for a while). This will help you with resilience in the long run.
Talk to others. I started talking about it in my friends’ circle, as I needed an outlet to process what I felt.
If you don't know where to turn, I recommend you tune in to the excellent podcast "Force of Nature". It brings eco-anxiety into the conversation with the objective to empower those who want to make a difference but do not know where to start.
https://www.forceofnature.xyz/podcast
[1] Title: Young people's voices on climate anxiety, government betrayal and moral injury: a global phenomenon; accessed on Lancet - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3918955
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