Climate Anxiety: We Can Manage It

You can’t avoid them.

On Instagram, TikTok, and the forum previously known as Twitter, whether it’s wildfires raging in California, extreme flooding in New York City, hurricane damage in Florida, or some other unimaginable disaster, the video footage is there. Extreme weather garners constant doom coverage from the media (were any of us able to turn off CNN after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans?) but social media is no better — and many people can’t look away. The distressing scenes of people being displaced and homes being destroyed — sometimes referred to as trauma porn — has an impact on our mental health.

How could it not?

In 2021, Google searches for “climate anxiety” rose by 565%. Anxiety in all forms is real. We live in a world where parents wonder if they will see their children at the end of the school day. Economic pressures abound, with nearly one quarter of Americans having no emergency savings. On top of other typical stresses like dealing with aging parents, navigating relationships, and demands at work. Piling on all this stress is climate or eco-anxiety, distress related to worries about the effects of climate change and rooted in uncertainty about the future. Oftentimes, anxiety about the climate is accompanied by feelings of grief, anger, guilt, and shame, which can in turn affect mood, behavior, and thinking.