Recently I've been spending a lot of time reading about climate change, and it's got me feeling anxious, a little tense, a bit frustrated, and I'm definitely worried about the future and it looks like I'm not alone.

People on social media are sharing their anxious feelings and fears about climate change.

So much so there's a name for this.

It's called eco-anxiety or climate anxiety.

Okay, so this isn't isolated and it's much larger than I thought.

So before we go forward, let's practice some mindfulness.

Come on, y'all.

Let's take a deep breath.

Come on, take in your breath.

Fill up those lungs.

And another.

I do have good news.

In response to the growing trend of eco-anxiety, clinicians and psychologists are ushering in new techniques to help their clients deal with this issue.

We're going to make it through this.

Ya'll, one more breath.

The Science of eco-therapy or climate aware therapy is evolving and there's plenty to learn.

Let's take a look at what you can do to address your own climate anxiety.

Eco-anxiety is a relatively new term.

Eco anxiety has been defined by the American Psychological Association as the chronic fear of environmental doom.

That's Britt Wray.

She's an expert at the intersection of climate change and mental health.

Britt, what are some ways someone might experience climate anxiety?

It can become so intense that it's debilitating and it can impair people's functioning.

And then it really does need clinical intervention or support, but it can also trap us in a pit of fear and hopelessness if we aren't careful and get us carried away in kind of a despairing narrative about the future being written off.

Even though someone might be dealing with these symptoms, it might be hard for a therapist to pinpoint the best course of action because eco-anxiety is not in the DSM-5, the manual that health professionals use to diagnose mental health disorders.

Climate aware therapy is part of this growing movement of mental health professionals who are focused on addressing the climate crisis, how it's showing up in people's lives.

You know, there's a lot of interventions from regular therapy that are being used and adapted to climate-aware therapy.

A lot about helping people manage difficult emotions, emotional regulation, deal with regulating a hypervigilant nervous system and moving into into being an inter-relationship with nature and fostering mutuality with our environments rather than trying to, you know, dominate them and extract from them, which can all be very healing.

Okay, So obviously we all have some anxiety.

So you might be wondering how is eco-anxiety any different than generalized anxiety?

In order to better understand that, we need to talk to a clinician that specializes in climate-aware therapy or a form of therapy that recognizes that the climate crisis is real and is a threat to the physical and mental well-being of everyone on Earth.

This is not a pathology.

It is a healthy response to what is happening to our world, to the destruction of our world.

A couple of things eco- anxiety, eco-grief.

Some people are calling it eco-distress because it isn't just one feeling anxiety and you know, but it's the feelings associated with helplessness, uncertainty, despair.

Those kinds of things.

While eco-anxiety does not fall under the diagnosable generalized anxiety umbrella, it presents its own unique mental health challenge in the form of what I call a feedback loop.

All right, come on, bring it in.

Consider the following.

If you are feeling anxious about climate change and you're seeing and hearing nonstop reports about the not so bright future, and then you start to evaluate your own impact on the climate which you're scared of happening, which can lead to maybe feelings of guilt or anguish or anger.

That's a slippery slope to what experts think can lead to apathy and feeling helplessness about one's own individual control of climate change.

And down the spiral you go worrying about how often your commute to work contributes to destroying the planet.

And even though you need a job to take care of your daily means, yeah, it's a loop.

Living with uncertainty is one of the hardest things.

That's how we get anxious and get stuck there.

And also kind of our values.

What I would want people to take away is like being in therapy can really move those things so that we're not in a tolerating are uncomfortable feelings which often involve not really feeling them because we're afraid to feel them.

And part of what we do in therapy is we learn, one: we have someone who's a trained listener who can take us or go with us to these difficult places so that we can move through them.

And we're not stuck in this displacement, this denial.

Deep breaths now that we are out of the loop.

Let's take a look at what a session with a climate-aware therapist might look like.

Well, first, when people come in, I validate.

And part of then what happens in the process is we find that middle place, but then it becomes, okay, well, what are some, you know, like adaptive coping?

And one is, you know, engaging, engaging with the facts, but also knowing, okay, today is not a day that I'm going to be reading about this species going extinct, but staying engaged and not totally retreating, staying engaged with people you can talk to about it, who, you know, maybe are on a similar path or staying engaged with problem solving, like real problem solving.

In a recent meta analysis of five major themes for eco-anxiety reduction treatments, four out of five suggested coping mechanisms as opposed to dealing with the root cause of the fear.

But does coping alone help someone embrace and accept their feelings of fear and anxiety?

Just prescribing action as the antidote to despair is not enough because it can reflect a culture of belittlement or aversion to difficult emotions and the struggles that are also part of life.

And so there can be this kind of knee-jerk reaction when talking about climate anxiety to say, "Oh, just do these three actions and then you'll paper over your concerns and you'll feel better again", when what we're talking about is much deeper than that because we have to contend with bearing witness to loss and struggle as these disasters are already here.

And so we need to get good at stretching our window of tolerance for dealing with this difficulty and not falling apart as it happens.

The key here to unlocking strategies to deal with your own climate anxiety might have less to do with your individual effort to deter climate change, such as lowering your own greenhouse gas emissions and more to do with building a climate crisis plan.

There is a recent article in the leading scientific journal Nature that said an important thing that individuals can do to address their climate anxiety is really focus on small aspects that they can control.

A lot of anxiety is provoked by the unknown and feeling like you can't control the situation.

Here's what a climate action plan might look like.

If you're in a flood zone, consider using personal storage bins that are watertight or moving personal items to a higher level on the shelf for more info on finding out if you live in a flood zone, check out the description below.

Those concerned about drought might want to learn more about urban gardening or drought resistant forms of agriculture that you can do at home.

Now, above all, find yourself a community that is preparing to deal with the next catastrophic event because global warming is happening.

Take action and join in on the effort.

But it's not just individuals who are feeling the effects of climate change.

Entire communities and even countries are facing displacement and loss due to rising sea levels, droughts and other extreme weather events, especially at risk communities such as in the United States, for example.

Communities of color and low income groups.

And let's not forget, therapy can be challenging to access for those in rural communities, and it is still relatively expensive and often unmet, especially for those without health insurance.

We do need to make things low cost and widely available, and it's difficult at this time because we already have a mental health professional shortage.

We've seen through COVID, for instance, that as mental health has come out into the public square as a huge issue because so many people have been struggling with the isolation, the anxiety about being infected, the depression that has come with lockdowns, all these things that have really made us realize that our society is functioning based on how well people are feeling.

So then you add the climate crisis, mental health demands on top of that.

Well, that's a tricky situation and we need to be thinking innovatively about how to scale and spread that kind of care.

When I think about eco-anxiety, I think about the fact that I am 34 living in Philly and I haven't seen a real snow storm in years.

When I was younger, there were blizzards and shoveling was a normal winter task.

Now the snow melts by the morning.

But if I'm to be honest, being able to think about climate change is a privilege because in my community and as a black woman, we are just thinking of ways to get ahead, stay alive, have our babies, and live to see them grow.

I think a lot of people in my community don't feel that we can impact climate change and we for sure don't feel that we are at a top priority for the lawmakers that impact climate change.

And especially they don't look like us.

I would say I believe overwhelming pressure of preserving life and my lineage by learning to farm and networking with my community.

For those of us out there that have never heard of eco anxiety before today, years old, how are you feeling about it now?

This episode was part of PBS' Celebration of Earth Month, which will have more than 20 new videos covering a variety of topics from across our network.

One I'd like to highlight is a new series called Women of the Earth, a show on PBS' Terra about women who are finding unconventional ways to heal the Earth from climate change, like using sheep.

There's a link in the description below.

That's it for us on this episode of PBS Vitals.

Tell us in the comments how you're handling climate anxiety and if you're making a climate change action plan, what's in it?

We want to hear all about it.

Sharing is caring, and maybe someone from your community picks up a few tricks for their own plan.

Thanks for watching.

Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel.

Until next time, stay safe out there and plant something.

Okay?