Eco Anxiety
Just as there’s a connection between the mind and the body, there is a connection between the mind and the environment. People have claimed that if you keep a messy space, you’ll have a messy mind. Eco anxiety is evidence of this phenomenon. As some people internalise their concern over environmental degradation, they experience a sense of hopelessness about the future, which leaves them feeling helpless.
Table of Contents
- Eco Anxiety
- Defining Eco Anxiety
- Studying Eco Anxiety
- Role of Eco Anxiety in Activism
- Understanding Anxiety
- Timeline of Eco Anxiety: Past, Present, Future
- Curing Eco Anxiety
- Eco Anxiety in the Media
- Who’s Currently Working on Eco Anxiety
- Who’s Most Affected by Eco Anxiety
- Innovating Eco Anxiety Relief
Defining Eco Anxiety
General Definition
Persistent worries about the future of Earth and the life it shelters.
American Psychological Association
In 2017, the American Psychological Association first used the term eco anxiety, defined as a chronic fear of environmental doom.
What would eco anxiety look like as a spectrum
What is the opposite of (eco) anxiety?
Confidence, faith, hope, security, ease, calm
Is it a spectrum of hopelessness — hopefulness?
Common emotions and side effects
Hopelessness
Helpless and small
Pervasive thoughts
Sadness
Escapism
Fear
Fatalism
Guilt and shame (personal and 3rd party; ex. guilty that one’s friends aren’t environmentalists)
Lonely and disconnected
Drained
Uncertain
Anger
Cynicism and resentment
Branches of negative eco concern reactions
Activating reaction: fight response (confront threat)
- Eco anger
Deactivating reactions: flight response (avoid threat)
- Eco depression
- Eco anxiety
- Eco fatigue
One study showed that eco anger was the only one correlated with better mental health outcomes, more engagement with pro-climate activism, and higher well being
Anger seemed to serve as an adaptive emotion, a mobilising reaction
What do positive eco concern reactions look like?
- Hope → using hope as fuel for problem solving
Helplessness
The “double bind” conundrum: damned if you do, damned if you don’t (contribute to change)
Feeling stuck and insignificant → inactivity
When mistaken for apathy by others, can lead to augmented feelings of helplessness
Activists guilting people who already feel guilt
Solution = compassion: when we feel understood and accepted for exactly where we are
Studying Eco Anxiety
Experimental environment
What would it look like to try and simulate eco anxiety in an experimental environment?
Stories and visualisations to help others empathise with it.
How can it be measured?
How is anxiety measured?
- Self report
- ...?
Validity of self-report measures
Influence of performativity
If someone doesn’t want to appear apathetic, would they be more likely to self-report as having eco anxiety?
Do most people who claim to have it define it in the same way?
Role of Eco Anxiety in Activism
Sense of urgency
Does eco anxiety add a necessary sense of urgency to the cause of environmentalism?
Seems like the purpose of most calls to action is to promote and augment some sort of negative reaction
Call to actions often attempt to make people feel guilt, fear, anger, and sadness
Signals that if you aren’t experiencing eco anxiety or a similar reaction, then you are too apathetic to the cause
Should the goal of relieving eco anxiety be to switch mindsets from deactivating reactions to activating reactions (from anxiety or depression → anger, or even better, hope), or could relieving eco anxiety reduce the vigour of the environmental movement?
Understanding Anxiety
Clinical vs self diagnosis
People use the word socially, without any need for clinical diagnosis
Self-reported vs clinical diagnosis
Lack of clinical diagnosis doesn’t invalidate the experience
Self reported eco anxiety
You don’t need a clinical diagnosis to tell you that you feel hopeless and helpless about the future of the environment
Companies
What approaches are companies currently working toward alleviating anxiety?
Timeline of Eco Anxiety: Past, Present, Future
Trends
What does its evolution look like through time (past, present, future)?
If it’s existed for a while, why hasn’t anyone worked on a solution for it?
Most past and current solutions focus on practical environmental solutions, neglecting the mental health aspects.
Attempts at informing people on how to make more environmentally positive lifestyle changes often come at the cost of over emphasising the potential impact of the individual over the corporate structures in place.
A focus on solving for eco anxiety could work now more than ever because of the upward trend toward mental health destigmatisation, particularly around the topic of anxiety.
Future
Are we ever going to reach a point of no environmental concerns. And if not, then will eco anxiety always exist?
What does a future with high environmental advocacy, and without eco anxiety look like?
Curing Eco Anxiety
Environment-first vs psychology-first solutions
Mental health vs environmental solutions. Most current solutions seek direct environmental impact. But there is an argument to be made about helping yourself before being able to help others.
Air plane oxygen masks analogy.
Active Impact
Working toward making an impact could reduce the helpless feeling that often comes with eco anxiety.
Types of impact (radius of impact):
- Self: personal environmentally conscious lifestyle upgrades (veganism, opting for public transport/biking/ride sharing)
- Inner circle: environmentally conscious advocation for one’s inner circle (friends, family...)
- Community: environmentally conscious advocation and interventions for one’s community (neighbourhood, group memberships, city)
- Global: environmentally conscious advocation on a global scale (protests, activism)
Eco therapy
The belief that the separation of humans from nature is responsible for environmental destruction and that we need to emphasise restoring this connection.
The power of awe & wonder on perspective shifting (optimistic nihilism).
Resilience
How to thrive vs how to survive.
Window of tolerance (Dan Segal): how much stress we can tolerate while staying connected and integrated with our thoughts and feelings without them overwhelming us.
Tech
What technological solutions are currently being explored?
Social
Lifestyle & Behavioural
Meditations → any eco anxiety focused guided meditations?
Bunkers and disaster preparedness
Avoiding the negative impact of media and news headlines
Exposure to nature: Numerous studies researching the benefits of time spent in nature.
Eco Anxiety in the Media
TV & Movies
Post-apocalyptic and dystopian movies and shows
Influence of photography
Ex. Pictures of the effects of the Australian wildfires to promote donations, sympathy, and collective action
Misinformation
What role does climate change misinformation play on eco anxiety? The importance of informing oneself through quality sources.
Social Media
Performative activism
How much of the eco anxiety expressed on social media is genuine vs performative for the sake of falling in line with the idea that the only way to be a public activist is by being openly outraged and emotional?
Groupthink and the echo chamber of environmental outrage
Doom scrolling
Clickbait commonly attempts to arouse an emotional reaction, which leads scrollers to only be exposed to the most outrageous headlines.
Who’s Currently Working on Eco Anxiety
Dr. Britt Wray
Britt Wray, PhD is an author, broadcaster and researcher. Currently a Human and Planetary Health Fellow at Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Britt investigates the mental health impacts of the climate crisis and their disproportionate burden on young people.
Clover Hogan
Climate activist | founding Executive Director @fon_xyz| researcher on eco-anxiety
Force of Nature
Mobilising mindsets for climate action
“We empower young people to turn their eco-anxiety into agency, and work with leaders across business and education to drive intergenerational solutions.”
Who’s Most Affected by Eco Anxiety
Direct vs indirect eco anxiety
Direct example: evacuated due to forest fires
Indirect example: concern for people being evacuated
Demographics of people affected by eco anxiety
Where do they live?
How does it differ across ages?
How does it differ across communities?
Eco racism, eco feminism...
Family planning
Effect on plans to have children. People opting for not having children out of fear for the world that they would inherit.
“1 in 4 child-free American adults say they plan not to have children because of climate change”
Climate scientists & activists
The anxiety, grief, and depression of climate scientists and activists have been reported on for years.
Victims of extreme weather events
Trends are seen after extreme weather events, like hurricane Sandy or Katrina, for increased PTSD and suicidality.
Northern communities
Mental health data from northern communities, where warming is the fastest, like the Inuit in Labrador, who face existential dread as they witness the ice (a big part of their identity) vanish before their eyes.
Innovating Eco Anxiety Relief
Free range solution brainstorming
Eco anxiety guided mediations
Facilitation of nature exposure
Hope-inspired resource for positive environmental news
→ emphasis on upward trends
→ innovations
→ small radius impact stories (personal, community, city stories)
Community building and social connectedness