Climate anxiety-personal experience story
From doom and gloom to hope
Intro
This post is about my personal story how I developed climate anxiety and what happened to me and how I try to cope with it. This is a personal experience story which might help you. I am not a professional psychologist and thus advice here is my experience. If you thoughts about suicide reach for professional help immediately!
Contagion
There is an exact event that caused me a climate anxiety. I started reading “Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us Or the Environment” and felt how anxiety creeped into me. Anxiety was boosted by extraordinary heatwave in Northern Hemisphere in 2021. I consider myself as an techno-friendly person. I have always considered that technology is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. It has moved our civilization from caves to megacities.
I started reading this book because one IT PhD claimed that it changed is view of the world because he couldn’t find any (big) logic mistakes in it. Initially I was skeptical how disruptive this book could be. How wrong I was! It had very clear facts how our current system is working as if there is no tomorrow. For example CO2 emissions are still increasing, we send more and more synthetic materials to environment which don’t degrade but are stored in animal fat tissues, we destroy ecosystems needed for our life in Earth. Technology is making situation worse. Technology is a big part of the problem. Every technological fix becomes part of the problem. And this book is not some anti-capitalist propaganda but written by scientists. Hard to deny the facts.
That was a bit shocking but that didn’t cause anxiety. Anxiety was caused by the fact that the book was published in 2011 and during that time things have gotten a lot worse. No technology has had significant impact on reducing CO2, reverting destruction of ecosystems. On the contrary. Every new solution becomes part of the problem eventually. This was really causing anxiety for me. We know that we are driving a car 100 km/h into a wall. And we do nothing to stop it instead we raise the speed. And at the same time we talk about flying to the space for fun, while Earth is literally burning and dying.
This book really hit me. I was thinking for the first time that climate change might really impact us all. It might drastically reduce the number of people living on Earth (our wipe us out), cause suffering for billions, make large areas inhabitable. I was in a mood of doom and gloom.
Feelings
I couldn’t get these thoughts out of my head. I felt how anxiety consumed me. Every day, every second it was controlling my mind. I was looking at people like oh they don’t know that they might die in near future, why do they have children, children will have a horrific future etc.
I felt like I would like to run, but I don’t know where to because this problem is everywhere. We have one planet and we are screwing it up.
Anxiety caused me multiple responsive actions. First it lowered my energy level and I didn’t have power to do anything. Just sat on the couch, tried to read a book or something. As anxiety really reduces ability to focus, I was having trouble to focus on anything. I was pretty apathic and waiting for a doom. Didn’t want to talk much anybody.
Also I felt extreme quilt because I consume products. For example buying a bread in plastic bag really got me feeling that I was worse criminal in the Earth. I felt I couldn’t do anything without a quilt. Maybe just walk and sit. People in Western world (as me) are the ones whop send most of the CO2 in atmosphere. I am part of the problem.
Next phase I felt betrayed, anger. My education has betrayed me. I can calculate ROI of an investment but have no clue how to assess the impact to the ecosystem. What effect will this investment have for 7th generation in the future? Education is great at showing monetary values of stuff but not talking about real elephant in the room. Why aren’t newspapers talking about it? This is number one problem we have. If we don’t get over it we might be all doomed.
Then I felt sorrow for everybody that will suffer and die. People are already suffering. It is nice to read news about Olympic games. But in Southern Madagascar 1.4 people are literally in hunger. And this hunger is caused by climate change which people of Madagascar have little contributed. When will my loved ones and I suffer from hunger?
Climbing out of the cave
Climbing out of the hole needed multiple steps. In the following list I’ll describe what helped me.
- Stay physically active. It is important to get moving: do jogging, walking, go to gym etc. This will give a bit better feeling. If you just stay on the couch for the whole day your degrading physical shape will make anxiety worse. Sporting will not take anxiety away but it helps to build strength for further constructive actions. I’ve heard that for depression there is a constant pull towards doing nothing. Only way to fight is to do the opposite-go out. I do every weekday morning some jogging and exercises. They help!
- Share your fears and feelings to a close ones. Sharing your concerns, fears, thoughts is one of the most universal therapy forms. Feeling that somebody is really listening to you gives a boost in energy, takes off the defences we build around our inner world. But it is important that other person really listens to you (and this is hard). If they make fun of your fears this might make you feel even more lone and anxious. But don’t blame other person. I know that I myself didn’t take this problem serious enough just a few months ago. I cannot expect everybody to be like me. If sharing creates conflict, pain then I suggest some kind of relationship therapy like Imago (and yes this is not only for couples but for friends, relatives etc.). First time one somebody listened to my fears, I felt a lot better. I felt I am not a lonely screwed up weirdo, I was accepted as I was. Sharing also might help to understand yourself better. I understood that this anxiety is about me fearing death and dying. Note that if you are afraid of sharing anxiety to anybody you know (or it didn’t go in a way that would help you), you can always seek for professional help.
- Understand that you will fail to live forever. As I understood that anxiety main cause was the fact that I was afraid of dying I knew that I have to face this fear (the thing we want to run away the most is usually the thing that we have to face with). I couldn’t put this fear into attic. I was full of it. Then I got a few good book suggestions. Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (even if you are not a Buddhist this book helps to set a perspective). From these books I started seeing death and dying as something you prepare for your whole life. Don’t get me wrong, dying is full of fears, unknowns, sadness, but you can prepare for it. So when the time comes you and your close ones can make this process a lot easier. Western cultures tend to avoid talking about death, although nobody escapes from it. Not talking about it makes us more vulnerable when we face the death. We don’t know how to make dying humane for the person dying and for the close ones. Change of a perspective made me more grateful for the life I have and all the people around me. But this process of accepting dying and death will continue my whole life.
- Accept you cannot control it. Initially I felt that I have to save the world. Do what ever is possible to stop the climate change. Then I understood that I can only make a dent into a global CO2 emissions. I cannot save the world, not by myself. This made me feel that I don’t have to hold the weight of the problem in my shoulders. I don’t have to read every report or tweet how bad things are. I know that things are bad, it doesn’t help if I am in a hole. Having enough energy will be more important.
- Do something about it. Although I cannot solve this problem I can do something about it. I am now more analyzing where to buy what so that it would have smaller impact to Earths ecosystem. This anxiety was good because it changed my perspective what is important and what is not *and did it quickly). People around you, having enough water and food, some shelter is most I need. Else is luxury which might not last long. I see that only we can make the changes. Now I eat less meat, I prefer food that is local, compost my bio waste, try not to fly, prefer goods that don’t have a package, make my balcony biologically more diverse, try to understand degrowth approach, etc. These are small steps, not enough to save the planet but better than nothing. Another thing I did was to join Fridays For Future climate strike. I met new people and it helped me to understand that I am not alone with my fear. Also striking is more about making changes really needed like immediate cut of CO2 emissions, not greenwashing (replacing plastic straws and shopping bags).
Final thoughts
I cannot say I don’t have climate anxiety anymore. It is inside me but it is on a lot lower level. It doesn’t consume me so much and I can manage it. I know that things are bad and will get lot worse. But I can also see that more people see it as a number one problem to work with. Not just inventing a new technology but really reducing human activity. I now know that when anxiety gets stronger I try to do something about it. I also now a bit more what climate scientists might be going through.
Don’t be afraid of asking for help (especially if you feel you don’t want to live). For example h ere are inspirational stories of 3 men who got over depression while being basically at the bottom of the barrel (not related to climate change but climate anxiety might turn inti climate depression). From the page you can find some contacts to get immediate help.
I hope that some people find this post useful. Having climate anxiety doesn’t mean you can’t live your life. Just adapt, connect and take time for yourself.
