Climate psychology and climate anxiety

The past decade has seen the important development of climate psychology.^{1–Reference Hoggett7} Ursano and colleagues^{Reference Ursano, Morganstein and Cooper2} describe climate change as one of the top threats to global health in the 21st century, and psychology has begun to respond. The American Psychological Association's 2010 report into climate change¹ identified six key areas for psychology, including risk perception, psychological and behavioural causes of climate change, psychosocial impacts of climate change, adaptation and coping strategies, psychosocial barriers to action and the role of psychologists. At the same time, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists are coming to terms with ecological loss, anxiety and guilt in their patients, and also among themselves, as they come to grips with the faltering biosphere.^{Reference Rust8,Reference Dodds9}

This article focuses on climate anxiety and its role in climate psychology, while recognising that anxiety interacts with a range of other emotions such as grief and rage. The American Psychological Association¹⁰ refers to ecoanxiety as ‘a chronic fear of environmental doom’, ranging from mild stress to clinical disorders like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide,^{Reference North, Kawasaki, Spitznagel and Hong11–Reference Arnberg, Bergh Johannesson and Michel13} and maladaptive coping strategies such as intimate partner violence^{Reference Harville, Taylor, Tesfai, Xiong and Buekens14,Reference Fisher15} and substance misuse.^{Reference Flory, Hankin, Kloos, Cheely and Turecki16–Reference Fullerton, McKibben, Reissman, Scharf, Kowalski-Trakofler and Shultz20} Cianconi et al^{Reference Cianconi, Betrò and Janiri21} found complex types of climate anxiety and trauma, including intergenerational effects, especially where environmental damage involves loss of a way of life or culture.

It is essential to differentiate between pathological and adaptive forms.^{Reference Panu22} The Handbook of Climate Psychology ⁴ defines climate anxiety as a ‘heightened emotional, mental or somatic distress in response to dangerous changes in the climate system’, but suggests that ‘paying heed to what is happening…is a healthier response than turning away in denial or disavowal’. Climate anxiety can lead to symptoms such as panic attacks, loss of appetite, irritability, weakness and sleeplessness,¹ yet given the increasing evidence about the impact of climate change on health, psychological professionals might ask if their patients feel too much anxiety, or whether they themselves feel too little. Climate anxiety is being felt much more powerfully among the young,^{Reference Kelly23,Reference Schneider-Mayerson and Leong24} by first responders to climate-related natural disasters^{Reference Benedek, Fullerton and Ursano25,Reference Alexander and Klein26} and climate scientists and activists, who are exposed to information about the threat more than most and therefore may need psychological support.

When considering the effects of climate anxiety, it is necessary to focus on at-risk populations, including children, the elderly, the chronically ill, those with mental illnesses and those with mobility impairments.^{Reference Ursano, Morganstein and Cooper2} Those from lower socioeconomic groups are disproportionately affected by climate change because of disparities in infrastructure and health resources. Severe weather events can also damage social support systems and mental health infrastructure, further isolating the most vulnerable.^{Reference Galea, Tracy, Norris and Coffey27–Reference Chan, Lowe, Weber and Rhodes29} Clayon^{Reference Clayton30,Reference Clayton and Karazsia31} reports that anxiety, fatalism, hopelessness and fear have been increasing globally, and offers a clinical approach to understanding, measuring and treating climate anxiety, while emphasising the distinction between adaptive and maladaptive types, and the need to keep the society-level response required to combat climate change in mind.

Given our need to effectively mobilise in response to climate change, the Climate Psychology Alliance⁴ suggests that psychologists and psychotherapists should not aim to get rid of climate anxiety, but instead ‘support individuals and communities to build strong containers that allow the expression and exploration of their emotions without collapsing under it or turning away’. Climate change is a psychological problem but that does not mean that it should be individualised or medicalised. As Lawton writes,^{Reference Lawton32} if ecoanxiety is treated as pathology, ‘the forces of denial will have won…what we are witnessing isn't a tsunami of mental illness, but a long-overdue outbreak of sanity’.

Why do we not act? Four psychological hypotheses

Climate anxiety is heightened in those that are aware of and feel the existential threat of climate change, by the fact that most of us, most of the time, act as if it does not exist. The poverty of collective responses to climate change is in stark contrast to its threat. Why do we not act? This section explores four psychological hypotheses, the role of anxiety for each, and comparisons with psychosocial responses to COVID-19.^{Reference Dodds33}

Types of climate anxiety and defence

Melanie Klein^{Reference Klein55} identified two groups of anxieties. Paranoid–schizoid anxiety involves feelings of persecution and fears of annihilation and fragmentation, and is defended against by psychotic defences (denial of reality), projective identification and splitting. Depressive anxieties relate more to loss, guilt and fears of dependency, dealt with by neurotic defences. We can relate these to the findings of affective neuroscience,^{Reference Panksepp56} which differentiates the FEAR system (involving the amygdala, medial and anterior hypothalamus, and the periaqueductal gray), which generates anxiety in response to external threats; and the PANIC system (centred on the anterior cingulate gyrus, with connections to thalamic, hypothalamic and other nuclei, such as ventral tegmental areas), which generates anxiety in response to the loss of attachment figures.

The psychoanalytic model suggests that the threat of climate change leads to two types of climate anxiety: first, the ‘apocalyptic’ fears (fears of death, annihilation and extinction); and second, complex feelings around loss, grief, dependency and guilt^{Reference Lertzman52,Reference Randall57} for losses that have already occurred and those that are to come (‘pre-traumatic stress’, ‘anticipatory mourning’, ‘solastalgia’^{Reference Freud and Strachey58,Reference Albrecht, Cunsolo and Landman59} ). Responses to climate anxiety include proximal defences (pseudo-rational, threat-focused and more conscious), distal defences (functioning unconsciously and taking a symbolic form) and facing difficult feelings and generating adaptive responses.^{Reference Adams60} Anxiety, guilt and loss become more manageable as they become more shared,^{Reference Randall61} and can be reflected upon in a safe space where realistic possibilities for action open up. All major defence mechanisms^{Reference Freud62} are clearly visible in relation to climate change, focused on the two emotional threats: denying the reality of climate change (it does not exist, it is a conspiracy), or denying our losses, dependency or responsibility (nature might die but we will be fine; it is caused by other humans or natural causes, the Chinese or the sun, not me).

There are many shades of variation: not only outright denial, but minimising the threat (it will not be that bad, it will happen in the future, or to other species or countries), by finding scapegoats through projection; intellectualisation (taking courses on climate change without allowing emotional responses or behavioural change); idealising charismatic leaders that support denial, repressing and suppressing awareness; reaction formation (denying the reality or the impulse while simultaneously giving expression to its opposite, e.g. those who ‘burn a tire for Earth day’ or participate in ‘coal-rolling’, becoming environmentally destructive to prove to themselves they either do not believe in climate change or do not care, as an attack against perceived group enemies, and a means of evacuating bad internal states); hopelessness (it is too late anyway); apocalypticism (the end of the world is exciting and allows for fantasies of the ‘bad’ being punished for their behaviours, and we can start again and better^{Reference Hoggett63} ); or manic defence behaviours, such as seeking distraction through increasing addictive behaviours and consumption,^{Reference Bodnar18,Reference Bigda-Peyton19} to avoid thinking about the problem. A certain amount of climate activism is also of a manic reparation type, which can quickly lead to disillusion and burnout if the movement's goals are not quickly met. These are just a few of the responses/defences that climate change evokes, with many reactions comparable with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Working with climate anxiety

Adams^{Reference Adams64} asserts that treating climate anxiety needs to address the underlying dangers. and therefore requires meaningful collective responses, including ‘acknowledging loss collectively and publicly’ as ‘an important step in facing up to the reality of the Anthropocene and the impossibility of carrying on “as normal”’. Randall^{Reference Randall57,Reference Albrecht, Cunsolo and Landman59} has emphasised the importance of experiencing and articulating difficult emotions, such as loss, grief and fear, in a shared context as a way of developing forms of mutual support. In addition to dealing with anxiety in their clinical practice, therapists can help support the development of social containers to express, contain and mobilise climate anxiety into positive social change.⁴ Ultimately, the results need to be measured in reduced carbon dioxide emissions rather than necessarily reduced expressions of fear.

By allowing feelings and thoughts we usually avoid to be brought into awareness, we can avoid more pathological unconscious acting-out. Bednarek^{Reference Bednarek65} agrees that climate anxiety should not be seen ‘as a problem to be solved or a condition to be medicated’, but rather ‘an important encounter with our awareness of our impact on the world’. All of us need to wake up to climate anxiety, including mental health professionals. Those who are most informed about the current danger, such as scientists, journalists, students or activists, often express the most intense fears – an anxiety heightened by feeling isolated in a culture in denial.^{Reference Schmidt, Ivanova and Schäfer66,Reference Smith and Joffe67} Instead of pathologizing their anxiety, which only worsens mental health, we can ask ‘what support do we collectively need in order not to freeze and anaesthetise ourselves against this context of so much loss?’^{Reference Bednarek65}

The answer lies not only from work in individual psychotherapy, but in developing strong social networks of supportive relationships, and a living relationship with the natural world.^{Reference Dodds68} Community is crucial for collective resilience, as we are seeing in the COVID-19 pandemic. Nature itself can function as one of these containing spaces.^{Reference Rust8,Reference Buzzell and Chalquist46,Reference Jordan and Marshall69} To conclude, the symptoms of climate anxiety are not necessarily feelings to be got rid of, but lessons to be learned, although only if they can be felt in a safe way, through developing meaningful action and positive social, psychological and ecological change.