Climate change and our mental health
>> From WXXI News. I’m Jasmin
Singer
and this is environmental
Connections Today’s environmental connection
began around 9 p.m. On a recent Wednesday, when my phone lit up
with
a text from an old friend. She’d
just put her young daughter to bed,
but
she couldn’t shake the
conversation that they’d had just moments
earlier.
Her daughter had come home from school very distressed, not
about
playground drama or homework pressures, but about climate
change.
She’d learned about it in
science class, and the images of
wildfires
and storms and melting glaciers
kept her awake. My neighbor’s message
captured a mix of anxiety and helplessness. How could she
reassure
her daughter? She asked me when
she herself shared similar fears for
herself, and even more so for
her daughter.
This moment of vulnerability is becoming familiar for more and
more
families and teachers and
caregivers. So many of us climate anxiety.
So the
emotional response to climate
change and the uncertainty it brings,
it’s
something that a lot of us are grappling with privately unsure
how
to express our fears, let alone address them. In recent months,
we’ve
seen a notable increase in
public conversations about climate
anxiety,
a direct response to
increasingly visible climate impacts. But
even as
we begin naming our fears
openly, so many people still struggle
privately
to cope with these overwhelming
or maybe confusing feelings of
eco-anxiety and grief and uncertainty.
How do we process? How do we
process these difficult emotions
individually
and collectively? What tools can help us find
resilience when facing such an immense and complex crisis?
Today we’re joined by climate inclusive psychologist Emma
Nelson,
who helps individuals and
communities navigate the emotional toll of
climate disruption. Together,
we’re going to chat about and explore
the
climate crisis and how it’s
reshaping our mental health. We’ll discuss
practical strategies for coping
with climate related distress, and
we’ll
reflect on why. Having open and honest conversations about these
emotions can lead us to
resilience, collective action, maybe even
hope
Emma, welcome back to
Environmental Connections.
>> Thanks so much for having me, Jasmine.
>> I am so grateful for you. I
interviewed you a few months
ago, and I just felt like I could have
sat
there for five hours. I mean,
you’re talking about something that
everyone I know is feeling, but
not everyone I know knows how to
explain
what they’re feeling. So you’re really normalizing something
that I
think is very profound at this
moment in time. So I want to start with
the
foundation. When we talk about climate anxiety, what exactly
does
that look like in practice? Like
how do people experience it?
>> For sure. So the first thing
I would do actually is broaden
this
term anxiety. I now use the term climate distress. Although the
word
anxiety is really culturally important for us right now, we
like
using it to describe a whole
host of feelings, but we certainly don’t
only
feel anxiety about the climate crisis, we feel grief. We feel
terror. We feel rage sometimes
and often. Really, we feel an
emptiness
or a numbness, a kind of mixture
of worried avoidance and denial.
And
none of those experiences are
right or wrong or normal or abnormal.
So
when I use the term distress,
part of the purpose there is to include
all
of us and all the parts of us
that are also having multiple
experiences
and different ones in this time.
Does that make sense?
>> Yeah, I appreciate the pivot
to distress, and it’s interesting
to me
to hear that you would put all
of those like grief and
all of those feelings under that umbrella. Anxiety, I guess, is
just
one way people are feeling about
this moment in time.
>> Exactly. And it’s a way that
we really like describing how we
feel.
But it can be a little limiting
if it’s our only word to describe
what
is actually a very complex and changing array of emotions about
being alive in this time. >> Yeah, I don’t want to get too
derailed here so soon, but I
think anxiety is an interesting way of
talking about things because to
me, in my body, it feels physical
and it
feels very similar to
excitement. And so I think like,
you know, my cords over there up
in my brain somewhere, hopefully
are,
are misfiring sometimes. And
whenever I sort of feel that palpitation,
I
just that’s anxiety. And so I
wonder if that’s partly why myself and
others I know refer to what they
feel about the climate as just
anxiety.
But there is a profound sadness
too. >> Yes. Yeah. Thank you for
bringing
grief in so early on. I mean,
even to go back to the way that you
opened
the show with the very poignant
story about your friend texting her
daughter, I feel in myself and I
swim in this material, right? I’m
talking
about it all the time. So I have
some resilience. Or you would think
that I
do. But you share that story,
and I just feel my stomach drop out
from
under me like there’s no floor and I’m
about
to fall into something that is
scary and unknown, and I don’t know
what to
do or how to be with it. To me,
the word anxiety fits for that, and
the
word grief takes me deeper
still. This is not the way I expected
to
parent my child and not the way
I expected to have to know how to
show
up for kids in general. >> Yeah, yeah. Wow. I remember
being
the age that my friend’s child
is now, and I remember learning
about
dinosaurs in school, and that
was what I was afraid of. You know,
like
dinosaurs. And now it’s just
like this big, real thing where, you
know,
as a kid growing up in the 80s,
it was quicksand or like, you know,
all
of these kind of random things
that you would see in, in these, in
these
movies. But now it’s not the
movies, it’s the news. It’s every time
you
turn on the radio, it’s every
time you turn on the TV, it’s all
around
us. And I know that you’ve noted
that there been a noticeable rise in
overwhelm. And as you mentioned, numbing as reactions to climate
issues. >> Absolutely.
>> Can you explain a little bit
more about why that’s happening and
what
exactly those reactions look
like? >> Yeah. The first thing I’d say
about numbing is that numbing is
an emotion like any other feeling.
It’s
not like our baseline state
numbing is actually an active process.
You
can kind of liken it to putting something in the freezer, right?
If I
put something in the freezer, I
have to pay the electricity bill.
There’s
some energy going into that to
keep it frozen. So then we get to
your
question, why might we be having
to put so much in the freezer right
now?
If we stay with our metaphor?
Right. Maybe we have a lot of food, we
don’t
know how to cook, or we don’t
have a recipe, or we’re just not sure
how to
digest it, how to eat it and
pass it through. And so we have to put
it
somewhere. And so our nervous systems are
smart.
They will numb us out when they
need us. And we certainly didn’t
evolve to
collectively metabolize this
kind of horror that we’re were really in
contact with, some of us more
than others on an increasingly
frequent
basis. >> Yeah, I don’t even have a
very big
freezer at home. So like, the
stuff would just rot on the counter.
Honestly, that’s such a good way
of putting it. And I think it’s a
defense mechanism, too. For a
lot of people. The numbness, because if
you’re feeling numb about
something as big as climate change or
as, you know, relatively small,
and I’m using air quotes here as
the latest wildfire that might not feel connected to
the
bigger climate change in the
moment that you’re looking at it in the
headline, numbness can feel like
the easiest way forward, because if
you
don’t have that, then what do
you have?
>> Absolutely. Yeah. I see a lot
of people who have shame about
numbing
out as though they should always
be feeling what we’re in contact
with.
And I really increasingly have a
lot of respect for numbing. If you
you
said it so. Well, Jasmine, the
food will rot on your counter, and it
smells bad, right? Like it’s
going to get flies. And so there’s an
intelligence to what our bodies
are trying to help us do.
If it’s our only strategy, then
yeah, we have a really big freezer
bill and
that can start to really detract
from maybe other things. We want to
be
spending our energy on. >> Yeah.
And I definitely want to start
to, unpack, like how we can deal
with
these emotions or confront them
or address them. I’m not going to
say
fix them because I know that
that is a go to for me personally, like,
let’s fix it. And I know that
you’ve you’ve mentioned before,
including to
me when I’ve interviewed you in
the past, that fixing isn’t always
the
right way forward. But let me
put a pin in that for just a moment,
because one thing I appreciate
about you, and you’re already doing it
is
the importance of naming these feelings, like naming collective
feelings about the climate
crisis. So what’s in a name? What power
does
naming our emotions hold in
terms of mental health and resilience?
>> Yeah, there’s an old
psychotherapy adage name it to tame it, that
the
first thing that we do as we’re learning emotion regulation is
learn
to put words on some of our
feelings. And with climate distress,
I think it’s increasingly
important because some of these
experiences
that we’re having don’t have old names, like the
experience of being sad or being happy. Right. Everybody knows
what
that means. But there are some
new words like solastalgia, which is
this
sense of loss of place when a
place you love has been changed for
the
worse, and topo aversion is
related. Maybe you don’t want to go
there.
You’re kind of averse to this
place that has been degraded in some
way,
but there’s something that
happens in my body just to know there’s a
word
for that. >> Yeah.
>> Something about it. >> Very normalizing. Can you say
those words again just for our listeners?
>> Yeah, those are Solastalgia
and Topo aversion.
>> Wow. That’s fascinating. If you’re just tuning in, this
is
environmental Connections. I’m
Jasmin Singer and today I’m speaking
with
climate inclusive psychologist
Emma Nelson about mental health and
climate change. Climate
inclusive psychologists tell me about the
choice to name name it that
because I haven’t heard that before.
>> Yeah, this is actually a name
that a colleague from the Climate
Psychology Alliance, I work extensively with that
organization.
Uses in her practice down in Australia. For the most part, we
actually use climate aware
therapy, but I’ve chosen climate
inclusive
because sometimes I see people
who wonder, well, would I only have
to
talk about climate change in
therapy? Or I had to work with you? And
that’s
certainly not the case. What I’m trying to do is create a
therapeutic
environment where we recognize together that the climate crisis
is
the context in which all of our maturation and struggle as
individuals is occurring now. So
it’s inclusive of climate change
rather
than leaving it as the elephant
in the room, or even worse, outside
the
door entirely. >> Is it inclusive of climate
change
or is climate change distress the foundation for it?
Like
if if someone’s coming into you because they, they
have marital issues going on, is
it possible that their fear of
climate
is partly at the core of that or insert the blank, how do I
parent
when I feel so, you know,
incapable of it today?
It may be the root of that is is climate distress. Can you just
tell
me your thoughts about that a
little bit? Because to me it feels like
it’s
the root. >> Jasmine that is a fantastic
question. So I’m just going to reiterate it for for you and for
the
listeners. So you’re asking how
much of what we experience as our
individual stuff is actually a response to this collective
unraveling, this collective predicament? Am I hearing you
right?
>> That’s exactly it. >> Yeah. It’s a great question.
The
answer is to me, both simple and complex. So the simple part is
that
our individual stuff. So like
what’s happened to me in my life, what
happened in my family, what
happened to my parents, what’s happened
in my
culture? All of that is always an already
interacting with our climate and ecological reality. They’re in
conversation with each other.
They’re tangled up together. The complex
part
is that that tangle might help
me in my life. It might actually help
me
engage in actions that are
really meaningful to me, give me some
direction, or help me feel some
grief about my family. Right? If I get
in
touch with my climate grief,
maybe it opens up grief in other parts of
my
life. It’s healthy. So there’s
that piece. But the tangle can also
make
it really challenging for me to
be in the world in a way that makes me
proud. So really, what I’m working with
when
I work with clients is asking,
how is the interaction between this
collective stuff? Our feelings,
our collective responses to the
climate
crisis, interacting with our
personal stuff in a helpful or unhelpful
ways.
>> So when you talk about
tangling things up, the first thing I
think
about is quite tangible, which
is like a bunch of necklace chains
being
tangled up. Taking those apart
is my least favorite activity. I give
it to
my wife to do it. She doesn’t particularly like it either, but
she
married me and she therefore
knows that untangling these necklace
chains
is part of her job. However, so
at the end of untangling those
chains,
you’ve got some. Presumably
you’ve got usable necklace chains that
you
could put your jam on. If you untangle what’s going on with
the
distress in your own life as it relates to climate anxiety or
climate
change, I should say from where
I sit, it seems like there is no
beautiful chain At the end of
it, there’s there’s climate change.
It’s
in and of itself is a tangled
mess that cannot be untangled. So I
don’t
I don’t want to get too lost in
my strange metaphor here. What I’m
asking is, is do we need, like, radical acceptance? First of of
this,
this catastrophe, you know, and I clearly my own
fears
are spilling out here. But this catastrophe we seem to be living
in,
that is not, you know turn
around a bowl. We have to sort of accept
that
in order to deal with the
distress or. No.
>> Yeah, I’m going to ground
this in, a wonderful phrase from another
climate psychologist, Steffi
Bednarek is her name. She’s out in the
UK.
I’ll say her phrase in a moment,
just to reiterate what you’re asking,
there’s this question that comes
up. If I were to really untangle
what I’m
feeling about our collective
moment and how my own stuff is playing
into
that, I would kind of be left
with this reality that is deeply
scary and
unstable. Am I still hearing
you? Right?
>> Yeah, exactly. >> Yeah. So Steffi has this
wonderful
phrase that is actually guided
my career. In part, she says, what
does
it mean to live well when the familiar is dying? I’ll say it
again.
What does it mean to live well
when the familiar is dying? And so
that
question, if you’re listening to
this right now, you might notice how
it
lands with you. Like how does it
feel in your body to actually ask
that?
What would it mean to live a meaningful, good life, a joyful
life,
even if you are born into a time
when the familiar is dying?
>> Yeah. I mean this it is.
Hearing those words is a gut punch.
Because
if you’re, you know, if you’re
going into therapy for marital
counseling,
for example, it is very possible
that both partners would do the
necessary
work on themselves in order to
come back together in a healthy way
But in
in terms of the climate crisis there there is no
compromise. It can make because
it’s just it’s just happening.
>> Yeah. I mean, I can lighten
it up a little bit for us here too,
because
there there is a funny side of
it that people often come to
therapy
because of our culture expecting
to be fixed so that we might return
to
being productive cogs in the
market economy that is created. The
same
mess that is causing us
distress. And of course, I have to tell people
at
some point in our work together
that that’s probably not going to
happen
with me. Like we’re probably not going to get to a place where
folks
are like, well, thanks a lot,
Emma. I’ll go back to work now
That’s funny. >> Like, I’ve got 45 minutes.
Doctor,
please. I need to get rid of
this, this childhood trauma. If you
can get
on that. Yeah, but now you’ve
said, and correct me if I’m wrong,
that eco
eco distress isn’t something to eliminate. It can even be
healthy. So
am I right there? I’d love to
know why you would frame it that way.
>> Yes, you’re right and wrong because this field is like the
the
paragon of paradoxes. So, you’re right in that the climate
crisis is a mental health
crisis. Eco-anxiety is a problem. This
is an
increasing and very real
experience of psychological suffering for
which
our mental health system is
woefully underprepared. So when I say
this,
you might think of things like climate trauma following
exposure to
an extreme weather event, like
if I lose my house in flooding and I
develop PTSD, that’s real, right? That’s a
deleterious mental health impact
of the climate crisis. Or even if I
have
an anxiety disorder and my
anxiety gets worse when it’s smoky
outside
because I worry for my children
and for myself. Right? That’s a very
real
mental health impact of the
climate crisis.
Of course we want to fix that.
Of course we want to alleviate that
suffering. So that’s true.
That’s one side of it. Okay. If I give the
other
side. >> Yeah. Please do.
>> And the other side of it is
that we are having inherently healthy
responses to a system in crisis. Climate distress is not a
disorder.
Climate distress is not a
disorder. Always say that choice whenever
I say
it, because our nervous systems
need to hear it, that there’s
actually
something right with you. If
you’re listening and you’re feeling
like,
oh, she’s talking about me.
Well, good. Right? You’re awake, or
part of
you is awake and you’re having
an adaptive response to living in a
time, perhaps when the familiar
is dying. Right? And so that feels
like
something. And that is a doorway into
action, or
can be a doorway into
transformation. We don’t want to fix that. We
don’t
want to shut it down. We want to resource it so that it might do
its
work on us so that we can meet
this moment with our full selves. So
there’s a real both end here.
This is a mental health crisis, and it’s
also
really not. >> Well,
how do you counsel your patients
when they are either convincing
themselves
that perhaps they’re being
overly sensitive or alarmist, or maybe
the
people in their life are feeling
that way about them? From your
professional perspective, how do
you respond to that kind of
skepticism?
>> Yeah, it’s tricky because our culture is changing quickly and
we
have all these, like, fragmented subcultures. So you never know
when
you meet someone. How climate
is, is or isn’t discussed in their
family
and how they’re concern about it
is being received in their family.
Am I
hearing. >> What you’re absolutely.
>> Asking about? So I think it becomes a pretty nuanced
conversation
about what’s functional, what
part of myself can I actually bring to
my
family, or to my colleagues, or
to my partner that the relational
system
that I’m in is able to tolerate?
And it might be that some social
circles
that we’re in aren’t able to
receive that yet. There’s grief there,
right?
There’s some sadness that we’re
all at different stages of working
with
this. There’s so much to say on
this. So I would just want to pause
there
and see if that lands. And then
we can say a little more about it.
>> It lands. It reminds me very
much of,
you know, a young Jasmine, 20
some odd years ago, going vegan, you
know,
living in New York City. I’d been vegan for more than 20
years at
this point. I was in my 20s at
the time, and just feeling like I
was
constantly going up the down staircase, right?
Because
we live in a meat eating society
and it was on every literally every
street corner with the hot dog
stands and this and that. And I had was
having this giant shift. And yet
all around me it was being drummed
in
that like it wasn’t me. That was
the quote, unquote normal one. And
so
it’s I’m not bringing that up to dissect that particular
situation,
but it’s very much reminding me
of, you know, the folks I know who
are
very concerned about the climate
and are alarmed by other people
around
them who aren’t acting like it’s
an emergency.
>> Yes. Yeah. I’m glad you said
I’m not here to dissect that moment,
because I was about to. Ask a question about that moment.
>> We’ll talk later. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can talk
later. But. Yeah. So what can we say on
this? You’re speaking to an experience many of us have of
this
kind of, like, confused outrage.
Why am I seeing something that
actually
feels so healthy and reality
based and important? And maybe I’m
changing
my life around it, and then I,
like, go buy milk at the store and,
like,
I’m just making small talk. And there’s a sense of unreality to
this.
Am I still hearing this? Right. >> Exactly.
>> Yeah. So that, I mean, even
as we just let that in the into the
room
with us, it’s worth saying that
that is not just you. Right? If
you’re
listening to it and you’re like,
oh, I feel that too. This is a
collective
experience. And sometimes I’ve started to talk about what it
might
mean to live in a time between
worlds where we have one world in a
system
that’s falling apart or falling
away or undercutting itself, and one
foot
in a world that really hasn’t
been born yet and that we can barely
even
talk about. And so those of us
born in a time are having to do this
strange dance of almost like
code switching back and forth.
>> Absolutely. >> Yeah. It’s a little
destabilizing.
>> Yeah. So what do we do with
that? I mean, I, I think that is a
great
way of putting it. You know, it reminds me a little bit of like
when
the internet came out when, when I was a young adult
and
suddenly I was living in this,
this world where we had we had to go
to
the gas station to, to get a
map. And then there was this, this thing
where
you could, like, get directions
on your computer by typing in the
address. And it felt like a bit
of straddling two different worlds.
Now,
that was kind of a fun precipice
to be at. This isn’t so much. So
how do
we navigate that duality?
>> Can I turn it back to you
here and maybe you might say a little bit
about how you’ve navigated that
in your own life, even with the
veganism
piece, like, how, yeah, yeah. >> With the just kind of
straddling
two very different realities. >> It some people don’t. How do
I
live? Well, in that. >> I mean, over time I’ve had to
just choose what hill I want to
die on. You know, I’ve had to
accept that, like, most of the
time I’m going to just, like, let
things
go because I know myself very
well. So I know my truth. And I know
what
what matters to me. And also recognize that everyone’s on
their
own journey and they they are
privy to different perspectives as
well,
that I’m not privy to. But the
core element, the anchor for me is
having
community around me of people
who really deeply understand it and
deeply understand me. So that’s
how I deal with it.
>> So three things there. If I’m hearing you right, and then I’m
going
to tell a story courage, compassion and finding
your
own people. >> Yeah, I love that way of
putting
it. >> Yeah. Do you want the story?
>> I do, of course I want the
story. >> You’re reminding me of Your
last
bit about community reminds me
of being on retreat many years ago.
I
was in my early 20s, probably.
And I’m sitting at this retreat with
this
teacher, and we’re doing all
this introspection and work on
ourselves.
And one of the women there were
doing a question period. She puts her
hand
up and she says, you know, I
feel like I’m really understanding
more
about who I am and what I might
be here to do. I feel better, but I
don’t know how to talk about
this with people in my life, and I’m
losing them, and I. I’m sad
about that or I’m anxious about it
and I’m listening to this woman
being like,
she’s not compassionate enough.
She’s he’s going to tell her right now
that
she just needs to understand
them where they are at.
And, you know, he looked at her
and he said, sometimes it’s
important to
have spiritual friends. >> Oh.
>> And it was very validating
for me because I, I think at that stage
in
my own development, I was
bending myself into a pretzel to try to
allow
space for others to meet me
where I was. And so depending on where
we’re
starting out, right, this is how
the intrapsychic our stuff and the
collective stuff are talking to
each other, right? I needed to back
off a
little bit and allow it to be
okay to have a community that gets
me. So
if you’re listening to this and
this is where you are feeling a
little
isolated, maybe it’s important
to allow yourself to have that
community. That said, if you’re so focused
in in
that insular community that you
can’t talk to anyone outside of it,
maybe
it’s the reverse. Maybe it’s the compassion piece from what
you’re
saying, the courage. I think,
goes all anyway.
>> Yeah, I appreciate that. I,
I’m wondering if we could really lay
it
out simply here because I think
we’re talking I feel like we’re
talking a
lot about the problem of, of,
you know, climate change and, and
how
people are sort of being gaslit
or gaslighting themselves, maybe,
if
that’s possible. I don’t know. Regarding,
you know, dismissing the reality
of what’s going on. And I feel like
we’re talking a lot about how we
can normalize and validate our
feelings
and recognize that this is a new world that we’re living in. And
we,
you know, it is normal. It is perfectly healthy to be feeling
this
distress and the importance of community. But what I’m curious
about
is how we cope with it. Yeah.
And I’m not I’m not sure if I’m missing
this
or if we just haven’t really
talked about it yet. And I’m trying
really
hard to not say fix it because I
know it can’t. You know, you can’t
and I
can’t. I wish, I really wish I
could, but. So how how do we go about
our
day? I mean, for my friend who
texted me the other day for people who
are
listening to this, who just feel
that gut punch, that despair, whether
it’s
about politics or, you know, how politics are, you know,
intersecting
right now with the climate catastrophe.
What what do we do with these
giant big feelings? I mean, saying we
feel
them like to me is a little
like, you know, weak tea. I just am
wondering
what happens next. >> There’s such a longing here.
Yeah.
What on earth do I do with the magnitude of these feelings?
This is
another paradox. So I have some tangible stuff that I’d like to
talk
about, so I’ll do that in a
moment. And at the same time, there is
such
an urgency that we’re feeling
with good reason to know how to grow
up in
this time and how to be okay if
we rush our way through it. We will
skip
what we’re really feeling. So
there’s a there’s a risk that we bypass
because we want to do climate distress. Right. And we want the
feeling to go away. But the
feeling is quite wise and it needs our
attention and respect. So
there’s a both and here. So that’s my
that’s my
preface to my answer. Does that track.
>> I’m with. >> You okay.
And then the tangible bit for
those of you who are like jumping at
the
bit, like what do I do? So
there’s a model I really like that you can
Google called the process model
of ecological anxiety and eco
grief.
It’s by a clinical psychologist
and climate researcher
out of Europe, and he talks about balancing
these
three facets of coping. So his
idea is you have an ecological
awakening
at some level. You wake up to
the severity of our predicament here
and
you feel really bad. What do you
do after that? He calls the stage
that
comes after that coping and
changing and the three pieces that he
balances
are emotional engagement, action and distancing, emotional
engagement,
action and distancing. The
amount of each of these that you need to
do is
kind of dependent on what you do naturally. If you’re an activist
who
only does action and you feel anxiety, or you feel depressed
about
the climate crisis, you’re
probably going to need to rebalance in
the
direction of grief work and
taking some breaks.
If you’re someone who’s only
taking breaks and who’s scrolling like
just
doom scrolling media all the
time, you need to get active or you
need to
feel what’s underneath all the
doom scrolling. Probably both. It’s
really
the flexible movement between
those three and balancing them. That,
in
his research, seems to help
people adjust to living in this time in
a
way that they have some more, more of a sense that they’re
showing
up in the world in a way that’s meaningful.
>> That’s great, I love that. I
want to talk a little bit more about
the
tangible. We do need to take a
really quick break right now.
But before we do, I do want to
invite our listeners and our viewers on
YouTube to join the discussion
here. I’m chatting with Emma Nelson,
who is
a climate inclusive
psychologist, and we’re talking about climate
distress
and how we’re managing our
mental health in these difficult
moments. So
please join the conversation.
Let us know how you’re feeling about
the
climate crisis. How is this
showing up in your day to day life? If
you
have any specific questions,
bring those to Emma as well. You can
call
us at( 844)
call 295-8255, or you can us if you’re local at(
585)
You can comment on YouTube if
you’re 263-9994. watching us on YouTube right
now. And
thank you and welcome to those
who Support for your public radio
station
comes from our members and from
Bob Johnson Auto Group.
>> Proud supporter of
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Bobjohnsonautogroup.com.
>> If you’re just tuning in, I’m Jasmin Singer and you’re
listening to
Environmental Connections here
on WXXI News, I want to say I’m
really
enjoying my conversation with
you, Emma. I’m talking to Emma
Nelson,
who’s a climate inclusive psychologist. I don’t know if
enjoying is the right word, but
there is something deeply grounding
about
discussing climate distress and mental health because it is a
very,
very real thing. You know, I
have a teenage niece and I sometimes
look at
her and I think, my goodness,
like, this is her reality. Like I
adapted
to this. I mean, of course it
was going on when I was born, but
it’s
just gotten 5 billion times
worse. That’s the official amount.
And I just, I, I’m very concerned for the up
and
coming generation. So can you
just tell me if this is something you
hear
in your office when people are
coming to you about climate distress,
perhaps concern about their
children, their children’s futures, or,
you
know, or themselves, like, I’m
also concerned for me, I’m not like a
totally selfless individual.
Believe me. But I I’m
I’m baffled. I’m flabbergasted
when I think about young people.
>> Yeah, absolutely. It’s a
concern that I hear. And it’s another
concern
that fits the facts. That’s an appropriate response to what our
young people are facing, and
maybe even a doorway into figuring out
how
to show up for them. So, I mean,
what comes up for me when you say
this is
there was a recent study last
year, a huge study, 10,000 young people
across ten countries ages 16 to
25. So these are young people, Gen Z
85%
of them are at least moderately worried about climate change.
59% extremely worried very, extremely. Yeah. So if you
are
a young person or you have young people in your life, it’s a
pretty
solid guess that they’re feeling
this to a certain extent. Some other
numbers from the study are 56%
of these young people believe
humanity
is doomed. What? >> Yeah.
>> What a feeling to be living
with. So it really begs the question
for us
as caregivers and parents and
and humans, right, who care for
other
people in our community? How do
we help them hold that?
>> How do we help them hold
that? >> Yeah, yeah, that’s a good
follow
up question. So one thing that
came up when you were just starting
after
the break and you said, like,
I’m kind of surprised that I’m
actually
like a little bit enjoying
having this.
>> Conversation. >> It made me think of this kind
of
group that I run sometimes
called a climate cafe,
which is an hour and a half long listening circle on climate
emotions.
So we don’t talk about what
we’re doing, what action is happening,
what’s coming down the pipeline
with news. We just talk about how
we’re
feeling. We use some nature
objects to help us associate and gets a
little deeper. But this funny
thing happens. You know, someone names
some
really scary stuff, like halfway
in, like someone’s like, I’m really
hopeless or someone is really
deep in grief, or someone is super angry
and
we’re all a little scared. We’re like, oh,
are we really going to talk
about this? And then we do and we’re
okay.
And then at the tail end,
there’s this bubbly feeling, and I’m so
curious about that. Bubbliness
and the more I do this work in
groups,
the more I notice, oh, we can’t
carry it on our own, can we? But there
is a
capacity that we might remember together. I don’t get that
bubbly
feeling when I do my climate
emotion work solo,
but I do in a group, holds it
with me. And so for young people, I
wonder
if one of the things we might remember as a community is how
to
hold things collectively and
include our young people in that, so
that at
least they’re not alone with it. >> I think that’s
it has to happen. I mean, it has
to be core to that generation,
especially as they come up. I
want to switch gears briefly before we
get to
some of our callers here and add
a little bit of context that we
haven’t
added yet. I noticed that you frequently mention, and
this
is something that’s deeply
important to me, to the intersection of
climate
anxiety with broader social
justice issues like patriarchy and white
supremacy, culture and
collective trauma. I know this is a giant
question for me to ask you to
briefly answer, but can you connect the
dots
for us a little bit there? >> Absolutely. So, I mean, the
brief
answer would probably be to
introduce this term poly crisis or meta
crisis,
which is the idea that the
crises that we’re living through are
actually one large crisis formed
of many intersecting systems that
have
kept us separate from each other
in the world.
So when we’re talking about collective trauma, what we’re
really
saying is the pain of what we’ve
done to the earth and each other
because
we forgot who we were, the pain of what we’ve done to
the
earth and each other because we forgot who we were. So
from that base standpoint, you
can track yourselves out to white
supremacy and to patriarchy and
to ecocide and our climate and
ecological crisis So I find when I’m trying to
link
those, it helps to go back in
time a little bit and ask ourselves,
well,
how did we get here? What are
the many things that we’re carrying
together and how have they
reinforced each other, talked to each other
over
time? In healing from one, you
have to touch the others. I never see
a
climate client who I don’t talk
with about whiteness or about
patriarchy.
It’s always in the room. >> I spent this morning, just by
complete coincidence, editing a
paper about Petro masculinity, which
is a
term coined by political
scientist Kara Daggett. And it basically
examines the intersection of masculinity and fossil fuels and
power dynamics. And it suggests that fossil fuels,
like
the fossil fuel industry as a
whole, not only provides energy, but
also
fuels certain ideas about masculinity, which is often
linked to
dominance and control. And I
think that’s actually a great
introduction
to our next caller. Samantha,
thanks for being patient. Welcome to
Environmental Connections. What
is your question or your experience
that
you’d like to share with Emma
today? >> Well, I mean, I guess you’re
sort
of addressing it right now. What
I, what I was hearing in all of
this, I
was feeling like, oh, like, okay, it’s a bunch of
white
people getting together and
saying, poor me, I’m so stressed out
because
of the condition of the climate.
And let’s really examine this. And
I’m
like, well, who’s, you know,
who’s taking care of the indigenous
people
who are having to abandon their homes
because
the water levels are too high.
And, I mean, and for hundreds of years,
Native Americans have been, you
know, their culture has been ruined
and
there’s no justice for them. So,
I mean, I just I kind of have a
really
hard time with all of this inner introspection or,
and probably not using the right word. But you know what I mean?
Like,
that’s what I’m feeling right
now. And I, I’m terribly angry about
the
situation, of course, of the of
the planet and my meager efforts at
recycling, just like it’s just ridiculous. It’s like there’s
nothing
we can do. I feel like until our governments really make it
mandatory
to do all the things we need to
do, and of course, our current
government
is never going to do that and is making it worse and worse daily.
>> Well, first. >> Of all.
>> Samantha, thank you so much
for calling. I just want to I just
want
to say that I think you’re
speaking for a lot of people right now,
and
Emma, do you want to do you want
to chat with Samantha about this
very
big topic? >> Yeah. I mean, Samantha,
you’re
bringing up something that
actually comes up a lot in these
conversations. It’s sometimes
phrased as, is climate distress a
privileged
white person’s problem? And the answer to that is
actually
more multifaceted than I think.
We often give ourselves credit for
in
climate, like when it’s talked
about in the media. So there are some
ways
that this conversation, the one
that we’re having right now,
privileges
the people with the resources
and the time and space and the lineage,
the
ancestry to have it. So who gets
to feel pain on behalf of the
world?
Probably people who aren’t
worrying about what they’re going to eat,
people who aren’t about to lose
their homes,
people who aren’t coping with
decades of racial trauma.
So that’s true, right? That’s a
piece of this. The vast majority of
the
people who come to me for
climate distress work are white people
of
privilege. There’s another side
to this that’s also important
climate
distress. The research tells us,
is actually more of an impact. And
marginalized communities vastly
more than it is for communities of
privilege. And of course, that’s because of climate justice
issues,
right? Because this is a crisis
that is and will impact those who are
most
marginalized more severely. And first.
So it’s wonderful, Samantha, to
bring this piece in because it raises
the
question of who gets to work
through these emotions and for whom, for
what. So this question often
comes up with my clients because there’s
an
assumption in psychotherapy that
you work through it for you, that
you
work through your feelings so
that you might be happier. But this
approach to psychotherapy really flips that on its head. You work
through it so that you might
know what is yours to do here, and
that’s
going to force you to look
outside of yourself, to look at
colonization, to
look at what’s happening in your community and what’s happened in
your
lineage. So, yeah, there’s lots to say here.
But,
Samantha, I want to give you a chance. If you want to come back
on
and say how that lands with you
and anything that it sparks in your
experience to. >> Yeah, I, I,
I agree with that to a certain extent.
But in my personal experience, I don’t see a lot of people in my
community making drastic changes
in order to impact the lives of the
people who are suffering the
most. Because of this, like those
marginalized people you were
just mentioning. And,
you know, there are a lot of
people yelling and screaming about it.
But
when it comes to brass tacks,
when it comes to, well, like, how do I
really
want to change my life, myself included? Don’t get me wrong,
I’m not
saying that I’m a saint or
something, and I’m bicycling everywhere to
work.
I’m not, but
you know, I it’s a it’s a
terrible reconciliation to know that
every
single day you’re breathing on
the planet and you’re contributing
to the
problem There’s there’s other people who
are
who are suffering even more
greatly than you and your. And you’re
just a
small, tiny, you know,
insignificant bug that has no impact. That’s
that’s
how I feel. It’s pretty
desperate. I understand that, but, you know,
somehow I manage to get through the day.
>> Yeah. >> Well, lucky for you, you’re
on a
show that where you can bring
the feeling of desperate and some
despair. I think that comes up
here. >> Yeah, yeah. Samantha, thank
you so
much. I really appreciate you.
You know, it’s not easy to share
that
kind of feeling. And I’m sitting
here nodding, and I just have this
feeling
that a lot of our listeners are,
too. So I really appreciate you
calling
in. And Carol, we’ve got Carol
from Livonia. Thank you for being
patient.
Carol, welcome to Environmental Connections. What did you want
to
chat about today? >> Hi. Thanks.
Well, Samantha really hit the nail on the head with
the
feelings that she’s expressing. Desperate and despair.
I, I’ve been very active for a
long time with climate change. Like,
back
in the 70s. I remember the VW
rabbit and the AMC pacer. Right. And
those
were such cool cars. And I
thought, yes, finally we’re going to
start
having smaller cars using less,
less oil and gas. And then all of a
sudden
I kept seeing bigger vehicles
and SUVs starting to arrive. I was
like,
what’s going on? And for years I wanted to have
a home off the grid. And we
finally did almost all that. This past,
few years. Not completely off the grid
because I
realized that to contribute back
to the grid was just as important,
sustainability wise, as to have
it all to yourself. So it really
worked
hard to study and learn how to be
self-reliant. So that gives me
some comfort on the not being so
desperate
part. But at the same time, politically,
just protesting is not enough to
me. It’s great to have numbers and
to
show others that they’re not the
only ones feeling that. But there are
people that came to me when I
finally pushed to have something in
Livonia,
a real protest, and it happened twice. Oh, I’m so glad you did
this.
I, you know, here’s my name and number. I want to keep informed.
And
so I’m trying to build on that desire. And I think it’s very
similar
climate distress that people are feeling as much as myself. And
my
thought was going to the
businesses, business owners in town because,
we are in the Finger Lakes and
we tend to have more of a touristy
kind
of economic situation that’s
getting
better and better, more year
round businesses are making it.
So I think linking those two
together and having conversations or just
meeting people where they’re at
and having some ground rules of what
is
fair and what is not fair to
share and discuss, to just start
talking
together again. And I’m
wondering what you think of that idea, and
if
it’s feasible. >> The
end bit of what you said, Carol. Right
Yes. It’s this longing to just
start talking again. Am I hearing that
bit
right? >> Yes
yes. The folks we all have very extreme. I don’t say all. That’s
not
fair. We tend to have extreme positions on climate change
based on what we’ve been told
and what we’re willing to buy into,
and
the sources of our news And that’s where I think we’re
missing the boat. And it affects everything. It affects the way
men
and women are not talking to
each other. Why? Some women just want
to
date women, and why some men
just want to date men. And I think
there’s
a greater issue there because
we’re just not talking anymore.
Whatever
happened to Venus versus Mars
books? You know?
>> Yeah. Stop you there, Carol. Because I do have some thoughts
on
this. I think you’re speaking to
a very painful fragmentation of,
particularly in our American
culture right now. We miss each other
sometimes. When I run a group,
this comes up. I miss my neighbors. I
miss
being able to speak with each
other and to know that we share some
commonality. Some, like
baseline. And so this comes up in our climate
conversations too. And I find if
I’m going to answer this question a
short
as quickly as I can, naming that
with another person is really
powerful. I
miss the time when we were able
to speak to each other, and we
understood. It’s a ballsy thing
to do.
>> Wow. Yeah, right. That’s so
true. And I also want to echo two
things.
First of all, that this could be a topic for
Connections just by itself. And secondly, I also just want to
thank
you, Carol, for calling in and sharing that. And I apologize
that we
have to cut you short here
because it is a very complex and
fascinating
topic. I was just talking to
someone yesterday about this, actually,
about
how she grew up in the 50s and
60s in the suburbs and said everyone
was
always outside. You always knew
your neighbors, and I can totally
relate
to what Carol is saying here.
Gary, from Bloomfield. We don’t have
too
much time left, but I’m so glad
that you called Gary. Welcome to
Environmental Connections. What
did you want to chat about?
>> Well, thank you very much. I always wind up getting at the
last
minute. >> Oh, no.
>> But, there’s a couple of couple of
issues.
One is the importance of, when you’re. When Emma was
talking
earlier, she said the importance of,
owning your, yourself and being able to talk
about, especially in family counseling. I’ve, I’ve been a
psychologist for a number of
years, and I don’t specialize in in
climate,
but I do a lot of anxiety and depression and those kinds of
things.
I also do forest, counseling, but,
but, the story I wanted to share and
one
is, one is how important it is
to in this. Let me, let me back up a
second
in this in this environment where people
are
afraid to talk about what’s
really bothering them. And I do that
sometimes things like, you know, political things or,
environmental things. They’re shut down so much that
that
causes problems in the families because it’s not just the
environmental issues, it’s it’s
the idea of not being able to talk
with
each other. Yeah. Share a quick story. That is
what
they put me on for. >> You’ll have to. Yeah, you’ll
have
to make it real quick, though.
Next time we’re going to get you on
first.
Gary I promise. >> Yes. Anyway,
Yeah. When one of the, one of
the things you had mentioned that
the,
that after everything else with
this, this convoluted speaking, but,
after everything else, you still wind up with the
environmental problems? Well, I’m going to share a quick
story.
When I was a younger man and my
son was in high school they had a
discussion about at that time,
it was nuclear proliferation and the
Central
America War and the Cold War and stuff like this.
And the teacher told me that they were having this
discussion, and all the students
were very anxious about being blown
up,
you know, and not being able to
end, you know
finish their lives. And my son, the teacher told me
that
my son perked up and said, it’s not going to happen. I know
it’s
not going to happen. And and he
just said, well, how do you know
that? He
says, because my dad is out
there every day working to stop this
nuclear proliferation. And, and
this stuff. And it was just amazing.
The
teacher was just flabbergasted.
And the whole
so, so, you know, the whole
class kind of kind of changed their
tune.
But the point is, Yeah, about 15 more seconds.
>> Yeah, yeah. >> Go ahead. Letting people know
that you’re active and getting
active helps your children feel more
comfortable. >> That’s that’s a very profound
way
for us to start to wrap up. Do
you want to respond real quick to
Gary?
Emma. >> I can respond very quickly.
That’s
correct. I know that story well.
The more active you are, the more
contained your children will
feel in their feelings. Show up for this
moment and and they will see you
when you do.
>> In our last minute. Emma, I’d
love for you to share with our
listeners
one key insight or practice that
you wish more people really
understood
about managing climate related anxiety or grief, or distress.
>> Oh, thank you for this. Yeah, it’s tricky because I notice in
myself all of the kind of psychotherapeutic coping tools
which
are really helpful with this,
but underneath them all is that we
have
forgotten that we’re actually embedded in the world.
So remembering that that’s
really where effective coping in this
moment
begins. >> And that is also something
that
totally goes with what all of
our callers said today. So I, I, I
feel
that sense of bubbliness that
you were referring to earlier, Emma
Emma
Nelson is a climate inclusive psychologist working at the
intersection of climate change
and mental health, which is such an
important topic. Emma. Thank
you, thank you, thank you so much for
being here with us today and
engaging in this dialog. We so appreciate
you.
>> Thanks for having. >> Me, and we’ll talk to you
next
time. I’m Jasmin Singer. Thanks
for making today’s environmental
connections.
Climate change isn’t just reshaping the planet; it’s reshaping our emotional landscapes as well. Climate-inclusive psychologist Emma Nelson joins host Jasmin Singer to explore “eco-anxiety,” climate grief, and the rising emotional toll of environmental uncertainty. We’ll discuss how climate change affects our mental health — and how acknowledging these feelings can become a powerful tool for personal and collective resilience. Our guest:
Emma Nelson, Climate-inclusive psychologist
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