“When we have cut down half of the world’s irreplaceable primary forests in record time, killed half of all wild vertebrates in a single life cycle and face a warmer, more turbulent and climatically unforgiving world, Wouldn’t it be wrong not to feel this precisely as anxiety and pain? Isn’t the alternative to that, perhaps, something delusional? This is how Ed Gillespie, marine biologist and environmental activist, explained the emotional state in which many people find themselves in the face of the climate crisis, human action, and its devastating consequences.
It is the preface to a book published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by psychologist Anouchka Grose titled A guide to climate anxiety. Gillespie continues his reflection by ensuring that this pain has a lot to do “with love and the connection we feel towards what we have already lost (and continue to lose).” “We suffer because we love, and pain is also the dynamic process that takes us to a new place,” he says.
These days, all of us Spaniards are feeling a kind of “collective shock” as we are experiencing first-hand or broadcast the consequences of the deadliest floods of the 21st century in our country, but we are not an isolated case. A total of 220 people died in Germany and Belgium in 2021 as a result of the intense rains that occurred during the month of July; In 2022, a terrible monsoon rain devastated northwest India and Bangladesh, also killing hundreds of citizens; and that same year around 1,700 people lost their lives in Pakistan due to other floods.
We must open our eyes, understand the absolutely exceptional historical situation in which we find ourselves. We must accept the reality (climate, energy, and food)
Jorge Reichmann
— philosopher
These are just a few of many recent examples. The climate crisis is here to stay, increasing and intensifying extreme weather events. “We have duels to elaborate about the present destruction,” says Jorge Riechmann, mathematician, philosopher and doctor in political science.
Fear, anger, and sadness
“The predominant emotion in all of us when we see this catastrophe broadcast – it is important to make this distinction because the emotional process of those affected is something much more complex – will surely be fear, but in the end each person will react based on their ‘trend’. We may experience emotions that we find unpleasant or there will be people who, through defense mechanisms, inevitably dissociate themselves from what these situations may cause them. Faced with emotions that are very unpleasant and realities that they cannot control, they think: ‘This doesn’t affect me’, and they experience it from a distance. The emotion is there, but they are not playing with it,” explains Laura Aránega, a psychologist who has spent years specializing in the entire range of emotions generated by the climate crisis and its consequences.
It is a process very similar to that of grieving: an awareness that life, as you imagined it in the future, as it had been presented to us, no longer exists. It is a loss of an ‘ideal’ and the sense of tranquility that a stable future would bring us.
Laura Aránega
— psychologist
He assures that it is absolutely normal to feel sadness, fear, or anger in the face of environmental disasters. They are “adaptive” emotions: “There are certain emotions that are ‘healthy’ to be associated with, because this tells us that there is an awareness of the environment.” And the famous “climate anxiety” or “eco-anxiety” can be added to them.
Aránega explains that we must finally leave behind the trivialization with which this term has been treated, since this type of anxiety does not have to do with something that does not exist, but is related to something very real: “If they take “Awareness of what is happening to the planet, it is normal for them to have this feeling of loss, this grieving process.”
Climate anxiety, another type of grief
“People who go through these emotions live a process very similar to that of grief: it is an awareness that life, as that person imagined it in the future, as it had been presented to us, no longer exists in that way.” shape. “It is a loss of an ‘ideal’ and the sense of peace and tranquility that a ‘stable’ future would bring us.” The person who is going through this, he explains, will have to adapt to the idea that the future is uncertain, as it has always been, but, in addition, “as the studies tell us, it seems that this uncertainty comes loaded with different events that are very likely going to be quite catastrophic. There is a duel in which the person has to let go of that ideal to be able to integrate all this,” Aránega elaborates.
Fear cannot be transformed into hopelessness. If what science is telling us is that we can still avoid the worst of the worst, but we have to make an enormous effort, then let’s grit our teeth and do our best
Sera Huertas
— environmental educator
In reference to this duel, Riechmann explains that we must “open our eyes, understand the absolutely exceptional historical situation in which we find ourselves. We must accept the reality (climate, energy, and food)”, but taking care to “not fall into despair”, says Aránega. The psychologist emphasizes that it is important “not to experience this feeling of uncertainty from the need for control, or that this leads us to stay too long in the future instead of thinking about what we can do here and now.”
“It doesn’t make sense to fight with our emotions either because they tell us something about the environment we are in and the world we live in and how we feel about it. We do not need to repress fear, but rather be able to give it space. To enhance the healthy and adaptive part of these emotions we have to be able to talk about it, we have to find spaces that are safe to be able to talk about all this,” he maintains.
Take action
The psychologist also assures that “taking action” can be very therapeutic for fear, because “you don’t stay blocked and sad.” “Here I would relate it to the two poles to which people tend when we are emotionally affected by these situations: one is more depressive and the other is more anxious, and they are related to the responses to the fear of flight or fight. “We have to look for an answer that is within the entire intermediate spectrum that exists between these two poles.” If our tendency touches one of these two extremes, those emotions, in principle healthy because they tell us something, can end up becoming pathologized. “Each person will be positioned on that spectrum based on their circumstances, characteristics, and needs,” he points out.
No matter how much pain we feel, we cannot let that emotion leave us at home. If we allow this paralysis, we will not be able to face what is coming. We need millions of hands to face this climate emergency
Laura Reboul
— Greenpeace activist and spokesperson
Laura Reboul (activist and one of the voices of Greenpeace) and Sera Huertas (environmental educator) know a lot about taking action. Both agree that the key to preventing fear of the climate crisis from becoming paralyzing is to transform it, first, into direct action by mobilizing to offer help to those affected, and then, into anger channeled towards the climate fight.
“A small dose of anger is useful, and that fear cannot be transformed into hopelessness, nor into ‘there is nothing to do’, but rather that fear can be turned around and transformed into a well-directed rage to achieve meaning to the discourse of hope. If what science is really saying is that we can still avoid the worst of the worst, but we have to make an enormous effort, so let’s grit our teeth and, with that, work and give it our all,” says Huertas.
Reboul emphasizes that “we cannot allow ourselves” as a society to become paralyzed in the face of these catastrophes, because “this is only the beginning and we have already had many years of paralysis, also political, in terms of climate action. It is clear that, if we do not demand it, no action will be taken. People, and especially the most vulnerable groups, have to unite, because in the end those most exposed to it will be the ones who will suffer the most. We have to go out into the streets to denounce that our way of life is at stake. No matter how much pain we feel, we cannot let that emotion leave us at home. If we allow this paralysis, we will not be able to face what is coming. We need millions of hands to face this climate emergency.”
Greenpeace has told elDiario.es that on November 17 there will be mobilizations throughout Spain to put pressure on this year’s Climate Summit, COP29.
We must demand more prevention and climate adaptation measures from our governments and join the mobilizations that arise in this regard without wasting any more time, says Reboul: “A strong action plan for climate adaptation is something that should already be fully implemented at the national level. state and international level. There should be coordination between all countries, because this is not going to stop happening, it is not going to be an isolated case. The question is: what are we going to do when the next catastrophes come?”
“It is important not to be left alone in assuming this climate reality. The weight of ‘opening your eyes’ is unbearable for isolated individuals. We have to accompany each other and weave ties with the mutual aid group. Ask ourselves what spaces we have nearby so we can hold on to them. If there are none, we can ask ourselves if we have the possibility of creating them together with colleagues. We can also organize ourselves through citizen assemblies. We have recent examples of collective organization, such as the Covid-19 pandemic,” says Riechmann. “The basic idea is that of mutual aid from below and from what is nearby: neighborhoods, towns… To resist reality but also to (to the extent of how we find ourselves at the level of strength) transform it,” he concludes.
#confront #climate #anxiety #DANA #tragedy #confronts #grieving #process
