Optomism, yes. OPTOMISING our shared resources. Encouraging others to action. THINK "What can I do to turn this round?" Change behaviours. Stop buying oil. Don't buy Chemically treated processed food wrapped in plastic. Grow your own. OK; so this is hard for some of us, bot not impossible to start.
This is happy-clappy BS. If your goal is to feel better, join a group of optimists doing good things. It can’t hurt. But if your goal is a clear-eyed assessment of reality, read the data. Scolding those who read the data and conclude we have no time to save most of us is neither helpful nor kind.
It simply addresses Eco Anxiety which, just like any other anxiety condition, causes a feeling of helplessness leading to inaction. The goal as it seems to me is to encourage positive action against Climate change rather than sitting with all the gloomy data and do nothing.
I don’t think ecoanxiety is like any other anxiety condition. Most anxiety isn’t rational. Ecoanxiety is. It’s not fearing the idea of extinction; it’s facing the fact that the data tell us it’s a foregone conclusion.
While I'm not a certified psychologist, I understand that any anxiety stems from a deep rooted fear. Whether a fear is rational or not would almost always be subjective. Emotions transcend rationality :)
I would actually argue against that statement. Eco anxiety might have its source based on rationality but the elevated response can be irrational. In other anxiety conditions that might be the same, for example if someone is afraid of a snake because it might bite, it's normal to step away from the path you're walking and take a detour but it's not normal to refuse to go outside your house just in case the snake might be there. Any sort of anxiety would be associated with a distressing thought which would seek any act/avoidance to make it better, that act will offer temporary relief and actually reinforce the original thought. So in fact reading distressing content will lead you to try to make some change not to "oh I have to change the world" but I have to reduce this anxiety which perpetuates the cycle. So infact eco anxiety based in it's roots on "rationality" takes on an irrational form. This can lead to other mental health conditions such as anxiety disorders, depression, substance use problems etc. So please let's not minimise mental health conditions just because one of them might be easier to palate as its for a "good cause". Thanks just wanted to add my 2 cents as a psychologist.
The irony is that my objection is basically that the author and several commenters seem to be minimizing ecoanxiety as a mental health condition. I think of ecoanxiety as a rational response to an existential threat that is real, not imagined or hypothetical. And for many people, it’s an added layer of stress on top of other traumas, disorders or vulnerabilities. So to suggest it can be addressed via the usual clinical approaches or mental hygiene hacks seems futile and even cruel.
I didn't see that as the intention. I think the challenge is that it's possible to get sucked in to paralysing fatalism, especially by some of the media coverage of disasters and clickbait headlines. I believe that we do need a clear-eyed understanding of the problem, but we need a sense of optimism, because don't believe anything can be done to fix the problem, then we won't do anything.
I think that personal action does make a difference, but it's systemic change that is really needed, so we need to focus more on that.
I agree systemic change is the only hope for mitigation. I think the media are downplaying or failing to comprehend the scale and scope of the risks we face. I think our human brains struggle to process what’s happening, let alone what’s coming. I find it nearly impossible to square my innate optimism with recent data trends. Maybe I’m missing something.
You're right about the rationality of eco-anxiety being different to other anxieties, but I still think we need to manage it partly using the tools for less rational anxieties.
The thing that keeps me going in all this is that a sense of cautious optimism is likely to prompt us to take action (and put pressure on governments and companies etc), while pessimism is likely to drive us to giving up and not doing anything. So I tell myself that optimism is rational and then just keep on going. I did write you a longer response then accidentally deleted it. But if you want to talk more about this issue, I'm happy to. I do a lot of thinking about this kind of thing.
The idea is not to ignore the hard facts or stop reading anything that is not positive but to view those things in the light of making progress. Progress needs action.
If people were to get, say, a similar 'Covid-anxiety' in 2020 (which some may have experienced) reading about the numerous deaths around them and felt doomed thinking no solution would ever get us our normal lives back, we would not have had vaccines, Covid-care facilities, or any other measures which eventually helped us emerge from the pandemic after more than 2 years. Rather the world displayed solidarity to act fast. This may not be the perfect example but hope it helps establish the point :)
It does—or it would, if I believed Covid was analogous. I believe Covid and climate change are but two symptoms of planetary overshoot. Overshoot has worsened, not improved, over my entire adult lifetime. Nor do I share your perception about global Covid response demonstrating solidarity or speed. Trust me, I want to agree with the optimist activists! Colleagues used to call me Pollyanna because of my seemingly indefatigable can-do attitude and creative problem-solving energy. 😃 But the totality of what we’re looking at is traumatic to even comprehend. The trauma response is not the problem.
Optomism, yes. OPTOMISING our shared resources. Encouraging others to action. THINK "What can I do to turn this round?" Change behaviours. Stop buying oil. Don't buy Chemically treated processed food wrapped in plastic. Grow your own. OK; so this is hard for some of us, bot not impossible to start.
Trickles lead to waves don't they ?
This is happy-clappy BS. If your goal is to feel better, join a group of optimists doing good things. It can’t hurt. But if your goal is a clear-eyed assessment of reality, read the data. Scolding those who read the data and conclude we have no time to save most of us is neither helpful nor kind.
It simply addresses Eco Anxiety which, just like any other anxiety condition, causes a feeling of helplessness leading to inaction. The goal as it seems to me is to encourage positive action against Climate change rather than sitting with all the gloomy data and do nothing.
I don’t think ecoanxiety is like any other anxiety condition. Most anxiety isn’t rational. Ecoanxiety is. It’s not fearing the idea of extinction; it’s facing the fact that the data tell us it’s a foregone conclusion.
While I'm not a certified psychologist, I understand that any anxiety stems from a deep rooted fear. Whether a fear is rational or not would almost always be subjective. Emotions transcend rationality :)
I would actually argue against that statement. Eco anxiety might have its source based on rationality but the elevated response can be irrational. In other anxiety conditions that might be the same, for example if someone is afraid of a snake because it might bite, it's normal to step away from the path you're walking and take a detour but it's not normal to refuse to go outside your house just in case the snake might be there. Any sort of anxiety would be associated with a distressing thought which would seek any act/avoidance to make it better, that act will offer temporary relief and actually reinforce the original thought. So in fact reading distressing content will lead you to try to make some change not to "oh I have to change the world" but I have to reduce this anxiety which perpetuates the cycle. So infact eco anxiety based in it's roots on "rationality" takes on an irrational form. This can lead to other mental health conditions such as anxiety disorders, depression, substance use problems etc. So please let's not minimise mental health conditions just because one of them might be easier to palate as its for a "good cause". Thanks just wanted to add my 2 cents as a psychologist.
The irony is that my objection is basically that the author and several commenters seem to be minimizing ecoanxiety as a mental health condition. I think of ecoanxiety as a rational response to an existential threat that is real, not imagined or hypothetical. And for many people, it’s an added layer of stress on top of other traumas, disorders or vulnerabilities. So to suggest it can be addressed via the usual clinical approaches or mental hygiene hacks seems futile and even cruel.
I didn't see that as the intention. I think the challenge is that it's possible to get sucked in to paralysing fatalism, especially by some of the media coverage of disasters and clickbait headlines. I believe that we do need a clear-eyed understanding of the problem, but we need a sense of optimism, because don't believe anything can be done to fix the problem, then we won't do anything.
I think that personal action does make a difference, but it's systemic change that is really needed, so we need to focus more on that.
I agree systemic change is the only hope for mitigation. I think the media are downplaying or failing to comprehend the scale and scope of the risks we face. I think our human brains struggle to process what’s happening, let alone what’s coming. I find it nearly impossible to square my innate optimism with recent data trends. Maybe I’m missing something.
You're right about the rationality of eco-anxiety being different to other anxieties, but I still think we need to manage it partly using the tools for less rational anxieties.
The thing that keeps me going in all this is that a sense of cautious optimism is likely to prompt us to take action (and put pressure on governments and companies etc), while pessimism is likely to drive us to giving up and not doing anything. So I tell myself that optimism is rational and then just keep on going. I did write you a longer response then accidentally deleted it. But if you want to talk more about this issue, I'm happy to. I do a lot of thinking about this kind of thing.
The idea is not to ignore the hard facts or stop reading anything that is not positive but to view those things in the light of making progress. Progress needs action.
If people were to get, say, a similar 'Covid-anxiety' in 2020 (which some may have experienced) reading about the numerous deaths around them and felt doomed thinking no solution would ever get us our normal lives back, we would not have had vaccines, Covid-care facilities, or any other measures which eventually helped us emerge from the pandemic after more than 2 years. Rather the world displayed solidarity to act fast. This may not be the perfect example but hope it helps establish the point :)
It does—or it would, if I believed Covid was analogous. I believe Covid and climate change are but two symptoms of planetary overshoot. Overshoot has worsened, not improved, over my entire adult lifetime. Nor do I share your perception about global Covid response demonstrating solidarity or speed. Trust me, I want to agree with the optimist activists! Colleagues used to call me Pollyanna because of my seemingly indefatigable can-do attitude and creative problem-solving energy. 😃 But the totality of what we’re looking at is traumatic to even comprehend. The trauma response is not the problem.