Its really cold in new york, so i'm gonna film next to this radiator and try to keep warm
[whoosh sound effect]
Climate Change can be really overwhelming.
Especially when I'm really plugged in and I'm trying to follow the waterfall of news
and science every day.
As each new paper on ocean temperature increases, or ice sheet loss, or UN report is published
this sense of doom and hopeless kind of settle on my brain like a heavy layer of dust.
A lot of the things I do start to feel really tiny and miniscule and it is silly to even
pretend that something I did would have any measurable impact on global climate.
A few years ago, I started hearing this referred as 'eco-anxiety,' and I really wanted
to explore that further, so invited Dr. Ali Mattu who runs The Psych Show and also happens
to be a Clinical psychologist over for a chat.
Okay, so let's start big picture, shall we?
What is eco-anxiety?
Ali: It's really about fear and hopelessness about what's happening related to the climate,
how that's going to impact you, how that's going to impact your family, your friends,
and generations to come.
Dr. Ali Mattu: It's really about fear and hopelessness about what's happening related
to the climate, how that's going to impact you, how that's going to impact your family,
your friends, and generations to come.
I think what elevates it from normal fears and stress that we might all have about our
planet, to something that's much more about anxiety, is that hopelessness, feeling kind
of stuck in your worries, and not knowing what to do, or feeling like there's nothing
that you could do.
Miriam: I've also heard eco-anxiety referred to as climate anxiety, climate change distress,
ecological grief among other permutations.
But they're all basically getting at this same idea of distress, worry, and hopelessness
connected to your global or local environment.
Ali: So there's no real psychiatric definition for eco-anxiety, it's not considered to be
any type of disorder, but it is a new term that's come up to classify a lot of these
type of fears.
And it's probably most similar to something like generalized anxiety disorder, where we
have a number of different worries about events in our life, day to day things that we have
to do, and a lot of these worries keep us from making decisions.
Miriam: Even though eco-anxiety isn't an 'official' diagnosis - it is worth exploring
for several reasons.
The hopeless and worry associated with eco-anxiety can stop us from doing the, yes, hard, but
incredibly necessary work of reducing fossil fuel use and preparing for the consequence
of climate change.
But it's pretty easy to argue that we should be more worried about climate change.
The impacts we're already seeing are devastating.
Ali: Well, that's the funny thing about climate anxiety, is in some cases, we want people
to be more anxious about it.
It's always hard when it comes to public health, and preparedness, and emergency responses,
to get people anxious.
It's a really difficult thing to do, because we are really wired to respond to what's happening
right now, not what's going to happen 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10, 20 years down the road.
So when there's a blizzard coming, or a tornado, or there's danger of fires, or drought, or
all of that kind of stuff, but it's down the road, it's not immediate, it's really hard
to get people anxious.
And we want people to get anxious, so they prepare and they act on it.
Climate or eco-anxiety is associated with the very real trauma experienced by people
living on the front lines of climate change: like individuals living in areas with poor
air quality, or in the risk for hurricanes, or experiencing extreme heat events without
access to air conditioning.
Ali: People might not think of it as eco-anxiety, but people who were in Michigan and didn't
have access to clean water had a lot of anxiety related to their environment.
Anything that happens in the environment tends to impact our most vulnerable populations
the most, so definitely kids, people who are pregnant, the elderly, people who live in
parts of cities and towns that might have lower real estate value, people who don't
have the means to be able to easily move or just go away for the weekend.
It's those type of communities that are hardest hit by natural disasters, or by changes in
water supply, or by drought, or extreme heat, or extreme cold.
People in those communities might not label it as eco-anxiety, but you bet they're experiencing
higher rates of anxiety, of hopelessness, of PTSD.
We saw that with Hurricane Katrina.
Years down the road, we'll probably see that with Puerto Rico, absolutely.
Miriam: But what can we do about this?
For people who are experiencing it, or if you're experiencing eco-anxiety yourself?
Ali: So you're not alone.
That's normal, it's healthy.
The thing to know is what do we do about it.
Sometimes people struggle with worries and there's nothing you can do about it.
You turned in your paper, the professor's going to grade it, the teacher's going to
grade it, there's nothing left to do, and then it's more about acceptance skills.
But that's not where we are with climate change and the environment.
There's a lot that we can do.
So number one, is definitely having some type of disaster preparedness kit in your home.
And that's for whatever you're likely to experience in your environment.
And so we're here in New York City, so, yeah, we might get a super storm, or we might be
cut off from access, like if something hits New York, subways are down, tunnels are closed,
bridges are closed, so we might be stuck in this environment for a long time.
Or if you're in an area that might be prone to a fire, or if you're in an area prone to
tornado, or hurricane, things like that.
What do you need to have ready in your home, and include things that are going to help
you to emotionally cope.
So a lot of us use music, or apps, or things like that to help us to emotionally cope,
like maybe you go on YouTube and you watch a funny Ellen video, where she's pranking
someone, and that cheers you up.
But if internet is down, if power is down, what's a version of that, that you can have
with you to help you cope?
Is it going to be a book?
Is it going to be some kind of board game?
Is it going to be printed out photos of loved ones, of family, of things like that?
So have some type of kit, but that also includes an emotional element to help you cope with
the intense emotions that you might experience.
And then number two, it's also about having a plan with your family, with your loved ones,
and something that is going to get you connected, also, with your local community.
So when Hurricane Sandy hit here, if you were below a certain part of Manhattan, you did
not have power, and you might not have access to water too.
And what we saw happen over there, is a lot of people who were in lower Manhattan were
connecting with friends and family that were more uptown and did have power.
So when it comes to any type of climate-related disaster, being able to connect to your larger
community is critical, absolutely critical, just in terms of being able to get access
to a safe shelter, being able to get access to power, or to water, or to things like that.
So it's not something you can do alone.
No way.
And the other thing is to definitely talk to people about all of this, and to talk to
people about your fears, about your concerns.
There's more research coming out now, about how there are network effects, where if you
talk to someone you work with, you talk to someone you go to school with, how that actually
impacts the whole network of people that you're connected to.
So this is a real tangible difference that you can make.
And it's actually critical to any type of preparation, and policy change, is actually
just having these conversations, because they do have ripple effects in your social network
and everyone you're connected to.
Miriam: Climate change is really scary and it is probably going to keep getting scarier
unless something extremely dramatic happens right now.
But there are a lot of reasons to stay hopeful.
Ali: I have a lot of hope and optimism about all of this.
What I'm constantly reminded about is, if you look at our evolutionary history, the
greatest period of growth of the frontal lobe, of the part of the brain that helped us become
the species who we are, the most advanced part of our brain, the greatest period of
development there happened during a period of massive climate change on our planet.
And I think being able to cope and adapt to environments is so inherent in who we are
as a species.
We live all over the planet, and it's probably because of massive climate change that we
are the species who we are.
But now we're much more of a intra-dependent global community, where one thing in one part
of the world does impact something in another part of the world.
And we're just not wired to be able to negotiate those type of social situations.
That's really hard for us.
It's really, really hard to scale up the type of helping behavior and community support
that is so a part of our DNA.
And so this is the challenge for our generation, for the next generation, for the generation
after that, is how do we overcome our tribalism and tap into that ability to adapt to change
at a global level.
Miriam: And that feels to me like a pretty great way to wrap up this vide.
Thank you so much for watching and a thank you so much to Ali for stopping by on my channel.
I cannot thank him enough for all the insight and ideas that he gave to me and his help
in making this video.
We had a conversation that was almost an hour long that I've kind of quickly edited together
and is now available to patrons at any level over on my Patreon.
So if you're interested in watching that click the links on screen or down in the description.
And if you want watch more of Ali, which I highly recommend you do, go over and subscribe
to "The Psych Show" – I recommend starting with his video "Why I give psychology away."
Awesome, I think I've got everything.
It has been a while since I've done one of these but, go watch Ali, subscribe to my channel,
like, comment, I'll be hanging out down there, and I hope that you have a great day.
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