#299 Climate Anxiety

We talk about climate anxiety as a real, complex response to climate change, and we name the grief, anger, guilt and dread that can come with it. We also focus on why this lands differently for the South Asian diaspora and share practical ways to cope without slipping into hopelessness. 

• Defining climate anxiety as an umbrella term that includes more than anxiety 
• Explaining why it is not a DSM diagnosis while still being legitimate and measurable 
• Personal triggers like adult allergies, rising pollen and wildfire smoke 
• Research snapshots on prevalence and who reports higher levels 
•The South Asian lens, including UNICEF risk rankings and wet bulb temperature 
• How floods, heat waves, monsoon shifts and air pollution shape daily life and future planning 
• Compounding stressors like school pressure, job markets and limited mental health supports 
• Coping tools: name it, set news boundaries, take small actions, find community 
• Grounding and body-based techniques for acute moments 


Tune in weekly with Gurjeet on Wellbeing Wednesdays at 6 PM on 97.9 FM or live-stream at www.theuniversalradio.com

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Transcript

Welcome And Setting The Tone

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Welcome to the Universal Radio Networks podcast. My name is Gurjeet and I'm the host of Well Being Wednesdays. You can catch me every other Wednesday on the radio. But welcome to our podcast. In today's episode, we are discussing climate anxiety. Specifically, we're talking about where the term originated from, how legitimate is it as a mental health label, and why is it important for us as South Asian diaspora members or South Asians to recognize climate anxiety? Welcome to another glorious well-being Wednesday. I can't lie, I'm not used to this rainy weather. It's something that I'm learning to love, but it's definitely not something I want to stick around for a really long time. I was just talking to Sabrina about this and I've talked to other friends about this as well, but I can do rain only sometimes. I can do snow for the six months of year that we haven't, including June apparently, because it snowed in Alberta in June. Because why not? Things can't get crazier. Which actually kind of works with today's topic. Today's topic, we're doing climate anxiety. It's something that I really struggle with a little bit because talking about systems and environments and things that are way above my pay grade and way bigger than me, like dying oil conglomerates and things like that. Like it's scary to think about climate change. I have very little control over whether or not the weather is warm enough to have certain crops. I have very little control about whether there's a flash flood in Calgary, but it does affect me. So we're gonna talk about climate anxiety. We're gonna talk about what that term means, how it came about, and how it shows up specifically for the South Asian community because a lot of us are more susceptible, or we have family members back home who are more susceptible to climate change than we might be in Canada. So we're gonna talk about climate anxiety and we're gonna try not to get too sad about it. All right, we're gonna keep it light, we're gonna try to keep it educational and informative, and we're gonna avoid sinking into a feeling of hopelessness because there is hope. There's always hope. And things are no doubt gonna get better all the time. And we can only do that with information. So we're gonna educate ourselves on what climate anxiety is, and we're gonna learn how to cope with it. So join me today as we talk about very cool concepts. We are talking about a topic that is a little bit harder than normal to talk about, but I don't think that makes it anything less worthy of talking about, to be honest. We're talking about climate anxiety. And the reason why I want to talk about this is so all of these really unique weather events have been happening, and it's gotten me thinking, I

Allergies Wildfire Season And Powerlessness

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have such little power over the weather. I have, in fact, zero power over the weather, but that doesn't mean that the weather doesn't affect me. Going into every summer, as I've gotten older, I've adapted to the increasing temperatures in Edmonton. But one thing that hasn't adapted to this increasing temperatures are the birch trees. And I developed a birch tree allergy as an adult, and birch trees are everywhere in Edmonton, like everywhere. As soon as you learn how to identify one, you'll notice they're everywhere. And the reason why that really sucks is because with rising temperatures in Edmonton, the birch trees are actually releasing more pollen than they normally do. So growing up, playing outdoors, growing up on an acreage, never had any allergies. Suddenly, as an adult, as the weather is warming up more than it usually does, I have allergies because a level of pollen in the air is just something not used to. And it could also be an age thing. To be honest, I don't know. This is just my best guess. And I've read that climate change has affected how much pollen that trees and flowers are releasing. And so if you've adapted to adult allergies, like let me know. Another thing is that summers are started to be called wildfire season. And I thought maybe this is just something that as I've gotten older, adults are talking about this term around me versus when I was a kid. Nobody really talked to me about wildfire season. But then I asked someone who's older than I am, and they said no, when they were younger and when they were an adult, wildfire season wasn't a thing. It only became a thing recently. And that's when the air is just filled with smoke. Jasper got burnt down, Fort McMurray had a historic fire, and wildfires really do affect us. There's not a lot of communication between BC and Alberta and the United States about wildfires. So wildfire wildfire south of the border in Montana has an impact on us in Alberta, but there's really no communication between Montana and the United States and Alberta and Canada over how to navigate that wildfire. So then we just get plumes of smoke covering the city, we get the red sun peeking out at us, and it's really challenging to live around. It's even more challenging for people who live in lesser developed nations. So when we think about family members back home or where our parents came from or where we came from, climate change has a very different impact. And it's much more impactful, especially to farming regions. So stick around. By the end of today, we're gonna actually have actual tools to talk about climate anxiety. We're gonna talk about what it is. Is it a real psychological term, or is this just like a TikTok buzzword that gets thrown at us every 45 seconds during the summers? But don't worry, we're gonna answer all your questions. I know they're burning questions because after all, it is wildfire season.

Defining Climate Anxiety And Eco Distress

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Now, when we talk about climate anxiety, one of the things that we gotta do right off the bat is define it. Alright, so it's a difficult, to say the least, emotional response to climate change and environmental threats. And it can be called a couple different terms, actually. So it can be referred to as eco anxiety, climate distress, or eco distress. And what's more important is it's an umbrella term. So it is more than just anxiety, despite the name saying climate anxiety. It can also include grief, it can include anger, guilt, helplessness, and hopelessness and dread about the future. So it's not just climate anxiety, it's this mixed bag of really complicated feelings about grieving the way things used to be, or grieving your home that's been lost to a flash flood or a hurricane or typhoon. It can be anger over people not doing enough, or it can be anger over the injustice of our poorest, most underserved citizens facing the brunt of climate anxiety more than anybody else. It can feel like guilt over not doing enough to combat climate change, and it can feel really helpless and hopeless. It's a really big feeling to tackle systems so much bigger than us, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth tackling at all. So it's really important to remember that yes, this is a term used to describe a complex state of mental being, but it's not a diagnosable mental illness or disorder. So you can have generalized anxiety disorder, but so far we don't have an official clinical label for generalized climate anxiety disorder. So it's not in the DSM 5. It's probably not going to be in the DSM 6 if I'm being honest, but maybe DSM 7 or 8. Depends on how bad things get and how fast, to be honest. That's a little bit of dark humor there for you. So it's really important to frame climate anxiety as a heightened emotional response to a very real thing happening to us. And it's actually coined by this philosopher, Glenn Albrecht, who described it as a chronic fear of environmental doom. So Glenn is actually a really cool researcher. He talks about biology and environment and the effect of humans and health within the earth environment. So he coined this term called solistalgia, which is the distress that's produced by environmental change. So that term is solistalgia. So it looks at the distress produced by environmental change and its impact on people while they're directly connected to their home environment. So it can be that distress overseeing floods in Punjab. It can look like distress oversee record high temperatures across Bangladesh. It can look like any sort of environmental change that's impacting people and the distress that comes with it. So examples of how it can show up is a constant low-level worry about the future that is persistent and doesn't go away. It can look like guilt over personal choices like use of plastics, not recycling, going on a lot of flights, eating meat, or using too much AC. And it can feel like a sense of helplessness when we're scrolling across climate news. And us being South Asian, a lot of our mental health systems are psychosomatic. They show up in our body. So it can feel like trouble sleeping, racing thoughts, tight chest, stomach pains, shoulder pains, back pains. And just know that this feeling doesn't mean that something's wrong with you. It's just a rational response to a very real situation. So we're gonna look at how it's backed by science, or if it's just a tech talk to her. So the field of climate anxiety is real, but it's not necessarily in the DSM just yet. People aren't being diagnosed with climate anxiety. However, that doesn't make it any less of a real phenomenon because it is legitimate and it's an actively growing area of not just psychological research, but also ecological. It's a public health issue, it is a biological thing, it's an environmental thing. So it's being studied by a lot of really different disciplines, but that can be both a positive and a negative, and we need to be careful about that because sometimes people can pass the buck off onto other fields saying, oh, this is more psychology related, and it's up to you to research it. And then psychology may look at it and say, well, this

Diagnosis Myths And Why Labels Matter

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is really more of a public health thing, but I I really doubt psychology would say that because a lot of psychology is public health, but it could be something like psychologists looking at and saying, this is more of like an environmental studies research area. We don't want to cross too many lines, so we're just gonna pass that area off to them. But research can also be really collaborative and there can be opportunities for really cool research across these different fields. So if you're a student looking for a research project, maybe look into this. Think about how cool it would be to have two research supervisors in two different fields, and uh also that's two different reference letters, left reference letters, guys. Reference letters don't just grow on trees, so think about it, see uh what the research looks like because it is a growing body, it's been researched since around 2007 and it's been expanding rapidly across the last five years. So just to kind of look at the current scale of recent research, there was a systematic review done in 2025, which looked at data over 60 studies and over 65,000 participants. And these 65,000 participants across multiple countries, mind you, they looked at them to measure climate anxiety levels globally. And the review actually found that average global climate anxiety level sits at a moderate level, but some estimates suggest that 70 to 80 percent of adults report at least some degree of it. So it's not a very, it's a very common issue. About 70 to 80 percent of adults think about it and they focus on it, but it's not a major concern just yet. And that's okay for it not to be a major concern. It is a growing body of research, and as our climate gets worse, like naturally we worry about it more. So it could be that it goes from a moderate level to a high level of concern. But to be fair, we also have higher levels of concern. Like people are more concerned about their financial state, being able to afford groceries, being able to afford gas. I don't know if you guys have read the news, but things are crazy

What Research Says About Prevalence

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out there. Another really interesting find about the scoping review is that they found that women tend to report higher levels than men, but age isn't an important factor. So it's not just a young people thing worrying about climate change, it's also older people, and it's seen to be pretty even across the age cohorts. But women do tend to worry about it more than men, or at least women report worrying about it more than men. So the reasons why scientists treat it as legitimate rather than dismissing it as just like a generalized anxiety concern is because it's tied to real-world threats and it's not an irrational phobia. You can track trauma and grief and hopelessness around a wildfire years later because people have experienced it. You can measure it. Studies also link it to actual events. So people in Bangladesh researchers found that a one degree Celsius rise in average temperature over two months was associated with increased anxiety and depression. So as this random one-degree spike happened, people reported worse mental health. You know, one thing I really regret doing is I got long nails recently for my cousin's wedding. And normally I'm not really rocket with long nails because of climbing. It's really difficult to climb with long nails. And that's because I don't want to lose my entire nail. I just don't want to get stuck on anything. I don't want to like do that painful thing where it like it's flipped up but it's still attached to your nail. Yeah, none of that is really fun for me. And what's even worse is it's so hard to operate the boards, you guys. So if things are a little bit delayed, just know it's because I'm sitting on the other end struggling with my click-clack nails, and they are just being a nuisance. But nothing is a bigger nuisance than climate anxiety. And the reason why that is, is because psychologists emphasize that your response to feeling anxious about the climate can be adaptive, meaning you can engage with these emotions rather than suppressing them, and that actually helps. By facing your emotions, you have a stronger sense of agency and increased drive for collective action, which drives then change to solve the problem that you're originally worried about. And it also leads to greater resilience. And resiliency is really that magic term in psychology and mental health, where it's your ability to just deal with what comes your way. It's your ability to be water. If you've ever heard the saying, you know, stuck between a rock and a hard place, be water, because water is flexible, water is resilient, water is still water no matter what situation you put it in, except for when it's too hot or too cold. But we're gonna we're not gonna think about that, okay? The analogy is perfect, and I won't be changing it, and I'm not accepting any feedback on that at this moment. So if you have feedback on my analogies, keep it to yourself. I heard that's a great place to keep your vinians. At least that's what people tell me. I haven't figured that part out quite yet. So, one thing we wanna kind of flag is the flip side of climate anxiety. It can kind of tip into something heavier. There is generally a pretty healthy fear and anger and anguish that comes with worrying about things that are bigger than you, especially the climate that affects you. It doesn't matter how rich you are, you can only run from climate change for so long. And when that anxiety becomes past the point of like a healthy worry, it can become paralyzing. It can lead to avoidance and it can significantly disrupt your daily functioning and daily living. And one more honest caveat for credibility scientists note that like the field of climate anxiety or the several fields that deal with climate anxiety are still kind of lacking a single definition. And so far, over 10 different versions exist, probably more, probably everybody's kind of developing their own as it goes, but it is a newer field, and it is unfortunately a field that exists and will probably be more researched as the problem becomes greater. So it's an evolving science, as all sciences are, it's not a fixed one, and we're kind of just rolling with the punches about it because there's really no reason to throw out the entire field because we're still working on it. All right, it's a work in progress.

South Asian Lens And Home Connections

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So, one very real aspect of climate anxiety is how it affects us in the South Asian diaspora. It is a refreshing break to kind of take away the Canadian lens and look at what it's like back home. And to cite UNICEF's Children's Climate Risk Index, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, and India all rank among the countries where children specifically face extremely high risk from climate impacts like heat waves and floods. And we've seen that year after year, temperatures are soaring past like what your internal body temperature is, which is wild. So we're gonna look more on the South Asian lens for climate anxiety and hopefully not feel too sad about it near the end. So UNICEF actually estimates that the number of children in South Asia who will be exposed to extreme heat waves is gonna roughly quadruple by the 2050s. So that is quite a lot. And just to bring in like a very vivid example, I'm gonna explain to you the wet bulb temperature. So the wet bulb temperature is a measure combining heat and humidity, and at 35 degrees Celsius wet bulb, even a healthy human body can no longer cool itself, and that can be fatal. And in 2022, there was this insane heat wave that hit Box Dom, and that was a time, like this was like pre-monsoon season. So it was incredibly humid, it was incredibly hot, and it reached a temperature above that 35 degrees Celsius wet bulb where the human body is failing to cool itself, that without external measures to cool the body, to cool the climate, to cool the environment, you're not making it out of that. And that's incredibly scary because what do you do when generations of your family have lived in an area? What do you do when you have no means to uproot and move somewhere safer? And for how long will that next area be safer before then that area also takes a turn? So there's everyday triggers that are specific to different regions. There is recurring floods, river erosion that eventually are displacing families, especially in Bangladesh. Like this is a very prevalent issue there. There's heat waves that are disrupting school, work, outdoor labor, water insecurity, and changing monsoon patterns that are affecting farming. If the monsoon pattern is always changing, how do you predict when to plant your crops? How do you predict how to tend to your crops? It needs to be predictable in order for us to have a sustained agricultural business and forget the business aspect of things, like just to feed your family. A lot of urban youth in mega cities like Delhi or Karachi are watching extreme heat and air pollution just become normal. And they're growing up thinking that this is normal. The same way that I grew up thinking summer is wildfire season, because I don't have a context from before there was just wildfires erupting all across Alberta and BC every summer. Just like these youth don't know a world outside of that extreme heat and air pollution. So it's important to remember that, you know, Edmonton has a very young, immigrated South Asian population. A lot of people are first or second gen and slowly becoming third-gen immigrants to the Edmonton region. So when we talk about these issues affecting Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, we're talking about people's homelands. We're talking about where people were from, where people have family. And it's really important to remember there is a very real, real, real human aspect to all of this. And it can feel a little bit like disheartening when we see ourselves having fun and going to spray parks and having popsicles and enjoying the warm weather and suntanning. And then across the world, people are experiencing like record-level heat waves that are just unbelievable. But that doesn't mean that we can't look at how it impacts all of us equally. So I know that it can get a little bit like woe is me. So I wanna just take a little pause in the middle of this. We're talking about climate anxiety, and it can be a

Wet Bulb Heat And Hard Questions

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lot, so I think now would be a good time to stop for the classic journaling prompt. And today's is a little bit different. Today is more of an action, so I know this started off as kind of like a like a thought experiment, and then it became something that I recommended like you could sit down and write a But just something to kind of get your wheels turning about your own life and something that you can, you know, take away from the show outside of the information that we give. So today I want it to be a little bit more of an action. Now, this links to a questionslash journaling prompt that we did a while back. And it was the question was like, What's something that you've done for yourself that is selfish? What is something that you've done for yourself purely for yourself? How did it feel? What was the the result of it? And so today I want you to do something purely for yourself. Now, it can be anything. It can be, I'm gonna stop at the gas station on the way home for work or the way to dinner, and I'm gonna get myself like a sweet little treat so that when I'm driving home at the end of the night, I can have that. Or it can be something like, you know, I'm deciding I'm gonna go to bed an hour earlier. I don't care about the laundry that needs to be done. I don't care about the fact that I haven't done dishes. I'm just gonna let them soak and I'm gonna go to bed because I deserve an extra hour of sleep today. Just something selfish. It can be taking time out to go to the gym when you really don't have time for it. But you know what? You deserve a little something extra, extra. So think about something that you can do for yourself today that is selfish. And of course, don't do something that hurts other people, not that kind of selfish, but just something purely for yourself that benefits you that would make you feel better, that would make your day a little bit better. I am currently locked in our studio, so I don't actually know if it's sunny outside yet, but I know on the drive-in it was barely getting better and it dumped rain today, so today seems like a good of a day as any to do something selfish. Returning kind of to the main theme of today. So I hope you do something selfish. And now I'm gonna do something selfish and it's talk about something really interesting that I found. So, specifically, I want to look at how climate anxiety impacts South Asia in terms of the psychological toll that comes with it. In a 2025 academic paper on South Asian youth, specifically Bangladeshi youth, they found that climate anxiety is increasingly linked to persistent worry and a sense of loss of control and depressive systems, depressive symptoms among young people. So, in a British council research, around 9 in 10 young people surveyed in Bangladesh agreed that climate change will be the biggest threat that they face in the future. And in Afghanistan,

Journaling Prompt Do Something Selfish

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the large majority felt their communities had become more climate vulnerable. Climate vulnerable is a little bit self-explanatory. Basically, it means that their community has become more susceptible to the effects of climate change or regular climate that maybe has gotten more extreme. So there's this 2025 mixed method study across Lahore, Garachi, and Islamabad that surveyed urban youth aged 15 to 24 specifically about climate change. And it signaled how mainstream this concern has become, even in cities. So it's not just rural flood zones, like people within cities who are a little bit more safe are also worrying about this. One thing we have to consider when looking at climate anxiety from a South Asian perspective is the fact that there's compounding factors. It just doesn't exist in isolation. Like the world doesn't work that way. So when we look at climate anxiety, it's not just in existing by itself. We're also looking at academic pressure, job market stress, and limited access to mental health supports. And this overall worsens people's mental health. Like there's just so many more pressures, so many more stressors, and then little access to supports. It makes it harder for people to work on their mental health when they're in an environment or a system that worsens it consistently. You can't really get sober from alcohol if you're living next to a liquor store. It's really difficult to get rid of a gambling addiction if you live across the street from a casino. It's really hard to have good mental health when you have all these pressures and stressors on you, but it doesn't make it impossible. Another thing to look at is that any existing app gaps in society or access to healthcare just get worse as climate anxiety increases or as climate change increases. So, on a gendered note, regional studies are pointing to added vulnerability for girls and women. And that's tied to existing social and economic disparities. And I haven't quite found as much research on this, but I imagine any other social vulnerability like class, status, income, gender, um, caste, any of that will just get exacerbated as things get worse. But, you know, naming these patterns

Youth Studies And Compounding Stressors

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and noticing these gaps doesn't add any more weight to them than is already there. Me naming them and listing them doesn't make it any more scarier than it was when people are facing these, but don't exactly have a name. So it's important to name it and then back it up with science and show people that this is real and personalize it because you know this is real and it's impacting people we know. It's impacting places we're close to. And then it's time to do something about it. So, some practical tools for navigating climate anxiety are really similar to the other ones that you would use around any sort of other mental health burden that you're facing. So the goal isn't to eliminate the worry completely. That is an unrealistic goal. And also the goal is just to make it 1% better. If we can worry about it 1% less or have it impact our life, but still worry about it 1% less, then let's do that. So the first step is naming it and normalizing it. Of course, naming and normalizing it doesn't make it any more scarier than the fact that it was already there. In fact, having language to talk about it reduces the isolation of it, gives us language, it gives us power, it gives us information to be able to talk about it instead of carrying it silently and slowly. And if we have a name for it, more people are able to recognize it in themselves and say, okay, maybe I do need to take a break from climate news and social media because this is starting to impact me. I am feeling a little bit of climate anxiety. Having a name for it gives you power over it. The second is set boundaries around news and social media. Us knowing about every single bad weather event isn't gonna make that bad weather event not happen. It's important to stay informed, but maybe it's time to put a limit to how often we stay informed. How often are we looking at this information and exposing ourselves to it? We can know that it's happening, but we don't have to brutalize ourselves by accessing photos and videos of firsthand accounts repeatedly of things going on in different regions. We know that they're going on, we know that they're important, we know that we care, but if it's getting to a point where it's starting to impact you, then maybe it's time to set a boundary there. Third step is channel it into action and even a small action. Pick up a piece of trash, recycle. Little actions have an impact and we matter. Now, the important thing to remember is that things are truly always getting better. And with these practical tools, I really hope that you feel that there is a sense of control. Because for a lot of people, you know what? I feel like climate anxiety isn't really top of mind, but that doesn't change the fact that it is happening and that is, you know, something that we've worried about. So setting boundaries around new social media, naming it, normalizing it, and channeling channeling it into actions, even small ones, has an impact. Now, of course, there's little things that we can do in our day-to-day lives. We do all have carbon footprints and we can all, you know, switch to paper straws and avoid plastic bags and organize like river cleanups or trail cleanups. But it's important to remember that that is just to give us a sense of control. As an individual consumer, our footprint is so small compared to, you know, big industries. So take that with a grain of salt because some people do bring that up quite often. However, I don't think that erases us of our personal responsibility to do our part. So being mindful of what we consume, how we consume

Coping Tools Boundaries Action Community

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it, that all plays a part in this. Another tip is to connect with community and don't go into it solo. Like find people who also care about this. If you feel like your friends may not quite understand it, try to find a community group or talk to your family about it. If you feel like your family might not understand it, then talk to your friends. And if your friends don't understand it, to be honest, educate them. They're your friends, they care about what you care about. So those are some tools. Another is grounding and body base techniques for acute moments. So if you come across a news article and it's talking about a climate event that happened in a community that you're connected to, or you know, one thing that always gets me is whenever I see bad things happen to other Punjabi people or other people who look Indian or other brown people, as I always say, and then get in trouble for saying because some people don't like the term brown because lots of people are brown, but we get what we mean when we say it. And whenever I see people that look like my family members in trouble or struggling, like specifically, I'm thinking back to the Punjab protest where my feed was just back-to-back endless amounts of people that look like me, people that look like my grandparents, people that look like my aunts and my uncles struggling and suffering. It was very hard to see that because it became my entire feed. And I would find myself, you know, stopping to scroll in between work and like just be stopped in my tracks because what I saw was so disturbing and upsetting, and it looked like state violence against Punjabi people, it looked like crazy weather, it looked like just so many concerns around food instability and climate instability, and it all became this like big thing. And I found myself like reacting to it as if it was happening to me, and I had to pause and just do a breath exercise or a rounding exercise to just remind myself that you know what, I'm not actually there right now, and I can do what's within my power, but me getting upset right now isn't gonna help anybody, but it's okay to feel upset right now because what I'm seeing is upsetting. Another thing is to reframe this all or nothing thinking that you don't have to be the single source to fix everything for everyone. We're one person and we don't have to do it alone, and no one to seek support. So that's another tip is to know that if this is something that's growing for you and it's becoming something that is a problem, bring it up. Don't carry it alone and don't feel silly that you're worried about the environment. The environment is important, the environment is based on like we base everything we do on our environment. So just know that it is important and it is valid. It's a little bit hard to talk about climate anxiety. I can't lie, because I get anxious about it. And whenever I get anxious, I notice like my leg bounces a lot, or I feel really erratic, or I just feel like I bounce from topic to topic to topic. But also, these are things that I do when I'm tired, which is really interesting. But I do hope that you pay attention to the signs in your own body as we've listened through today's show and you keep an eye on this in the future because I have no doubts that, you know, flood warnings, mudslides in Edmonton specifically, like we don't get quite a lot of natural disasters. If anything, the most realistic ones are wildfires. And we've talked quite a bit about those. But keep in mind that as we hear about the things that happen around the world, specifically related to ecology or the environment or the climate, keep in mind that you are still a person who deserves to be happy and free of anxiety and worry. But worrying about these things is not abnormal. It is normal to be worried about your environment. It is normal to be worried about what's going

Grounding Support And Closing Reframe

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on around you and in your environment. So it's not weird, it's not strange, it's not overthinking. Like this is this is a real thing. And it's a growing body of literature talking about climate anxiety, specifically anxiety around how our environment, specifically the earth environment, impacts us, as we've seen by the definition I used in the beginning of today's episode. It is something to consider, but it's definitely not something to stop you from enjoying good weather or from trying to find ways to enjoy bad weather. And just remember that we can take individual action as well as lobby and petition and do river cleanups. And you don't discourage your grandma or your grandpa from throwing out their coffee cup on the park bench because there's no nearby convenient garbage can. Just do what you can that's within your power, and I'll see you in two weeks for Wellbeing Wednesday.

Follow The Show And Listen Anywhere

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