S2 EP4: Eco-anxiety - how should we respond?

After a brief update on Episode 6 from Season 1 "Flying, climate change and the bystander effect", we continue exploring eco-anxiety. Expert Panu Pihkala explains how eco-anxiety can be viewed as a process involving emotional engagement, self-care and action. Paul considers the educational implications of the link to action, and meets climate activist Rosie, who explains how she has experienced climate anxiety and responded to it.    

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Transcript

Eco-anxiety 2 – How should we respond?

Hello and welcome to Mind Brain and Planet where we’ll shortly be continuing with our exploration of eco-anxiety but just before that -  Episode 6 of season 1 on the psychology of student flying – the biggest source of carbon emissions from our top universities…..You might remember the students suggested more events over Christmas vacation might encourage them to fly home less. So that’s why I’m outside our first Karaoke for Climate party – sneak in and let’s see how it’s going….my first impression is that it’s very loud!

PHJ: Can I just ask what is it about Karaoke that makes karaoke so exciting? 

Student: Meeting new people as well as singing…

PHJ: Do you think if we did more Karaoke then maybe students might not want to go home so much?

Student: Yes because we don’t get much opportunities during the semester to meet different people.

PHJ: So karaoke for climate is not a crazy idea?

Student: No it’s not a crazy idea.

PHJ: Do you mind me asking where you’re from?

Student: China

PHJ: what is it about Karaoke that makes karaoke so exciting? 

Student: Beer! Yeah beer. Beer is a very important alcohol. Also I think that 

It’s like people who love music gather round and share and even broaden our howizons because like these guys can broaden my music taste (Hindi singing). It’s really famous in China – I don’t know why….but everyone just sings this,

PHJ: So could Karaoke be a major weapon in the fight against global warming?  Well, I don’t know about that – but if universities are serious about cutting carbon emissions then, by my calculations, events for international students during vacations could have a bigger impact than just adding more insulation to lecture theatres. And isn’t it great when you find something that’s cheap, good for the community and good for the planet? Love karaoke…(And let’s all be grateful I didn’t record my version of Sweet Caroline)

PHJ: In the last episode, we put eco-anxiety under the microscope, or perhaps I should I say into the brain scanner, and decided it was a very real and increasing phenomenon particularly among young people. While it can become problematic, eco-anxiety doesn’t generally present itself as a disorder – but rather the adaptive response of a healthy brain – part of a normal process, if you like. So let’s pick up with Panu Pihkala again, at the University of Helsinki, who spoke of eco-anxiety as process involving three components: emotional engagement, action and self-care. 

Panu: Hello, my name is Panu Pihkala. I'm speaking from Helsinki. I work at the University of Helsinki with interdisciplinary environmental research specializing in eco-anxiety and eco emotions research.

PHJ: Panu thank you for joining us again. Let’s look at each of these components now in more detail. Self-care sounds a good idea – so anyone who’s feeling eco-anxious should be mindful of protecting their own personal resources – what does that mean in practise?  

Panu: Depending on how much trouble and stress there is generally in a person's life, there will be different kinds of challenges and possibilities. But a very universal challenges would be to limit the amount of stress in our nervous system. A classic example would be that if a person continuously follows troubling environmental news, which is very easy because of smartphones and other things, that causes a reaction in our nervous system, and we can't take it if we do it 24/7. So one very on one hand, simple, but also sometimes complex and crucial thing is just to limit our exposure to troubling information. So that's one example of taking care of our resources. But of course, so many other things are there also: trying to sleep enough, if only possible, trying to negotiate feelings of responsibility or possible guilt so that a person can give themselves permission also to rest every once in a while. And this has been shown to be sometimes difficult for environmentally active people because there's strong motivation to do things, and there's so much to be done that it may be difficult to give enough space for rest also.

PHJ: And in terms of emotional engagement, you’ve written a lot about grieving – and that can be a positive step towards personal change and being able to cope. Is that right?

Panu: Yeah, absolutely. And it's often all about balance. So distancing to a certain amount and in a certain rhythm is healthy. But if one only practises distancing, that's gonna be problematic, both in relation to responsibility and in relation to cognitive dissonance, and also in relation to grief and mourning. It's gonna be very often necessary, but if that's the only terrain in which we walk, it's gonna be very heavy. So having rest from grieving is also very important And that is studied in grief and bereavement theory. So grieving can be about many things. For many people it's the local environmental changes. You know, there's a species of bird that you have become accustomed to and living with it, and, and then it disappears, which causes sadness. It may be the local forest, which is either cut down because of construction or then global warming has an impact on its vitality. And these kinds of ecological losses usually haven't been much engaged with in western industrialized societies. So this whole dimension of grieving is related to quite profound cultural change. But I'm very happy that in various parts of the world, there are now movements which argue that it's grievable these kinds of ecological losses.

PHJ: Grievable – that’s a new word for me – but I can see it’s important to be able to acknowledge a strong enduring sense of loss as grief. So we have self-care, we have emotional engagement – but action feels like a really important part of this response?

Panu: Hmm. Yes. Thanks for asking. And many people find resources via some kind of action. And psychologically we can speak about efficacy here also. And one of them difficult conditions, often associated with various levels of eco anxiety, is feeling of powerlessness and sometimes even helplessness because the problems are so global. And a sort of antidote to that is the ability to at least do something good in the world. And for some people, that's more direct environmental activism. For others, it's like supporting others who do the direct activism. But it all can also be community building learning skills for local gardening, for example, which include increases community resilience. So there's many kinds of actions and that that also psychologically helps us.

PHJ: Well thank you so much Panu, that’s really for me clarified the different ways in which we might positively respond to experiencing eco-anxiety. I have to ask is there anything that you do personally that you find is helpful?

Panu: Hmm. Yeah. It's been a lovely discussion and I also appreciate this last question. And I've been trying to develop, develop a broader array of emotion regulation methods over the years. And playing music, for example, is important for me. And I've even started doing, doing dancing, which I didn't do as a young Finnish person. That was also very common for Finnish young men (not to really dance). But going outdoors and practicing a kind of concentrated but intuitive connection with the modern human world, especially trees. Now, this is not a very novel idea, and folks in environmental psychology and eco-psychology have written a lot about this. But my personal experience is that it really helps and there are sort of possibilities to get deeper with that also by being present and doing perhaps some breathing exercises and, and so on. So I still keep learning many things when practicing that very simple matter.

PHJ:  Mm-Hmm. And I can imagine you might be able to combine some of those with the music, with dancing and the being outside, but maybe that's, that's the next level. I don't know?

Panu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I  have my own sort of applied version of Tai Tai Chi, which I do in the local forest almost daily. So you are, your guess is absolutely right.

PHJ: Well thank you very much for coming on and sharing your expertise with us. It's been really fascinating.

Panu: Thanks so much, Paul, for engaging with these matters.

PHJ: On a personal note, I’ve been focusing my work on climate change for a few years now, and that action has been my most obvious response to my concerns about climate. I try not to be too distracted by my own emotions when I’m doing it – and like a stereotyped Englishman, I keep a lid on my feelings.  When I’m podcasting, for example, I’m trying to stand back and scientifically understand the human response to environmental issues. I’m trying to find and communicate objective insight that might, in some small way, help positively change that human response. When I started making these two podcasts about eco-anxiety, I would have claimed that I don’t really suffer from eco-anxiety – my work and the scientific thinking helps me step back. But a few days after the last episode, I suddenly found myself in tears when discussing with my family the current political situation about Greenland and how it was all connected with climate change. My usual stoic reasoning had given way to unconsolable sobbing. I guess this is what Panu would call emotional engagement, the grieving part of our response. And I’ve realised that it’s been a good thing – I’ve come to more clearly acknowledge and understand how environmental issues are impacting on me emotionally. That’s made me think more about self-care – but it’s also allowed me to become more aware and understanding of my own emotions– which, as a neuroscientist, I know is intrinsically important for my reasoning. Over deep time, in the evolutionary pathway that has led to the human brain, the connectivity has increased between our subcortical emotional centres and those frontal regions of the brain that we most associate with our reasoning – that connectivity is part of what makes us human – and leads to a more emotionally capable and informed brain. We don’t want to be ruled by our emotions, we need to manage them – but we can’t afford to ignore them either – they’re there for a reason - to inform our actions. And they’ve helped me feel never more sure about why I changed the course of my career to focus on climate change.

PHJ: Now since we know young people are more susceptible to eco-anxiety, we have to consider what does all this mean for climate education? In the last episode we heard about Ans Verkammen’s research, that led her to conclude that distress was an almost inevitable consequence of learning about climate change. So it’s not hard to imagine how climate education might increase eco-anxiety amongst young people. But the concept of climate education promoted by UNESCO and by environmentalists involves empowerment for action  - and that, we know, can help reduce anxiety.  So here’s a thing – the science suggests climate education without empowerment can cause anxiety, while climate education with empowerment can be part of the cure. And this little complexity can cause a lot of confusion. In the UK, for example, the government’s strategy for climate change education appears specifically motivated by a desire to tackle eco-anxiety but, since its doesn’t include much empowerment for action, has the potential to increase eco-anxiety. And on GB news, my findings that UK teachers wanted an action-oriented climate education got turned into a story that they wanted to scare children and make them feel more anxious. 

GB News presenter: “You’re paid to do a job and that is to teach, not scare, not scive - teach. I actually know a little girl who lives near my parents who is scared because they keep telling her the world is going to burst into flames tomorrow. I mean some children are really scared….”

PHJ: What do you think children should be taught in schools about climate change? Remember you can leave a message on Mind.Brain.Planet.com

For some, the anxiety and concern we feel about the environment can, of course, lead to actions that include protest. Rosie is a young climate activist who has learned to feed her emotions into drawing attention to the environmental issues that she cares most about…

Rosie: Hi my name's Rosie. I'm 21 and I'm a final year student in sociology and politics in London.

PHJ: Rosie, as someone who is very aware about climate change, to the point that you’ve decided to become a climate activist, how do you experience climate anxiety?

Rosie: I've gone through like different phases of what you'd call eco anxiety throughout kind of through the years. I'd say I'm at a point like right now where it doesn't affect me too much, but I've had moments in the past where I guess it has, but I've never had it to like a kind of like crippling de degree of anxiety where it's like, you know, affected maybe my, my day to day functioning. And yeah, I don't know, I don't know how much I like personally aligned with the term eco anxiety, but I kind of have felt versions of that or whatever that means for me. 

PHJ: And what does that mean to you what does that actually feel like?

Rosie: Yeah, I guess it's just like to me it feels like a frustration and at points where kind of that frustration builds up and I feel impatient and then normal day-to-day things around you can start to feel a bit pointless. That's how it can come to me. When I have been in periods when I've really engrossed myself in learning about or involving myself in activism for climate. Then when you are so engrossed in that world of knowing the bigger picture mundane things can feel frustrating. And yeah, impatient and I kind of get like a buildup of like some kind of energy. Maybe it's like anger, maybe it's resentment. Maybe it's just passion and excitement to get, but maybe yeah, on doing some kind of activism where I can feel like I can put that energy to use. And I often feel that when I get to put it into use, it doesn't it doesn't collect up into a ball of frustrated energy as much. Yeah.

So it turns out eco-anxiety is, generally speaking, a normal, typical response to learning about climate change and its consequences. We need to manage it – to avoid it becoming problematic – and that may sometimes even require professional help, but we also need to feel it, not least because, like most emotions, it’s there to inform and motivate our actions – it’s an energy, as Rosie puts it. It can motivate us to reduce our own environmental impact but, importantly for the necessary societal change, it can also motivate civic action – to us exercising our power as a citizen in the public realm. And, for some of us, such as Rosie, this can include climate activism – a phrase embracing protest and even civil disobedience. We’ll be hearing more about that type of action in the next episode, when we’ll be looking more closely at climate activism in terms of the mind and the brain.