Eco-Anxiety: How to Talk About It and What to Do About It

In this episode, we talk about our own experiences with eco-anxiety. Eco-anxiety is defined by the Climate Psychology Alliance as the heightened emotional and mental distress in response to dangerous changes in the climate system. We’ve all felt it at one point or another, and if you haven’t, maybe your climate bubble just hasn't popped yet. Eco-anxiety can be difficult to talk about, but the more you talk about it, the less anxious you’ll feel. And if you don’t have anyone to talk about it with, then sit back and listen to us talk about it – it might relieve some of your worries to know that you’re not feeling this alone. We share when we first started feeling eco-anxious and the emotions we’ve felt while experiencing eco-anxiety, and we learn a new term: “solastalgia,” the pain or distress caused by the loss of a comforting place, the isolation one feels when their home or land is lost. We move into talking about eco-anxiety, and ways you can relieve your eco-anxiety through small tangible actions like composting, saving the cold water that comes out of your faucet, and connecting with the earth. And lastly, both educators and students can bring this discussion into their classrooms by opening up real and honest conversations about climate change and eco anxiety. We discuss how educators can prompt more solutions-based projects, and how students can choose to center their class projects around climate change (whether it’s explicitly assigned or not).