Back in April, the the Environmental Politics Research Group (EPRG) at Lund University and the Research Group on Green Politics (REGROUP) at the University of Copenhagen co-organised a workshop on “How to deal with climate anxiety as teachers and researchers?”. As part of that, Marlis Wullenkord, Associate Senior Lecturer in Environmental Psychology, gave a presentation on eco emotions, which I will try and summarise below.
Emotions in general consist of a subjective experience, and can be expressed both in behaviour and in physiological responses. They serve to direct our attention and orient perception, and — given some degree of emotional literacy to put words to and make sense of what we are feeling — provide us with information about both our inner and the outer world. Contradictory emotions can co-exist, and there are many different strategies to cope with emotions.
Eco-anxiety includes emotions like anger, shame, grief, guilt, sadness, powerlessness, worry, and others. While some see it as a pathological condition that needs treatment, others see is as reasonable response to an existential threat. But in any case, eco-anxiety is very common:
- Worldwide, 80% of young people report feeling at least moderately worried about climate change. This is highest for women, indigenous populations, people from the global south. 45% of young people worldwide report that the worries have impact on functioning, for example causing trouble sleeping or dealing with social situations.
- For Swedish high school students, worry levels significantly increased from 2010 to 2020. Worries are highest when thinking about future generations, animals and nature, and people in poor countries, and not as high relating to oneself or friends and family. But preliminary data from this year and last year indicates that the worry levels might now be back to values comparable to 2010, but it is unclear why that is the case.
- For German adults, a study investigated climate anxiety in terms of thoughts and emotions, and impairment. While there are people that score high or low on all, for part of the population there is a disconnect where they score high on thoughts and emotions, but low on impairment, so that would be an interesting population to investigate coping strategies! Generally, younger people tend to be more anxious (more impacted in the long run combined with less influence over their future because of roles and representation, and “more vulnerable to social construction to silence” — see also my interpretation of the Spiral of Silence, I believe that is a very real problem!), and women are more likely to be anxious. But interestingly, the most impaired group tends to be male (possibly because expressing emotions and coping with emotions is very gendered — men generally have less access to validating contexts for support?)! But the study also finds that the most impaired are at the same time the most connected with nature, so “connecting with nature” does not seem to work as a coping strategy.
Coping efforts and strategies to manage stressful experiences can be focussed on coping with the actual emotion, on dealing with the problem that is causing the emotion, or with finding meaning behind the emotions. A different study investigated the influence of mindfulness and integrative emotion regulation. They found that awareness and accepting of emotions are buffers that can keep anxiety from turning into an impairment, but they found no relation to activism (e.g. signing a partition, occupying an airport; the study didn’t look at private sphere actions how participants’ own behaviour influences carbon footprint etc). On the other hand, integration of emotion (I feel anxious, I am aware of it) into the sense of self (what does it mean about me, about the world, what can I do with that?) makes people more likely to lead activism, but there is no relation with impairment.
One result from many studies was that talking about uncomfortable emotions is really important. In a study from Sweden, 75% of respondents report talking about climate change more than once a month, 40% once a week or more. In that same study, 1/3rd of the participants reports talking about their emotions in at least half of their conversations, 1/4 almost never. But talking is related to more anxiety and more emotions, and that to more pro-environmental actions. And interestingly, experiencing empathy when talking about climate anxiety enables pro-environmental action further. So, as Marlis suggests, empathy training might be a possible intervention method. In any case, emotional literacy, being able to name your emotions, seems to help with mental health. So we should encourage emotional expression and meet them in others with empathy!
What is really not helping, though, is distancing oneself from climate anxiety, for example because of wanting to be objective and look at facts (like many teachers still teach — and, concerningly, this one correlates with weaker tendencies for collective action and policy support!), or because expressing anxiety is discouraged (again, as many teachers still teach), or because people avoid thinking about climate in everyday life. The latter two are actually correlated with higher impairment!
But there is also positive distancing: taking breaks, slowing down with purpose. Marlis shared Klimatpsykologerna’s “ice cream image” for how to cope with climate anxiety: three scoops of ice cream, “take breaks”, “act together”, “cope with emotions” rest embedded in a cup of “social support and community”.
So where do we go from here?
Emotional awareness is critical, and Marlis recommends to integrate emotional literacy tools in teacher training (btw, klimatpsykologerna also have a cool method data base [in Swedish]), give teachers time and resources, and to create space for institutional discussions and policies on how to confront climate anxiety. She says that “anxiety is often about inactivity of powerful actors” (my emphasis, because that resonated with me so much). Powerful institutions, like universities, should acknowledge their responsibility, act in responsible ways, and in that way help fight the problem directly, while also reduce anxiety by showing that they are taking the problem seriously and are doing something about it. And — side note — this signal is not only important for people that struggle with climate anxiety — there is also the other end of the spectrum where the paradigm that universities are institutions of rationality keeps them from taking the problem seriously themselves (because if it was really such a big deal, wouldn’t there be rules in place that I need to learn about it and include it in my teaching, since as a rational place, universities are probably as close to perfect as it gets?). So even more important that universities take action!
Marlis also shared some advice for teachers: Work to increase your own, and your students’, emotional literacy. What are emotions for? What can they tell us? How can we work with them? And she shared that in a study, even 8-year-olds say that they would rather be told the truth than white lies. So put trust in your students, be truthful about “the facts” but also about how they personally affect you. Leaving things out, or making them sound less scary, is not the way forward!
Lastly, Terese shared a piece of advice that our colleague Steven Curtis (who we miss a lot!) has taught us for dealing with climate anxiety: give space for and validate the emotions, embody them (for example through art), and then encourage action!
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