Teens and Climate Change Anxiety

As climate change becomes an increasingly visible and urgent issue, individuals are feeling a mix of dread, helplessness, and uncertainty about the future of the planet. This anxiety can manifest in various ways, from general worry and stress, to more intense feelings of fear and grief. Many of our teens are feeling these emotions deeply, and bringing their strong feelings to conversations with friends, family, teachers, coaches, and therapists. The adults who care about teens experiencing Climate Change Anxiety can struggle to find the right words for these tough conversations.

Therapists generally tend to think of anxiety as an overestimation of risk combined with an underestimation of our ability to cope, leaving us feeling uncomfortably distressed. Part of what puts Climate Change Anxiety in its own category is the appropriateness of the client’s response to the threat of climate change. In other words, feeling anxious about climate change, and feeling unsure of humanity’s ability to cope with it, is an understandable emotional response. This makes addressing “symptoms” a bit more complicated for therapists. 

Climate Change Anxiety and grief

When a client’s emotional response is a match for the presenting situation, therapists move away from “symptom reduction” and look for ways to protect the client from feeling their painful emotions all of the time. Therapists who work with Climate Change Anxiety make space for client emotions around this real and present threat in a way that allows the client to continue living a full and meaningful life. We can look to grief therapy interventions for guidance when addressing Climate Change Anxiety. In fact, processing grief about climate change is often a component of addressing Climate Change Anxiety. When clients are grieving and facing change and uncertainty, therapists aim to help clients acknowledge their emotions when they come up, take good care of themselves, and stay socially connected. 

Social connection

Social connection can help us to manage painful emotions. If you are talking with your teen about Climate Change Anxiety at home, it’s likely that recommending school eco-clubs will be met with violent eyerolling, and your teen will probably make some excellent points about how ineffectual these clubs can be. But you can let your teen know that one function of school eco-clubs is to provide connection with other people who are feeling what they are feeling, and whose value systems align with their own. Scary movies are scarier when we watch them by ourselves. 

Helping our teens to feel heard

Qualitative research on teens and Climate Change Anxiety tells us that teens can easily feel dismissed by adults whose intention is to support them, and to reduce their anxious feelings. The literature tells us that teens feel heard when we acknowledge that they are right to be concerned. Instead of trying to talk teens out of their anxious feelings, we might focus on helping them to feel less alone. We may consider saying something like, “I’m going to be with you while you are worried about this, so you don’t have to worry about it alone.” Research tells us that this vocabulary gets us farther than, “You can’t worry about this all of the time,” or, “You don’t need to worry about this.”

Social media algorithms and climate change

Bringing phone management into the conversation is another giant eyeroll risk, but it’s important to keep in mind how much climate change material is available for consumption on Instagram and TikTok. Teens with honourable intentions to stay informed about climate change will find unlimited videos with hopeless messaging and devastating footage. We process information that we read differently than information we see, and reading about animal ecosystems that have been impacted by wildfires doesn’t stick the same way that watching videos of suffering wildlife does. Conversations about phone safety are always a minefield, but if your teen is distressed about climate change and having trouble finding ways to get a break from their distress, it might be worth taking a collaborative look at the content they are consuming. 

Separating action from rumination

Finally, making a clear distinction about what is productive and what is not can be helpful for all of us in our climate change discomfort. Processing painful feelings counts as productive! Joining clubs, making personal changes, assembling emergency kits are all productive. But doomscrolling and rumination are not. Naming out loud the things that help and the things that don’t will help us take good care of our teens, our clients, and ourselves.

Additional resources:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00278-3/fulltext

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667278223000032