What can we do when we’ve run out of things to do about climate change?

This is the first of a series of four blog posts on mental health during a climate emergency. If you want to skip ahead, you can download my summary of the series when you subscribe to receive my blog posts to your inbox.

I’ve lived with anxiety since I was about ten years old.

Far too many hours of my teenage years were spent locked in smelly toilet cubicles trying not to throw up, because nausea was one way that anxiety manifested for me at the time.

‘Do I look pale?’ I would whisper across the classroom to my best friend, my sweaty palms gripping the spare plastic bag I always kept in my rucksack, just in case I actually did throw up.

Whether I looked pale or not was my way of discerning if there was something really wrong with me, or whether it was just the usual anxiety-induced nausea (because, if it’s an emotionally caused problem, it’s not a ‘real’ problem, right?)

‘No, Jo, you look absolutely fine- positively rosy, I promise you’ll be ok!’ Soph would whisper back.

As an adult, anxiety morphed into a multitude of inner voices, recurring thoughts and uncomfortable bodily sensations. But they all had more or less the same message;

You’re not strong enough for this, Jo. This- whatever it is- it’s going to break you.

*Anxiety tells us that we are not strong enough for what lies ahead.*

Mastering Anxiety

A few years ago, a number of events in my life aligned into a rather unfortunate set of circumstances, and I experienced the full power of anxiety’s grip on my mind and body.

I ended up in A & E a couple of times, thinking I was dying. I would often wake up in the middle of the night shaking, screaming or sobbing, having battled for hours to get off to sleep in the first place. I almost constantly felt as though an electric current were surging through my limbs, so that to be still or rest was torturous.

And my mind never, ever stopped. Forever whirring with everything that could go wrong, and all the ways I might be able to avert disaster if I could just figure out what to do about… well, anything and everything really.

Anxiety was my master, and I was kept hostage to her because the terrors that she whispered to me felt so real. I believed that what was happening in my life could destroy me, and that to rest for even a moment would render me even more vulnerable.

Eventually, thankfully, I was introduced to medication.

Medication gave me the power to master anxiety, banishing her screams for up to five hours with a single tablet, and giving my wrecked and exhausted body a moment of beautiful, blissful respite.

Medication enabled me to survive, and I am very grateful for that.

But in the keeping on going that medication enabled me to do, I lost something too.

Because anxiety, it turns out, kind of had a point.

Anxiety knew that some things in my life really did need to change- all be it with a more strategic approach than the chaos of anxiety’s desperate admonishments enabled at the time.

So with both professional and personal support, I eventually came to realise that anxiety wasn’t trying to torture me, she was actually trying to protect me.

I had to learn to make friends with her.

*We can make friends with our anxiety so that we are informed but not controlled by it.*

Listening to Anxiety

And so the second turning point in my relationship with anxiety took place when I began a course on mindful meditation- essentially, the practice of sitting still for a number of minutes and observing whatever might arise, without reacting.

No trying to work out what my feelings meant, what I should do next, where this could be taking me.

But instead, learning to observe. At first the terror, yes, but then also my breath, boredom, the feel of the air on my skin, or even just an itch.

The practice allowed what I was experiencing to speak to me, whilst releasing me from the need to do anything about it.

In meditation my job was no longer to try and fix all the things that were scaring me, but to learn to listen and observe what they had to say to me.

And over time this discipline gradually taught me how to set boundaries with anxiety so that she was still allowed to speak her truth, but she could no longer dominate my mind (although I do still call on medication’s help when anxiety is shouting a little too loud).

I learned that, aside from all my endless doing as a charity leader and climate activist, there was a place in my life for the art of just being.

So meditation was a mental health game changer for me, but this practice is also scientifically proven to help with all sorts of other issues including reducing chances of cancer, increasing our pain threshold, improving focus and decision making, and even rebuilding the brain itself.

I could easily spend the rest of this blog post singing mindfulness’ praises, but this is a climate change blog, after all.

Eco-Anxiety and Burnout

As the unravelling of the planet becomes more and more apparent, it’s not surprising that mental ill-health relating to ecological collapse is on the rise, with over two-thirds of young people now reporting that they experience eco-anxiety.

*Two-thirds of young people currently report experiencing eco-anxiety.*

That is a staggering number of young people carrying the weight of the whole world on their still growing shoulders.

Envisaging collapses in global food supplies. An exponential increase in forced migration. Many more pandemics.

All within most of our lifetimes.

Can you feel what that does to your body as you read that?

Maybe your heart rate rises a little, or your mind tugs at you to close this blog.

Or maybe you’ve heard so much bad news recently that you’re numb to it by now.

Because living with that level of ecological threat is exhausting as it pushes our bodies way past their usual capacity for managing our fear response.

Those ancient ‘fight or flight’ reactions that are designed to expertly deal with immediate problems, such as hungry lions, don’t work so well for a widespread threat that we will be living with for quite a number of years, even under the best case scenario.

So we know that we cannot let anxiety’s voice take over, befuddling the clear thinking we will need for the road ahead, or sinking us deep into the depths of despair and rendering us unable to act at all.

But hiding from our anxiety, using whatever tools are at our disposal to try to quieten that terror, cuts us off from a powerful source of motivating energy. Our eco-anxiety has something to say to us about the state of the world, and failure to listen will leave us all the more poorer for it.

So how are we to harness our eco-anxiety?

Identity and Activism

Last week I listened to a Hope for the Future eco-anxiety webinar interviewing 21 year old Clover Hogan, a climate activist of ten years and founder of Force of Nature.

Towards the end of the webinar, our Youth Engagement Officer, Robbie, asks Clover, ‘with the future looking so bleak, how do you avoid burnout?’

I expected something along the lines of; practice self-care, get your support networks around you, create boundaries around distressing information…

So what Clover actually said surprised me.

‘You’ve got to remember, this isn’t all about you.’

I know it’s not all about me, right? This is all about climate change.

‘Let go of a saviour complex. Don’t get your sense of self get all tied up in hitting that 2030 emissions deadline because the reality is, we might fail. And where does that leave you if your identity hinges on that?’

What I heard Clover say was, don’t mistake your cause for who you are.

Well, that I could relate to.

Stop Trying to Stop Climate Change

You might wonder why someone so prone to anxiety has chosen to work on halting global mass extinction for a living.

Well, as grateful as I am for all the ways anxiety has tried to keep me safe over the years, I want to prove her wrong.

I want to show her that I am strong enough to contribute something meaningful to this battle, and that I do have what it takes.

But sheer will power alone isn’t enough, which brings me once again to meditation.

To the art of being without doing.

Because climate activism is based on lots and lots of doing.

Changing. Demanding. Fighting for our cause.

Thank goodness. Because we need that, for the world, and also because taking action is proven to help ease eco-anxiety.

So we do because we care. But caring can become exhausting.

Lobbying elected representatives, joining climate NGOs, signing petitions, reducing meat and dairy, giving up flying, talking to friends and family, buying less stuff, putting out food for wildlife… we need all these things.

But the truth is, with regards to climate change, none of us can ever do enough really. At a certain stage most of us encounter fatigue, or discouragement. And for some that can mean disengaging all together.

So we also need to find a way to rest, even when it feels hard to do because the world is on fire.

Which is why meditation has been a game changer for me.

At first, meditation was what I did when I ran out things to do which would make me feel better about climate change.

But before long it became something I knew I needed to do every day.

Because, whilst meditation is a much needed break from doing, it is far from doing nothing.

Meditation is about allowing ourselves to be nourished deeply, simply by letting go of all our stories about who we are and what we think we’re doing in the world.

And if you are religiously inclined, meditation- or prayerful contemplation- is also about creating space for the divine. A limitless resource.

So ultimately meditation is the act of stopping trying to stop climate change, so that we can become the kind of people that have the deep resilience needed to address this global emergency for the long-haul.

A meditation practice causes changes in the brain that increases our capacity to become informed by our feelings about climate change, without exhausting ourselves trying to fix it, run away from it, or pretend it isn’t happening.

And so meditation is also one of the first steps we can take to encourage a kind of climate activism that is just as much about cultivating within ourselves all the changes the world needs, as it is about working for that change ‘out there’ in the world itself.

*A meditation practice is about becoming the change we want to see in the world.*

Grace

So I think of meditation as a kind of grace.

A reminder that life, and this planet, is above all, a gift.

That we do not have to earn our place in the world, or perfect ourselves in order to be worthy of contributing to it.

That our primary purpose in life is not to make money, buy a nice house, save the planet, be the perfect spouse and maintain a healthy lifestyle (or whatever goals we set for ourselves).

But instead that humans can reach their highest potential in simply savouring the precious and fleeting moments we have each been given on this earth. And in extended that gift to others also.

That’s why finding ten minutes out of your day to meditate isn’t supposed to be just another thing to fit in- none of us need any more of that! It’s certainly not another thing for your climate activism to-do list.

Instead, meditation is about a fundamental shifting of our self-worth from valuing what we do for the world, to valuing how we are in the world.

Many decades of human ‘progress’ have been lost in the pursuit of mastering the earth and our fellow beings, when so much of what we really need is right here, within and around us.

A gift, already given to us.

So meditation can help our activism flow from a place of abundance, rather than the same kind of scarcity mindset that has led to a pursuit of infinite economic growth, the colonisation of the earth and many of its people, and climate change itself, in the first place.

If you haven’t already given it a go, or if it’s been a while, I would recommend trying ten minutes a day for at least ten days, and seeing if it does anything for you. If in the past you have found meditation difficult or unhelpful, you might want to try meditating on something in particular, such as a flower, a smell or a particular sound.

You can try apps such as Headspace, which has 10 free sessions introducing you to the basics, or Insight Timer, which has a whole host of different guided meditations.

You might also want to try a mindfulness course. I learned from Fiona Watson mindfulness and couldn’t recommend Fiona’s courses more highly!

And if you have any advice on living with eco-anxiety that you would like to share with others, please leave a comment below.

This is the first of a series of four blog posts on mental health during a climate emergency. If you want to skip ahead, you can download my summary of the series, when you subscribe to receive the blog posts to your inbox.

**About Me**
I’m Jo, formerly the founder Director of national climate change charity, Hope for the Future. I am currently researching eco-anxiety and how we can build emotional resilience in our response to the climate emergency.

Welcome to Climate.Emergence- a place to emotionally process what on earth is happening to us and our planet.

On… Eco-Anxiety #1