Climate Anxiety Is Real Anxiety
Post in our ongoing daily series on the top concerns clients bring to Integrative Mind Body Psychiatry.
Climate anxiety is a diagnosis I now hear in every generation, from teenagers grieving the future to grandparents watching drought change the landscape they raised their children in. It is not a passing trend. It is a real psychological response to real information.
What Climate Anxiety Often Looks Like
Grief for landscapes, species, and futures
Uncertainty about having children
Anger at institutions and older generations
Doom-scrolling climate news
A feeling of paralysis: nothing I do matters
How I Think About It
Climate anxiety is proportional. The problem is not that people care. The problem is that anxiety without action loops in the body without an exit. Anxiety needs a body to move through — and a purpose to move toward.
Five Whole-Person Steps
Grieve. Give it a name. Grief is proportional to love — including love for a planet.
Take one small local action. Community garden, restoration project, mutual aid.
Reconnect with nature directly. Walks, gardens, water, sky — daily.
Limit doom media. Read one article of solutions journalism per doom article.
Treat the anxiety layer. Sleep, movement, and professional care all help.
Caring is not the problem. Isolation with the caring is. I see patients via telehealth in Utah at integrativemindbodypsychiatry.com.
Tomorrow: Doomscrolling Is Not Rest.
Respectfully, Beth Makar, RN, Dual-MSN, PMHNP-BC · Integrative Mind Body Psychiatry · integrativemindbodypsychiatry.com
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