5 Tips for Dealing with Eco-Anxiety

Living in an age of extinction and mass ecological degradation can be hard to bear for those of us who have a love of nature (and desire for a habitable planet). The toll this has taken on our mental health has even coined a new term: eco-anxiety. According to Medical News Today, eco-anxiety (or climate anxiety) is “a fear of environmental damage or ecological disaster. . . largely based on the current and predicted state of the environment and human-induced climate change.” It affects a wide range of people, from scientists and researchers to young children as well as people who have experienced extreme weather events such as wildfires and hurricanes. If you find yourself feeling more anxious about the environment, as I have at times, then here are 5 tips for dealing with eco-anxiety.

1. News/Technology Cleanse

We live in a time where we are constantly connected and receiving endless updates on anything and everything that is happening. However, this constant feed of bad news can cause us distress and impact our health and ability to work. As a biologist, I frequently face the news of damaged habitats and declining species. This has led to some sleepless nights and feelings of depression. After a particularly bad bout of such news, my dad told me to stop reading it. I felt like I couldn’t, that it would be morally wrong to ignore what was going on. But it was becoming too much to handle. So I took a week off from reading the news. At work, I found other things to occupy my spare time and at home, I focused on cooking meals for myself and keeping my apartment tidy. Over the weekend I cleaned and re-organized my apartment and relaxed at home working on my hobbies and catching up on my favorite shows.

I felt. So. Much. Better.

The constant drag of the depressing headlines on my mentality every day had been building up and wearing me down. Going a week without it I felt fresh and more awake. I was able to focus on other things and just generally feel better, both physically and mentally. Since then I’ve been trying to restrict how much news I read during the day to just 1 hour in the morning and nothing during the weekend. I also try to avoid reading too many negative stories.

If the bad news is getting you down, try a news/technology cleanse. Turn off news alerts or take a break from taking it in at all, for one day or even a whole week. It doesn’t have to be forever, just long enough for you to recover and have the mental and emotional energy to handle it. Then set a reasonable limit for how much you can consume without compromising your emotional health.

2. Self-care

Self-care isn’t just a hashtag on Instagram, it’s a necessary part of our health and well-being. It’s also going to mean something different to each person. Maybe it’s taking the time to pamper yourself a little with a face mask or a relaxing bath. Maybe it’s working on your physical health and trying some healthy recipes or exercising. And maybe it’s just giving yourself the time to relax, take a break from work, and enjoy your hobbies or some entertainment. Regardless of what shape it takes for you, we need to take time to care for ourselves, something we often neglect in our busy modern world. By taking this time for ourselves, we can recover and be better placed to handle the stresses of the news cycle or work.

For me, self-care is treating myself to a movie or bingeing a favorite show after work. Especially comedies or relaxing shows that will put me in a good mood at the end of the day. It also means taking some time to work on my hobbies: crochet and hand stitching. I find crafts like these where there is simple repetition to be relaxing and helps occupy my mind. In fact, craft therapy (which includes knitting, embroidery, and other hands-on crafts) has been used to help veterans and those suffering from PTSD, physical, and other emotional trauma since the first world war.

Self-care can take as little or as much time as you need, but the important point is you making the time for it. Set aside the time and make it a part of your daily or weekly routine.

3. Look for the Positives

The almighty algorithm seems to favor the shocking and most negative headlines, pushing them to the top of your feeds. In the face of this, it’s important to make an effort to find the positive stories. Following pages or sites that focus on these positive stories is one way to ensure you get your dose of positivity in the news cycle. Also, it’s important to focus on positives in your own life as well.

In my case, I follow groups like “Zoos Saving Species” on Facebook so I can see the positive impacts zoos are making on species recovery and a biological station where I can see trail camera photos. I also follow some of my favorite zoos and aquariums on Instagram so I can enjoy the great photos of animals and laugh at the excellent sea puns by Monterey Bay Aquarium (seriously their Instagram is on point). Each month I also make a point of writing my list of accomplishments in my journal. What counts as an accomplishment varies, but making yourself recognize the good things can help drown out the bad.

Do a bit of research on the platform and field of your choice and see if you can find some accounts you are interested in to follow. The good news is many more scientists and professionals in their fields are becoming active on social media. This can give you a window into their work and the progress they’re making in their field. For positive science news, there’s also the “Good News Network“. You can check out positive news stories at work via their website or on the go via their mobile app.

4. Find a Focus

This is going to be a weird place to bring up a fiction series about dinosaurs, but one thing that comes to my mind is the 7th code of Dinotopia: “Do one thing at a time”. Many threats are impacting our planet’s ecology and the species we hold dear, but there is only so much we can do at one time. Rather than let yourself be pulled in a million directions, choose one thing to focus on. Choose one change to make or one action to take at a time. This can help you dilute the barrage of information you are subject to a more manageable amount and give you the motivation and energy to follow through on your goals.

There are already tons of posts listing the various individual actions we can take to reduce our footprint, so I won’t go into it too much here. I will say that a personal effort I am working on is reducing how much meat I eat and adding a little more variety in my diet. I’ve made a page to track the amount I eat in my bullet journal and I’m trying to lookup more recipes to try. If a lifestyle change is what you choose to focus on, choose something manageable. Keep track of your efforts and at the end of the week or month, reflect on your progress. What problems did you encounter in trying to make this change? What are some ways to address these problems? Is there a different change that would be easier for you to make?

Lifestyle changes aren’t the only thing you can focus on though. Find a specific issue of interest to you to read up on. Get educated on it and find out what actions you can take to try and address it. This could mean getting involved in volunteer activities or contacting organizations and government representatives. It can be hard to make large scale changes, so start local. Even helping get the word out among your friends using social media to bring awareness to the issue is a step in the right direction.

5. Volunteer

This last suggestion is of course for those that have the time or opportunity available to them, but if you are feeling like you’re not making a difference, try joining in on some volunteer activities in your local community. By volunteering you can feel like you are making a tangible difference; like you are taking action. Getting out and being around like-minded people may give you some social support for dealing with your eco-anxiety and open up more opportunities to take action.

If you can’t get out in person, don’t worry. You can try volunteering some time on online citizen science sites. I recently found Zooniverse and have tried out a few different camera trap projects. Classifying the photos is easy to do and you can enjoy seeing the animal pictures. Plus, how much time you give is completely up to you. A few spare minutes or even a longer session, however much time you spend it will be helping out real scientific efforts.

Bonus: Get out in nature!

How exciting! A bonus tip! If you are worried about the environment, surrounding yourself in nature can actually help you feel better. Studies have shown that spending time outside in green space, even listening to natural sounds or having natural materials and house plants can trigger physiological changes that lower our blood pressure and stress hormones. There is even a growing field of ecotherapy, where outdoor activities and exposure to nature are used to improve our physical and mental health.

Knowing about all the loss that is occurring can be hard to bear, but all the more reason to get out and strengthen your connection to nature. Take a walk in a local park and get some fresh air. Head down to the beach or out to the forest for a hike. Or, if the air is not so fresh where you live (or you are lacking green spaces), try looking up some nature podcasts to listen to. Sound by Nature is a podcast that has long tracks of outdoor recordings of things such as rainfall, birdsong, and frog calls in a variety of natural locations.

Whenever you start feeling eco-anxious, try these tips to take a break, recover, and find your focus. This will help you maintain your emotional and mental health and be ready to face whatever life (and the news feed) throws at you.