How to Stop Being Overwhelmed by Climate Change
Emotional Intelligence has Something to Do with It
When I first woke up to climate change, I catapulted right over what I now think is the most important and helpful thing to reckon with: my emotions about it.
Our emotions, after all, are the gateway to everything – including our perceptions, decision-making, and actions. Emotion is like the rudder of a ship. It directs action even when you don’t see it. There’s plenty of research to support this.
But climate change is so overwhelming, so big and scary and complex, and for many people still so abstract that it’s easy to be triggered into the trifecta of fight, flight, or freeze.
That’s why on a day of more bad news from the United Nations about the likelihood of an increasingly chaotic future, I thought it might be useful to explore our emotional response to climate change.
Only when we can master some degree of calmness in the face of what is undeniably an emergency can we make the best decisions, after all.
It’s why emergency workers are trained to walk not run to the scene.
How Our Emotions Get Hijacked by Climate Change
Fight is where I went first when I woke up to climate change. I decided I was going to do everything I could to fight it so my children and others would not have to experience it. Hah! Yes, I’ve been brought down quite a few pegs since then.
Flight is where I think most people go most often. And from one perspective, it seems a pretty understandable response. The alternative is to imagine yourself capable of doing battle with the Hulk. You’re only going to feel powerless and probably get beaten up. So why not find something else to do with your time?
And then, of course, there’s freeze. We understand what is happening and want to do something but don’t know what to do. But we also find we can’t quite look away. In short, we’re caught. Stuck. Overwhelmed. Frozen. I’ve spent a lot of time here.
The critical point is: None of these responses help us reckon with our vitally important emotional responses.
Fight, flight, and freeze are, to the contrary, efforts to escape from uncomfortable emotions. It’s what emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman, with whom I co-authored the book Ecoliterate, talks about as an “amygdala hijack.”
The Problem with Fight, Flight, and Freeze
The amygdala is located in the brain's emotional center and strongly influences every other part of it—most notably, the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the seat of our executive functioning. In other words, it controls how we make decisions, solve problems, and act with long-term goals in mind.
The emotional and executive centers are engaged in an ongoing dance, as Goleman , says. But when the amygdala is hijacked, that dance breaks down. We experience sudden, strong negative emotions. And then we have sudden, strong reactions.
In the case of immediate, discrete, physical threats to our safety, this is good news. It helped our ancestors jump out of the way of a hungry lion and helps us jump out of the way of a careening car.
But in the case of modern global threats like climate change, the whole dynamic is a lot more complex. We may – and often do – jump away from the very idea of climate change because we are emotionally triggered.
I have experienced this with hundreds of people with whom I have tried to discuss climate change. They manage for a minute or two and then they shut down, as I do often enough myself.
So, what can we do that can help us and others stay focused on better meeting this great challenge of our time — which, as the executive functioning part of our brain would know, would clearly be to everyone’s advantage?
Five Ways to Manage Climate Overwhelm
This, of course, is a crazy big topic that cannot be adequately addressed in one brief newsletter. (Indeed, the book I am writing about this barely feels like enough!)
But here are a few ideas I have found helpful. I hope they may also help you better manage the stress of living in a changing climate and, if you are working in the field, perhaps better engage others.
1. Recognize that all of us are emotionally triggered by climate change.
That means that if we want to get to the point of constructively engaging in problem-solving, being part of the solution, or simply existing in a wiser relationship to the biggest issue of the many big issues of our day, we need to learn to manage those emotions.
2. Know it is beneficial to make space to reckon with uncomfortable emotions.
As the psychologist, poet, and author Miriam Greenspan has written: The suppression of emotions is psychologically worse for us than the expression of them. It’s worse because it causes us to get stuck rather than to grow and thrive in response to the challenges we face.
“Suppressed grief,” Greenspan writes in her brilliant book, Healing Through Dark Emotions, “often turns into depression, anxiety, or addiction. Benumbed fear can easily lead to irrational prejudice, toxic rage, and acts of violence. Overwhelming or unconscious despair often leads to severe psychic numbing or expresses itself through destructive acts to oneself and others.”
“The inability to tolerate grief, fear, and despair, as most any psychotherapist knows, is a major feature of the epidemic of addictions to alcohol, drugs, technology, entertainment, work, sex, etc. that afflict our civilization,” she adds.
If this is true in the case of ordinary sources of pain, such as a breakup or loss of a job, it is certainly true in the case of something as significant as climate change.
3. Given that climate change is triggering, we need to recognize the need to learn better strategies to address our emotional responses.
Put another way: Brene Brown famously launched a global conversation about the previously little-examined topic of vulnerability. Then she taught us how a better understanding of vulnerability could lead to a more wholehearted life and more courageous leadership.
Starting a global conversation about vulnerability in the face of our fast-changing world can also only help us develop more wholehearted and courageous responses.
Breathe.
It sounds ridiculously simple, I know. But the more stressful something is, the more important it is to slow down and breathe to access the biggest, best parts of yourself. There is also plenty of research to support this.
Do something, even if you think it’s too small.
Many people stop themselves from taking action because they think it won’t be significant enough to make a difference. That’s a losing proposition. There is nothing any of us can do as individuals that can match the scope and scale of climate change.
But it still matters that we act — not only because our collective actions add up. It matters because it will help us, and that will help us stay in the game.
"Walk. Don't run." Thank you for reminding me.
And that unsplash photo - great choice!