Winter recedes and summer rushes our way. This means longer days, warmer weather, hiking the mountains, and swimming in lakes. Oh, and wildfires.
As wildfire season approaches, a lot of people experience increased climate change anxiety and wildfire related stress. These feelings can be overwhelming, but there are some things you can do.
Accept and Grieve What is Out of Your Control.
Anxiety is a signal that helps you take action as needed. This is useful when you can actually take action, but often leads to sleepless nights and unnecessary cortisol when you can’t take action. So, determine what is within, and what is outside, your control and take some time to appreciate the gravity of that distinction. There is A LOT about climate change that is out of your control, including where and when wildfires happen. I love Smokey the Bear but almost all wildfires are ones that you cannot prevent. I love climate action but your sphere of influence is very small. Do the (very difficult) work of accepting your limitations and feel whatever you feel about that–likely sadness, anger, and grief.
Connect
Find folks who also care about these things. Resist the urge to collapse together into despair, but instead, connect over your shared values, the pain of what you feel, and collective strategies to make the difference you can. This may be your partner, some close friends, or a community found online such as Climate Cafes (https://www.climatepsychology.us/climate-cafes-for-the-public-1) or the Good Grief Network (https://www.goodgriefnetwork.org/). Of course, you can speak with a therapist who specializes in eco-anxiety, which can be a very helpful start to this kind of community. Look for a climate-aware therapist here (full disclosure: I am a part of this organization and a climate aware therapist myself): https://www.climatepsychology.us/climate-therapists
Take Action
You can’t stop climate change–it has come and it will continue to come. But you can make a difference locally and, depending on your position in society and your willingness for committed action, you can make an increasingly large difference as you build community and support. If you care about these things, take action. Notably, this is the last step in the advice here–action without acceptance, processing your feelings about these things, or community is something that will lead to burnout and despair. So make sure you have these in place and that you continue to develop them (imagine a tree’s roots–necessary for anything above ground to happen, and these grow as the tree grows). To steer your actions in the right direction, use your values and feelings. Understand your actions as taking place as part of a movement, not as something you’re doing alone (solving for climate change is too big to do it alone). Trust your gut, but if you’re unsure where to start, you might consider doing something that looks a lot different from your day job. If you sit at a desk thinking all day, go outside and do something with your hands. If you’re working with your hands in the physical environment all day, write a letter to your senator. Getting a change of pace and using a different part of you may be energizing.
Summary
So: accept what is happening and your place in it. Connect with folks who get it. Then do something about it. As each of these grow, make sure the other parts are growing too. As you take more action and get more experienced, there will be more to grieve and more people with whom you can grieve. As you accept your powerlessness in the face of climate change, you will likely be more powerful.
If you need someone to talk to, I specialize in helping people navigate these feelings and their response to them. You can learn more here: https://www.jonreevesphd.com/climatechange
Oh and put out your campfires, because only you can prevent that wildfire.
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