Eco-anxiety: what's in a name?

Blog 1/2

In this first of two blogs, I’m looking at the words we use to describe emotional responses to environmental and climate change, and why it might matter what we call it. In the follow-up blog I’ll look at my own approach to treating eco-anxiety.

Eco-anxiety or Eco-distress?

There is now ample evidence for the prevalence of eco-anxiety (often among young people in particular), with vigorous debate among academics as to our understanding of the relationship between observed emotional, behavioural and cognitive responses to the impacts of climate and environmental change more generally [1].   Discussion ensues over terminology, categorisation and taxonomy of the psychology associated with climate change and what seems often to be a significant focus on ‘grief’.  While eco-anxiety has often become an umbrella term for all the other eco-emotions, including anger and sadness, maybe a simpler and more encompassing term would be ‘eco-anguish’ or ‘eco-distress’ (Dictionary definition of anguish: “severe mental suffering or distress” (OED) or “extreme unhappiness caused by physical or mental suffering” (Cambridge Dictionary); distress: extreme/great anxiety, sorrow, or pain)(Collins Dictionary) either of which, to my mind, capture much of what we are dealing with.  For want of a better alternative I refer in the rest of this post to ‘eco-distress’ to cover all negative emotions associated with environmental and climate change.[2] 

Why does this matter?  Because so many who experience eco-distress experience a range of negative emotions, not just one.  Trying to define ever-more tightly each eco-emotion either labels an individual with many apparent negative labels or misses the underlying issues by focusing primarily on the immediate experience and symptoms. 

My own viewpoint on eco-distress is informed by some 40 years working in the environmental space, as an academic, campaigner, consultant and in more recent years as a therapist specialising in anxiety and stress, in higher education, and in eco-anxiety/distress.  This perspective provides me with a significant resource on which to draw as a therapist in my approach to treating eco-distress. What is interesting is that much of the literature on eco-distress, unfortunately, is not hugely helpful to therapeutic practice.  That's not so surprising perhaps since the drivers behind research are very different to those behind practice.

Is it really ‘grief’?

In opening, I touched on the fact that grief gets a lot of air-time in the academic literature among emotional responses to environmental change. Grief is, of course, very relevant for those directly affected by loss of life, livelihood, homes etc, e.g. though fire, flood, drought; the immediately experienced consequences of climate change [3]. However, therapeutically, this may confuse the picture as to what is often going on with many eco-distressed clients who do not have that direct experience.  If you look principally through a grief lens, then you are likely to define the experience in those terms, in terms of loss (real or perceived).

I see rather less expression of real grief or loss among my client base, but a lot of commonalities through underlying maladaptive processes that contribute to and maintain anxiety, sadness, and anger– eco-distress.  Most frequent is a ‘stuck’ attention and loss of clarity about personal values – the things in life that are important to you (the environment having so often become dominant over other value domains); this, alongside the perceived role of worry/rumination underpinned as it so often is by a (metacognitive) belief in the power of thinking as an unconscious (but unhelpful) coping strategy to an intolerance of uncertainty. Uncertainty is inherent in all environmental policy fields, but it is not possible to make certain that which is inherently uncertain, despite our endless search for it in our thoughts.

Framing eco-distress principally through a grief lens, to my mind, risks undermining our meaning and understanding of ‘grief’ as a process rather than a single emotion (see also an earlier blog post on Labelling issues: the pros and cons). It risks over-complexifying what might really be going on for the eco-distressed.  But for many experiencing eco-distress (and those presenting in my London clinic) their experience is usually less immediate or direct and more anticipatory, future-focused and therefore often has a strong element of fear/anxiety about the future and anger at humanity’s apparent inability to act. Even while some clients might make reference to a sense of loss, this can be as a result of trying to make sense of what they are feeling and thinking, e.g. around hopelessness and helplessness. What might be described as a feeling may well actually be a thought, or at least involving significant cognitive appraisal (e.g. guilt, shame, ‘grief’).

In practice, the experiences of the ‘eco-distressed’, I suggest, are not really so different to the ‘ordinarily distressed’. The ‘eco‘ term relates to the situation or context of the emotional response.  I don’t find it particularly helpful to define the emotional responses of clients to environmental change as somehow fundamentally different to the emotional responses of clients to other contexts when we are dealing with the same underlying processes. From an academic research perspective the ‘eco’ aspect perhaps has become a way of defining the emotional experience as somehow exceptional, and so it has helped define the focus for research (and funding) linked to climate change [4].  From a therapeutic perspective, the ‘eco’ aspect relates to the situation or context in which the emotional response occurs (in the same way that ‘work’ or ‘health’ might precede the word ‘anxiety’), which includes the usual range of normal human emotions, behaviours, and cognitions, some of which may be unhelpful and maladaptive.  My environmental expertise therefore informs my therapeutic work because I also understand the challenging scientific, policy and political context within which these emotional and other responses are happening.

So, what is in a name?

Well, quite a lot it seems. It matters, as a client, what you are labelled with or how you label yourself. Labels can be helpful, but are also ‘sticky’ and can distort how you see yourself; and they can shape the approach adopted to therapeutic treatment. The purpose of treatment in this case is not to eradicate the emotional responses - they are after all normal human experiences - but to better understand them and to gain perspective that helps build greater, long-term resilience. In the next blog post (‘Eco-anxiety, eco-distress: finding joy in life again......a practical approach to treatment’) I will look at the approach I use in treating eco-distress – anxiety, sadness, anger, etc - which is based on well-evidenced therapeutic models and techniques for treating anxiety and depression.

Bill Sheate, 17 March 2024

[1] See for example: Lawrance et al (2022, Lancet); Vercammen et al (2023, Challenges) Stanley et al (2021, The Journal of Climate Change and Health); Hickman et al (2021, Lancet Public Health); Hogg et al (2021, Global Environmental Change); Agoston et al (2022, Climate Risk Management); Léger-Goodes et al (2022, Frontiers in Psychology); Kurth and Pihkala (2022, Frontiers in Psychology); Agoston et al (2022, Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health); Pihkala (2022, Sustainability); Pihkala (2022, Frontiers in Climate);

[2] Marks and Hickman, Nature Mental Health 2023; Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2020.

[3] Tschakert et al (2019, Global Environmental Change).

[4] Chiolero (2023, Epidemiologia)