Human Elements

- [Announcer 1] I feel guilty about my impact on the planet.

- [Announcer 2] The sky is full of toxic pollutants.

- [Announcer 3] I feel really hopeless about the future.

- [Announcer 4] Our glaciers are melting.

- [Announcer 5] People are already facing climate impacts.

- [Announcer 6] There's more smoke in the air every summer.

- [Announcer 7] I feel like I'm the only one stressed out about this.

- [Announcer 8] I'm worried about my kids' future.

- [Announcer 9] I'm anxious about the future all the time.

- [Announcer 10] I feel guilty about my consumption.

- [Announcer 11] I feel like I can't make a difference.

- [Group] I don't feel like anything I do will change things.

- I find the most important place to start is just providing a space for people to talk about how they're feeling.

(calming music) Well, I get to enjoy the view 'cause I usually sit over there and let the clients have the view.

I started having clients bringing up these issues of anxiety or fear about the future in the context of climate change, for themselves, for their loved ones, or just grief about the anticipated loss of nature.

Whether it's, you know, ethical to have another child given their carbon footprint.

My kids were quite little, and to have a client say, oh, I don't know if it's a good idea to bring a child into this world, felt very impactful.

I had to wrestle with those concerns myself.

This is such a new field, the field of climate therapy, climate aware therapy, or climate mental health.

People who are really struggling with these experiences have a lot of knowledge of what the science says and what's not being done.

Often, you know, they look out at a landscape and feel a huge amount of grief, 'cause all they can see is this forest out here is gonna die.

Fresh water is gonna dry up and these species are gone.

This delicate ecosystem is not gonna be here in 40 years.

Like those people really need to be supported, just because they have a huge amount of knowledge and information and skills and we're gonna need them.

I realized, oh, I'm not really sure, I don't have the training that prepares me for this topic.

Maybe in my own way of coping with my own anxieties and worries, felt like, oh, what can I do?

And sometimes I started thinking, oh, maybe I should switch careers and become a climate scientist, or an environmental scientist, or who knows what, park ranger.

But when I slowed myself down, I would say, okay, well actually there's something that's not being done right now in this area, and it's a focus on the emotional and psychological impacts of this experience that we're all having.

And so I started kind of bringing together what I thought of as like a clearinghouse on climate mental health.

And I put it a website called Climate and Mind.

(relaxing music) And I'm definitely not an expert.

So I felt this sort of project came out through my own ignorance, and my own desire to learn from other people who are already working on this.

That's one thing that's makes this topic different, climate change and how it impacts us is we're all kind of in it together.

When people start talking together about it, they immediately often feel a sense of relief, that they're not the only ones with these emotions.

Not necessarily needing to do anything about these feelings, but just paying attention to them.

That's actually kinda radical.

And then talking about them, bringing them out from inside out into the world in some way, that's kinda like maybe 80% of the support I can do, is help people take those steps.

A lot of people jump to action right away.

They think like, I gotta do something about this.

That's not usually very helpful.

And like we bring ourselves down.

I have to solve climate change myself.

I have to save the world.

People genuinely feel that way.

So I see, you know, I really see my role as helping people get unstuck from isolation and hopelessness.

And start trying things out in the world.

Sometimes people join, you know, activist organizations, climate organizations, political organizing, do trail work out in the forest.

I had one person buy a bicycle and that was his action.

I think if we as humans tend to slow down and take in the world around us, we feel a sense of appreciation and love for the planet, for nature, for everything we're interconnected with.

There's a moss garden growing on the roof outside my window, that's like a cool forest.

And there's squirrels and cats and creatures.

And human technology isn't actually separate from the bigger nature.

(footsteps crunching) (relaxing music) It is both peaceful to be looking out at this wetland area.

And also, you know, you can't ignore the noisy freeway that's there in the background.

And that's part of it too.

That's part of the experience, and we have to sort of hold those two at the same time.

(traffic passing) (calming music) I hope we shift course as a species, and as a society, especially like the wealthy nations of the world who are, have so much control and so much responsibility for what's happening.

I hope we wake up and recognize that we're not disconnected from our planet.

That we're a part of it.