Climate change: Clinical considerations

Abstract

Psychological reactions to climate change run the gamut from a sense of the need for urgent action to utter denial. This paper looks at some categories of defenses that block acknowledgement of this pressing threat. It cites the work of Renee Lertzman, an analytically oriented social scientist, whose research suggested that disavowal, negation, or denial could be deconstructed and viewed as defenses against intolerable anxieties, feelings of helplessness and disappointment, loss and guilt, and warded‐off wishes for agency and reparation. Clinical examples and personal self‐reflection are employed to posit that when anxiety over climate change, a serious disquiet in its own right, gets confused with childhood traumatic anxiety, with its attendant feelings of helplessness, smallness, hopelessness, shame, isolation, and useless rage, then dysfunctional defenses and affects are more likely to come to the fore. In contrast to this, realistic anxiety over our changing climate and need to shift from a carbon‐based culture can be made more tolerable and can allow one to face the uncertain future, to feel one's feelings, to work them through, to share them without shame, and to feel a certain amount of agency in confronting the climate future and working to cope with it, both individually and societally. Finally, the paper suggests that we clinicians need to listen with new awareness to patients' references to and defenses against climate change, as not simply displacements but also as allusions to a looming reality that is a thing in itself. It is suggested that although we cannot impose our agendas on our patients, as climate change disavowal breaks down, we do have in our tool kit ways of helping our patients with it, depending of course very much on the state of our own disavowal.

A Scoping Review of Interventions for the Treatment of Eco-Anxiety

“…After removing non-relevant literature, 34 records published between 2005 and 2019 were included in the review. Twenty of the records reviewed were conceptual or reflective papers [ 7 , 12 , 16 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 ], five were organization reports [ 13 , 15 , 47 , 48 , 49 ], three were mixed methods studies [ 26 , 50 , 51 ], three were magazine articles [ 10 , 52 , 53 ], one was a qualitative study [ 54 ], one was a chapter from a conference report [ 55 ], and one was a blog post [ 56 ].…”

“…Despite these differences, all three psychological schools were united in their shared emphasis on the value of group work as a supportive environment for emotional processing and for connecting one’s inner experience of eco-anxiety to others’ and to greater social themes. Some authors notably referred to established group work models like “The Work that Reconnects” [ 37 ] and “Carbon Conversations” [ 42 , 55 ].…”

Avoidance, rationalization, and denial: Defensive self-protection in the face of climate change negatively predicts pro-environmental behavior

“…Various researchers describe implicatory denial as similar to a conscious cognitive awareness without the emotional acknowledgement of the implications ("knowing but not knowing", e.g., Norgaard, 2006b). Denial here is a matter of self-protection when environmental problems are simultaneously deeply disturbing and invisible (Ager, 2008;Haseley, 2019;Lertzman, 2015;Norgaard, 2006a). For example, Swiss citizens found the prospect of changing their lifestyles to mitigate climate change more threatening than the reality of climate change itself.…”

Ympäristöahdistus ja rituaalit: analyysia ympäristötunteiden rituaalisesta käsittelystä

“…Monet ihmiset kuitenkin kokevat ympäristöahdistusta niin voimakkaasti, että ilmiöön sisältyy myös mielenterveyden järkkymiseen liittyviä piirteitä (esim. Haseley 2019). Psykodynaamisessa ja psykososiaalisessa tutkimuksessa on tuotu esiin, kuinka torjutut asiat (repressio) ja komplisoituneet tunteet voivat voimistaa ahdistusta (Hoggett 2019;Weintrobe 2013).…”