Climate change: the psychological impact of climate anxiety and trauma: understanding from the psychotherapeutic encounter

ABSTRACT

Anthropogenic climate change has been a crisis that human beings have spent decades being in denial of, at great cost to nature, biodiversity and ultimately to ourselves. Facing the reality of this crisis and the damage done to the natural world has been unbearable and places us in touch with primitive anxieties about our own destructiveness. There is hope that our species can take a different path than the current one of living beyond our means. Some momentum towards change is beginning to occur: but will meaningful change be expedited soon enough to protect our struggling planet? The focus of this paper is to explore how psychoanalytic thinking can provide a deeper insight into the anxiety that the climate crisis is bringing to the fore, especially in young people who are wary of adult figures and institutions that are not seen to be doing enough to address this issue. Through the work of child and adolescent psychotherapy with a young person, the impact of climate change is considered in terms of the relationship between internal and external worlds. Also discussed is the importance of the psychotherapist themselves in bearing the reality of the climate crisis and its accompanying anxieties, especially when working with climate anxiety and climate trauma in our patients.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• climate anxiety
• disavowal
• young people
• dependence
• destructiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. This we know. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself ’ (Chief Seathl; Gifford, 2015, p. 86).

2. The IPCC was set up by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organisation in 1988.

3. Climate change brought about by human interaction with the Earth (burning of fossil fuels, increase in greenhouse gases, deforestation), as opposed to more natural climatic factors (Earth’s orbital path around the sun, glacial advances). The ‘Anthropocene Epoch’ is described as a geological epoch where human activity has determined its character and make-up. Attenborough (2020) suggests that today’s rock formations will likely contain fragments of plastic and nuclear plutonium, for example.

4. At the time of writing, evidence appeared in the press that in the 1970s, ExxonMobil funded their own scientific research into climate change and fossil fuel usage with breathtakingly accurate figures, predicting our current situation in terms of the egregious impact on the climate of carbon emissions. The cover-up of this information appears to go beyond denial and to something more malevolent. This knowledge was not only turned a blind eye to, but was knowingly concealed, to the extent that for 30 years or more, ExxonMobil and others funded campaigns and drives to deny and attack scientists, environmental and climate groups who were merely pointing to the same evidence that they themselves had earlier discovered.

5. Radovanovic and Spasic’s (2022) research looked at changes in the value orientations of adolescents between 1972 and 2018 in Belgrade. The results obtained, based on a study of 832 teenage school students, showed that hedonistic behaviours remained stable through this period, while activist and altruistic value orientations decreased. Interestingly, there was a significant increase in utilitarian value orientations that advocate actions fostering happiness, in opposition to actions that cause harm.

6. To ensure anonymity, Perdu is not the patient’s real name. Perdu gave both written and verbal consent for the clinical material to be used in this paper. The patient had been provided with a full draft of the paper, prior to giving their consent.

7. The recent IPCC report (March 2023) has scientists plainly warning that we will exceed the average global temperature 1.5C above preindustrial levels by the first half of the 2030s. There is however hope that our current course can shift, but would require halving greenhouse gases by 2030. The report was signed by 195 countries and a greater sense of consensus through discussion that recognises the risks to the planet are a hopeful sign as with an agreement between nations to protect ocean life, which was also signed in March 2023.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Slater

Peter Slater is a member of the ACP and works in private practice. He is a Visiting Lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic in London and at Heguang University in China.