If you’re worried about the impacts of climate change, global ecological disaster or a specific extreme weather event, if such worries and fears are either constant or temporarily overwhelming, if they affect your daily life so much that, for example, you have difficulty sleeping, or you have panic attacks, or you’re unable to focus on other important things like your relationships or your schoolwork, then you might be suffering from eco-anxiety.

If you worry or feel guilty about the environmental impact of most actions you take, or if your great concern for the environment is matched by a huge sense of helplessness that there’s nothing you can do, and if this tends to immobilise you, that also sounds like eco-anxiety.

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Over the last two to three years, reported cases of eco-anxiety have risen dramatically across the world, especially as the threat of climate change and its environmental impacts have become more regularly reported in the media and online.

Eco-anxiety can also be related to one or more specific ecological disasters which occur close to home.  After a tsunami, for example, people can become continually fearful of another tsunami, and their lives can be permanently unsettled.

Eco-anxiety isn’t a recognised medical condition.  But general anxiety is, and eco-anxiety has many of the same characteristics.  Most people are a little eco-anxious, but some people are more eco-anxious than others.  In parallel to eco-anxiety, there’s a growing interest in the study of ‘eco-psychology’ which explores our psychological relationship with the natural world.

HOW ECO-ANXIETY AFFECTS PEOPLE

Eco-anxiety does not affect everyone equally. In fact, it tends to be more prevalent among people who are more aware of the protection of the environment. The symptoms include the following: slight cases of anxiety, stress, sleep disturbances, nervousness, etc.

In the more serious cases, eco-anxiety can cause a sensation of suffocation or even depression. Among the latter group, it is quite common for people to express a strong sense of guilt about the situation of the planet, which can be aggravated, among those who have children, when thinking about their future.

OVERCOMING ECO-ANXIETY HOLISTICALLY

• Resilience At Its Best: By not viewing problems as unsolvable and finding real and systematic solutions, you can combat eco-anxiety, so an optimistic mindset is a way forward!

• Fostering Personal Habits: Everyone can do their bit by adopting a greener and more sustainable lifestyle. Calculating your carbon print, reconsidering your commute, reaching out to community organisations, spreading awareness and organising campaigns will ease your anxiousness.

• Consider Visiting A Counsellor: Mental health professionals can manage people’s relationship with nature and help cope with modern-day environmental problems.