“If the goal is to insure that the planet remains habitable, what is the right degree of panic, and how do you bear it?
…“For years, you read all the articles,” Wehage told me recently, over the phone. “You look at pictures of the pollution, you think about the greed that fuels it, and you feel upset. But then, when you’re there, you understand that it’s so much worse than anything you could read.” He returned to Seattle overwhelmed. He started checking labels for palm oil, but knew that wasn’t enough. He couldn’t stop thinking about the carbon footprint from all his flights, and how, in some of the cities he visited, the local water was so polluted that the only potable option came in plastic bottles. Then the pandemic set in. Wehage went through a breakup, and began to spend every day alone in his spare, undecorated apartment. (He hadn’t wanted to purchase anything unnecessary that would just end up in a landfill.) He went on long walks, sometimes carrying a trash bag to clean up the streets, but a sense of powerlessness weighed on him: seeing car commercials every two minutes on television, getting on Reddit and reading endlessly about climate doom. He stopped enjoying the things he used to like: playing basketball, going hiking.
“Therapy wasn’t really a thing people did where he grew up, Wehage thought. But, after some prodding from friends and family, he decided to seek it out. He came across the Web page of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, which has a list of more than three hundred climate-aware therapists—practitioners who recognize climate change as a major cause of distress and have developed methods for discussing and treating it. He e-mailed and called a dozen of those listed, but none had any availability. He tried a dozen more therapists in his city before finding someone who could see him. When Wehage told her what was bothering him, she said that she talked about the climate crisis with most of her clients. “After so much isolation, just to think, I’m not alone—it made me get tears in my eyes,” Wehage told me…
“Davenport paused, and murmured sympathetically. “O.K.,” she said. “If someone were not as concerned, I would encourage them to keep their eyes more open in an accountable way. For what you’re describing, I might encourage you to back up a bit. As trite as this sounds, I would remember the guide of the Serenity Prayer, and task yourself with doing what you can do and accepting what you can’t do in any particular moment.” She added, “I would advise trying to contain these feelings within one hour every day, where you can feel those worries and evaluate whether you can take action and make plans.”
Read/listen to the full article/podcast here.
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