Stop Calling It “Climate Anxiety.” It’s Climate Dread.
Stop Calling It “Climate Anxiety.” It’s Climate Dread.
The phrase “climate dread” better legitimizes the real and tangible threat coming toward us.
Mark Freed experienced growing dread due to the increasing wildfires near his home in California. He felt a sense of helplessness and searched for safer places to live, but still felt disaster was inevitable. Experts define dread as being heavier than anxiety since it involves a tangible threat. With climate change, people dread future extreme events and the consequences of inaction. Constantly focusing on doom and helplessness can cause paralysis. Taking small climate-friendly actions and community support can help transform dread into hope and empowerment. While dread spreads awareness, constant focus on it harms well-being. Therapists recommend acknowledging valid emotions while reconnecting with life's meaningful aspects through nature or hobbies. For Freed, routine and spending time with his dogs now makes life livable despite managed dread.
It's both.
Different people are suffering from climate anxiety, fear, dread, unease, rage, terror, grief, denial, angst, anger, avoidance, etc.
There is no One Size Fits All when it comes to how we feel about this stuff.
17Taking small climate-friendly actions and community support can help transform dread into hope and empowerment.
I don't see how. As long as everything's made in heavily-polluting countries and transported here on bunker-fuel-burning ships, global warming will proceed on schedule no matter what you and I do.
16Permanently Deleted
13It’s an article about climate change, greenhouse gases, or global warming. I upvote.
8“It’s like there’s no control over what’s going to happen to us,” he told me. In trying to name his emotions, Freed said what he was experiencing wasn’t quite anxiety—it was deeper and heavier than that. That looming feeling, he said, was dread.
Sounds like Mark Freed just doesn't know what anxiety/generalised anxiety disorder is like. Because yeah, that's what anxiety is, a feeling of impending dread, doom or foreboding. It can be really fucking deep and heavy.
8I swear every week someone new wants to change terms commonly used
7Journalist: “I want to report on how apocalyptic coverage of climate change breeds inaction.”
Editor: “Cool… Cool, cool, cool… But like, can you do that in an apocalyptic tone?”
Journalist: “…Fine…”
7Who even called it climate anxiety?
5I have heard the term before but what a bizarre article title either way
9There's been a lot of articles recently published referring to mental health issues on the rise due to climate anxiety, and the tax it would have on govermnets and insurance companies to treat folks due to it
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