Climate Anxiety: Coping with the Climate Crisis (for 16-25s)

The climate crisis stirs a variety of negative emotions in most of us, from fear, to anger, to depression, to anxiety. This is a completely normal response, but unfortunately the vast majority of people use unhelpful coping mechanisms to block out these emotions, meaning that inaction on climate change becomes common place.

At ZERO, we’re trying to change this. Giving people agency to take action appropriate to the scale of the threat is essential. But we need to be able to have honest conversations about the scale of the problem without triggering people’s unhelpful coping strategies.

Young people, as well as those in the global south who are the least responsible for climate breakdown, stand to face the worst impacts. Yet the nations and individuals most responsible for creating the emissions which are driving global catastrophe are simply ignoring those voices.

We want to hear from young people about how anxiety around climate change is affecting their day-to-day lives, their mental health, and their outlook towards the future. We want to help develop positive coping mechanisms which allow all of us to cope with this existential threat, without turning away from the problem in fear. As such, we work with a number of practitioners who work on different techniques to help with climate anxiety.

We’re all different, so you may like some techniques more then others. But perhaps you can find something in this workshop which helps you to deal with negative emotions around climate anxiety, and empower yourself to take action. Your everyday actions and voice can drive peer-to-peer climate change, and help others cope and take action.