How To Care About the Climate and Thrive:
Advice From an Eco Psychologist

You don’t have to be a climate activist to feel a sense of anxiety at the scale of the environmental crisis we are facing. It’s something that Dr. Thomas Doherty is seeing in his Portland practice. A specialist in the relatively new field of eco psychology, which applies an environmental perspective to mental health and well-being, his aim is to give people the tools to cope and move forward. How does he do that and what can we all learn?

Here’s what he says:

Anxiety is normal, but let other feelings in

“If we’re in a tough situation, we might feel scared, sad, or anxious – those are all normal. But if you’re only sitting with these, that’s not very comfortable. Eco anxiety is a problem, not because of anxiety. It’s because it’s lonely and there are no other feelings to support it.

The metaphor that I use is an old-fashioned magnetic compass. A compass has a needle and it’s always trying to point north. So as you walk around, the needle is going to be shifting around. If your needle is always pointing in the same direction, that’s a broken compass. And so in our emotional life, we ideally want to cultivate being able to feel a range of emotions, like curiosity, hope, anger, privilege, peace … all the different shades.”