Disclaimer: General meditation practice and services like Meditation Rocks are not a replacement for, or a form of therapy, nor are they intended to cure, treat, or diagnose medical conditions. Meditation can, however, be a component of an overall treatment plan, when monitored by a healthcare professional.
The dangers of climate change have been well reported for years.
This week, an IPCC report stated that the world can still hope to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown, but only through a “now or never” dash to a low-carbon economy and society. UN scientists laid out a plan and have said this is, in effect, a final warning for governments on the climate.
But how is news about this need for an urgent approach to saving our environment affecting our children?
In the past six years, I have taught mindfulness to over fifteen thousand school children. During these sessions, the state and future of our planet is often raised as a cause of concern and worry amongst these young people. But what really is climate anxiety? And how can we help our young people process what is going on?
“Children and young people are very aware of what is happening to our planet, and many of them know that the moment for action is now. Mindfulness can act as a tool to help everyone deal with the feelings we face, consider our actions, and deepen our connection to the natural world.”
- Lucy Stone
BBC’s Newsround commissioned a study which found of the 2000 children they questioned, four out of five (80%) said the problem of climate change was important to them, with over a third saying it was very important. Nearly three quarters (73%) said they are worried about the state of the planet right now - including 22% who say they are very worried.
The survey reflects feelings of frustration in young people towards what adult are doing - or not doing. More than half (59%) of them don't think their voices are being heard on climate change. Nearly two thirds (64%) don't believe people in power are listening to them enough when they do talk about it. But when asked about the action being taken by grown-ups to tackle the problem, more than two in five (41%) said they don't trust adults to tackle the challenges that climate change presents.
One of the biggest movements in recent times was the "Fridays for future" campaign led by Greta Thunberg.
The teenage environmental activist inspired a series of school strikes around the world. They led to children leaving school to try to make their voices heard by making signs and joining marches, calling on world leaders to do more to protect the planet and to take bolder action to try to cut climate change. Despite millions of young people all around the world taking part in these protests it's clear that you feel that it's not making the difference you hoped it would.
A recent survey from 2021 including professors from the University of Bath which looked at “Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey” — the largest of its kind — asked 10,000 young people in 10 countries how they felt about climate change and government responses to it.
The results, found that most respondents were concerned about climate change, with nearly 60% saying they felt ‘very worried’ or ‘extremely worried’. Many associated negative emotions with climate change — the most commonly chosen were ‘sad’, ‘afraid’, ‘anxious’, ‘angry’ and ‘powerless’. Overall, 45% of participants said their feelings about climate change impacted their daily lives.
And it’s not just children, according to a 2020 survey by the American Psychological Association, 68% of American adults say that they experience eco-anxiety in some capacity.
When people experience stress and worry about the potential impacts of climate change, although it's not a medical term, lots of researchers call this feeling eco-anxiety or climate anxiety.
The difficulty for young people is the scale of the problem of climate change, the challenges tackling it presents and what often seems like the slowness of the response shown by governments and world leaders.
Young people are clearly worried about climate change and their futures as this survey reveals. Public figures like David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg have helped young people to voice their worries and we have to make sure that we as adults listen to them and empower them by giving talks at school and in their communities to help them become involved in positive change
Emma Citron, Consultant clinical child psychologist
Seeing stories in the media about wildfires in the Amazon and Australia, ice melting in the Antarctic and Arctic, sea temperatures rising and plastic destroying wildlife in the oceans, the scale of the problem can sometimes make the idea of dealing with it feel hopeless.
There is a general feeling that the future is so uncertain and it's extremely hard to live with.
Mary Jayne Rust, Psychologist
When we experience anxiety, there is often a kind of internal loop happening within us: an anxious thought arises in the mind, the body recognizes that thought as worry, triggering feelings we associate with worry. When the mind recognizes that the body is worried, it responds in turn by producing more thoughts. As a result, the body then follows suit, and so the anxious spiral begins.
“The more we get into the body, the more we step out of the mind”
One way to short circuit this loop is by using meditation which provides an object of focus for our attention — such as the breath or a physical sensation — allowing us to divert our attention away from the anxious thoughts.
When we try and focus on the present moment through a physical sensation, we don’t really allow space for thoughts because the mind can only be in one place at a time. So instead of focusing on a story that fuels the anxiety, our focus becomes our physical sensations, rooting us in the here and now.
But part of the reason many of us feel anxious about climate change in the first place is the sense of uncertainty that’s often attached, thoughts like these that can send us leaping into the future and easily send us spiralling — or even catastrophizing.
• Talk to someone you trust if you feel your worries about climate change are affecting your life too much and making you unhappy
• Be involved in positive changes - small efforts make a difference and if you can't control the rest of the world it's easier to control what you do in your life! This might include walking, cycling and taking public transport to get around, and thinking about sustainability in your own life.
• Join a campaign group or work with friends to build support for causes you believe in - it's great to work with others and have their support. Joining groups also provides a voice for people concerned about the changing climate
• Encourage your school or family to be more eco-friendly. Seeing the ways you can influence others can help you feel more optimistic about making a difference.
To cope with these fears, we might try pairing action with mindfulness, a practice that can help us navigate both uncertainty and anxious thoughts, as well as helping be clear on what choices to make in how we live our life, or how we wish to campaign to make a difference.
Here are ten ways developing a meditation practice, or acting more mindfully might ease climate anxiety in you, or young people in your life.
Navigating all our feelings around climate change often means engaging with difficult emotions — precisely the kind of emotions we tend to spend most of our time avoiding. But by bravely facing those feelings and using mindfulness to learn how to cope with them, we can work on preserving the health of both our planet and mind.
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