If there were no negative emotions, in fact, we would mainly face two situations:
- We would not notice danger, risking harm to our safety. Anxiety and fear are two absolutely fundamental emotions for our existence; they are primordial and intrinsic to our nature. If these emotions appear at inappropriate moments and/or in an exaggerated way, that is when pathology sets in.
- We would always remain in the same situation, never improving. Without a measure of discouragement, without fear of what will happen in the future, we would not be driven to change ourselves and the circumstances around us.
Eco-anxiety is in fact a label used to identify several negative emotions related to climate change and the environment: fear, nervousness, anger, stress and so on. It is essentially fear of the future, which generates feelings of anguish and anxiety, but also of lost hope and helplessness – the latter common in depression.
Is there an eco-anxiety that can be useful to us and spur us on to build a better world? According to some, in fact, the point is that there is not enough eco-anxiety: if there were enough of it, we would already have made important changes.
We can classify the feelings provoked by climate change into several categories:
- An anxious type of response, in which we have emotions such as nervousness and fear that provoke a defensive reaction, such as minimising the risk.
- Responses such as guilt and shame, which are more self-directed; in this case there are reparative attitudes.
- Responses such as anguish, which are feelings of loss and which can lead to effects as far-reaching as isolation.
Besides having an existential facet, such as worry about the future, eco-anxiety also has a social component. Individuals ask themselves: “what will the people around me think if I do/say this?” We humans are social animals, made to be interdependent. The fear of abandonment is ancient and deeply rooted in us, since being abandoned by the group in a prehistoric society could mean death.
It is therefore normal that we adapt our behaviour to those around us, or at any rate surround ourselves with people who can support us and are similar to us so as not to be alone. And so the way we approach the changes we should make for the climate also depends on who is around us. If urging colleagues to sort their rubbish for recycling in the office risks labelling us as annoying fusspots, we will clearly be much less inclined to do it.
Eco-anxiety is a future-oriented emotion, focused on what can be done to improve things; it is proactive. And this is what we need to build on, even in pathological forms: trying to attenuate it and make an essentially negative feeling positive.
In conclusion, two opposite attitudes can be observed. If on the one hand we have extreme eco-anxiety, on the other we may have the rejection and denial of these problems. As we mentioned a moment ago, the media often tend to talk about the most severe eco-anxiety, as if everyone who experiences it had severe symptoms. This can provoke a total rejection of these topics, perhaps considering the whole matter a whim or a compulsion to make changes.
We refer you to our podcast Kloros to listen to an interview with one of the best-known expert doctors in Italy on this subject, Dr Casolari.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5iiihTvdbPXl5tVept8z2G
Source of the article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.981814/full
