New York (AP) – anxiety, sadness, anger, fear, disability. Emotional losses for Climate Wide -range, especially for young people.
A lot of concern about What the future hides, And grind my daily from Climate Narration can lead to insomnia, the inability to focus and worse. Some young people wonder whether it is moral to bring children to the world. Many people grieve over the natural world.
Activists and psychologists and others in combating climate change have a set of ways to build flexibility and help manage feelings. Some ideas:
Be active in your community
Feeling isolation? “I am looking for ways to communicate with similar people in thinking and helping nature. There are many ways to participate.
Work locally to persuade more residents to abandon grass promoter and increase biological diversity with The original plantsFor example. Help create new green spaces, join water protection projects, develop wildlife paths, or reduce the use of pesticides to save frogs, insects and birds. Work to get the floor on Low night lighting To help birds and lightning.
“I see people Struggle with these feelings “I have parents who really struggle with their feelings and really worry about their children in the future,” Robinson said.
Make a positive sandwich
Climate news and attack from disasters and chaos in general have become heavy and overwhelming for many with the rise of social media and the use of a mobile phone. Try to schedule the separators from the notifications on your phone or back down News cycle In other ways.
Consider the idea of ”positive sandwich”, as it begins with a good set of news, followed by more difficult, and then ends with a good second story.
Typical behaviors of your children
PHOEBE Yu, 39, gave up a comfortable job in healthy technology to work on business management with a focus on sustainability. A company that sells a sponge made from Luffa Gourd. She does everything while raising her 6 -year -old son with her husband in Frimmont, California.
“I am generally a very happy person and I am very optimistic. I am still, but sometimes it becomes very difficult to manage. Like what will happen and think in the long term,” she said. “At points, he regretted Bring a child to this worldKnowing how things can become much worse. “
Part of the management of its emotions is Try to model sustainable behaviors For her son while teaching him on The importance of helping the environment. The family drives an electric car. They do not eat meat and encourage the extended family to do the same. It is recycling, fertilizer unit traveling by air.
Yu said: “I try to explain things to my son so that he can at least understand how the world and the ecosystems work as a whole.” “I think children are able to absorb this and turn this to a level of work.”
Remember: We are all in touch
Britnee Reid teaching science in the middle schools of the Gaston Virtual Academy, a public virtual K-12 school based in Gastonia, North Carolina.
Reed participated in a pilot project for Free teacher tool group On the climate gathered by the National Environmental Education Foundation and the Mental Health Network, it is a group group for community lawyers who work on the emotional effects of climate change.
This group is full of ways to help teachers support the mental health of students and manage their climate -related feelings. One of the exercises includes students who document their interactions with the natural world in an environmental schedule. Reid said that setting everything raises work often.
“They can be worried, they can be angry, they can feel fear, but they are such horses,” I will make change in this world. “She said:” There is a kind of facts at the same time where they feel fear, but they also feel, as you know, I can do something about it. “
“The timelines, I presented some good and rich conversations,” said Reed.
Find words to express your feelings
Patterical therapist Patricia Haspat, outside Eugene, Oregon, has written many books on environmental psychology and environmental treatment, and she studied graduate students in those topics.
“We integrate nature into the healing process,” she said. “We are treating a person’s relationship with the natural world. Certainly with climate change, environmental treatment has a great role in playing.”
One of its most important tasks Help people find their words To talk about climate change in the pursuit of flexibility.
“There were some studies that were conducted that show an increasing number of young people who were anxious, such as 84 % of young people in the United States who reported their concern about climate change, but just like 59 % of them believe that others are concerned as they are,” Halakhah said.
She said that this contributes to the inaction and feelings of anxiety, depression or isolation.
You are not one. You are so much
Climate scientist Kate Marvel, a physical scientist and author of the new book “Human Nature: Nine ways to feel our changing planet”, urge people to think differently in their place in preserving the environment.
She said, “Often, anxiety and despair comes from a feeling of helplessness. I do not think any of us is helpless.”
“I think collectively, we are incredibly strong,” said Marvel. “The atmosphere is concerned with what we all do together, and I think you can have a greater effect if you think about yourself as part of the collective.”
