“Get a fucking grip, pussies.”
The American Psychological Association has created a 69-page guide aimed at helping mental health care providers treat an increasing number of people who report “climate anxiety,” according to a Tuesday CNN report.
Climate anxiety and grief, otherwise known as solastalgia, is defined as “the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.” The anxiety has become so persistent, the APA is preparing mental health providers for an influx of cases related to climate change.
“The psychological responses to climate change such as conflict avoidance, fatalism, fear, helplessness and resignation are growing,” said Susan Clayton, one of the lead authors of the guide. “These responses are keeping us, and our nation, from properly addressing the core causes of and solutions for our changing climate and from building and supporting psychological resiliency.”
Penn State psychology Professor Janet Swim, who has authored research on psychology and climate change, said there’s ways to treat this kind of anxiety.
“Anxiety is something people feel more and more when they get closer to an anti-goal, meaning a negative result, like the destruction of the planet,” Swim said. “Instead of focusing on the fear, you should instead focus on what you want to do.”
“If you get closer and closer to a solution, you can feel more pride and there is hope,” Swim added.
According to CNN, the treatment can help people like the students in Wendy Petersen Boring’s class, many of whom have experienced severe anxiety about climate change.
A history, religious studies, and women & gender studies professor, Petersen Boring has also taught a climate change class at Willamette University in Oregon for more than a decade. In that time, she says she has watched students’ anxiety over climate change grow.
“Back in 2007, it was the mouse in the room; then, it became the elephant in the room. By 2016, those concerns and fears began to flood over,” Petersen Boring said.
According to Petersen Boring, one of her students even awoke at 2 a.m. and “cried for two solid hours” about the warming ocean.
The election of President Donald Trump, who has taken a more skeptical stance on climate change compared to previous presidents, has only helped increase her students stress.
“With the Trump election, the change in my students, the sense of grief and fear and paralysis in the room, became palpable,” Peterson Boring said.
However, some critics aren’t too keen on showing sympathy to those professing anxiety and distress over climate change.
Reacting to the CNN story on Twitter, Playboy advice columnist and author Bridget Phetasy had simple advice for those suffering from climate anxiety.
Get a fucking grip, pussies. https://t.co/Vt57roXgnP
— Bridget Phetasy (@BridgetPhetasy) May 7, 2019
Aftter admitting she would be a “horrible therapist,” Phetasy joked that those struggling with even the thought of climate change would likely be the first to go were the feared climate apocalypse to arrive.
The irony is—if you can’t even handle the *idea* of climate change, you’re definitely not going to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland you’re envisioning.
— Bridget Phetasy (@BridgetPhetasy) May 7, 2019
Josh Hammer, editor-at-large for the “Daily Wire”, expressed shock that climate anxiety was real.
How is this real life? https://t.co/TNfklLlTxY
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) May 7, 2019
Others blamed the media for getting liberals all worked up.
The only reason people need mental help over anxiety with "climate change" is because lying media outlets like @CNN are freaking them out
— Angus T. Kirk (@angusparvo) May 8, 2019
Progressive activists and politicians have also been stirring up emotions. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., released her ambitious Green New Deal earlier this year, and she and other prominent Democrats have suggested the plan may be the only way to save the planet from imminent doom.
Critics argue that the Green New Deal is too costly and will have almost no positive impact on the environment.
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