Practices and exercises
Self-care – Incorporate different types of activity into your week
Consider ACE and BACE worksheets to plan and schedule a balance of activities in your life.
These worksheets encourage you to make time for bodily care, relaxation, and relationships.
Explore techniques for managing worry
You could experiment with worry time or “climate anxiety contemplation” sessions. Worry time is a set period each day dedicated to contemplating and processing your fears and anxieties. The rest of the day, as worries surface, you make a physical note of them somewhere, remind yourself you’ll return to them in your worry time, and then go back to what you were doing. A climate anxiety contemplation session is a similar system but focused on climate anxiety.
I’ve practised worry time on the recommendation of a counsellor and despite being very sceptical, I found it helped. It did take a lot of practice. The same worries would resurface repeatedly, especially at the beginning. I’ve also used this workbook from the Centre for Clinical Interventions1The Centre for Clinical Interventions (CCI) is a clinical psychology service, administered by the North Metropolitan Health Service in Western Australia. Its website hosts a range of self-help workbooks and information sheets. helpful.
You may find the worry tree helpful as a way to deal with your worries. A worry tree is a set of questions that help you decide whether to do something about what’s worrying you or let it go.
There is also a worry time app, produced with the CCI, for scheduling your worry time and recording your worries.
Information and ideas
“Healthy distancing“
An interview with Dr Panu Pihkala, in which he describes the difference between healthy distancing and avoidance.
What counts as healthy distancing is different for different people in different times and places, when evaluated ethically and psychologically. It is important to differentiate between various possible motives for distancing. If it is only due to a selfish interest to not be bothered, that’s condemnable. But many times people resort to significant distancing in an effort to protect their psyche and/or their social relations. And then social change and support is needed.
Dr Panu Pihkal talking to Britt Wraya, in ‘How to take breaks form the climate crisis without living in denial” at Gen Dread
Wray, Britt. “How to Take Breaks from the Climate Crisis without Living in Denial.” Substack newsletter. Gen Dread (blog), January 25, 2023. https://gendread.substack.com/p/how-to-take-breaks-from-the-climate.
“Climate contemplation time”
Dread, Gen. “Dear Climate Therapist: I’m Dreading Another ‘Horror Summer.’” Substack newsletter. Gen Dread (blog), May 30, 2024. https://gendread.substack.com/p/dear-climate-therapist-im-dreading.