Keeping Cool in the Face of Eco-Anxiety with Britt Wray
It can be very stressful to see how we are contributing to the problem that makes us feel unsafe. And that is a very psychologically, strange place to exist.
Listen to this episode
Intro
In this episode of the podcast, Brooke chats with Britt Wray - author of Generation Dread and a Human and Planetary Health Fellow at Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Britt talks about her work around eco-anxiety, the reasons and extent to which different people feel it, and the tools people can deploy to harness it and achieve positive, climate-friendly outcomes.
Some of the topics discussed include:
- The drivers of eco-anxiety, media hysteria, and the evolutionary experience of an existential threat.
- Why do some communities experience higher levels of eco-anxiety than others?
- The role of time perception and present bias in eco-anxiety, and why it can be compared to Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
- Why climate change is a unique ever-evolving challenge for us to contend with psychologically.
- Tools to help us acknowledge and accept eco-anxiety as being real and valid, and move beyond a state of anxiety-induced paralysis.
