“Many of us are feeling a sense of powerlessness and despair over climate change and its harmful effects,” psychiatrist Emily Willow observed in her latest advice column for the Washington Post. One might deduce from both Dr. Willow’s vocation and the implications around the words “powerlessness” and “despair” that this psychological condition is something its sufferers should try to overcome. Not at all, the Post’s editors confess in their summary of Willow’s prescription. “Eco-anxiety and climate grief are unlike other issues in psychiatry,” they write, “because the feelings extend to something greater than ourselves and our personal narrative.”
Willow’s clinical approach isn’t to help her patients conquer their fears but to advocate “more acceptance and awareness of their emotions” in non-sufferers. To remedy the syndrome’s most acute symptoms, she recommends hectoring corporations and governments rather than internalizing any sense of personal control over the weather. Beyond that, a regimen of powerful hallucinogens and street drugs such as “MDMA (commonly known as ecstasy)” might help. But the most important step for those dealing with “climate grief” is to convert those emotions into activism.
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