Eco-anxiety: living with worry about the climate

1. Before you begin

It is past midnight. You only wanted to check tomorrow's weather. Forty minutes later, you are still in bed, phone in hand: a video of a forest in flames, an article about a retreating glacier, then the search you have already typed twenty times, "is it too late". You know you will not find an answer. You search anyway.

The next day, at the supermarket, you stand for a long minute in front of a bag of vegetables wrapped in plastic, with a guilt out of all proportion to the object. On Saturday, you turned down a dinner invitation: you could not see yourself listening to your friends talk about their holidays. And the last time you tried to talk about it, someone advised you not to get so worked up. Or else, which is almost worse, someone replied that it's all over anyway.

You may be wondering whether it is you who is becoming anxious, or the world that is worrying. This guide takes both questions seriously.

Three things, straight away.

Worrying about the climate is not an illness. Eco-anxiety is not a diagnosis. It is the name given to a set of emotions, such as fear, sadness, anger or guilt, that are aroused by a threat the major scientific syntheses describe as real. The large surveys show it: you are very far from being alone in feeling this.

What can change is not your concern for the world, but the place it takes up. This guide does not seek to make you indifferent. It is interested in what the worry has taken from you: hours of sleep, evenings, friends, plans, and sometimes the very ability to act. Those things can be taken back.

This guide will tell you neither that everything will be fine, nor that all is lost. Nobody knows. Nor will it tell you what to think about political choices, what to eat, how to travel, or whether to have children: those questions belong to you. It helps you approach them with your head, and not only with your anxiety.

2. What the word "eco-anxiety" covers

A recent word, which does not name an illness

The term refers to the distress aroused by the climate crisis and, more broadly, by the degradation of the environment. It appears in neither of the two major classifications of mental disorders on which doctors rely: the manual of the American Psychiatric Association, known as the DSM, and the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases, known as the ICD. This is not an oversight. The word describes a reaction, not a disorder.

The Finnish researcher Panu Pihkala, who in 2020 analysed work from many disciplines, notes that most forms of eco-anxiety have nothing to do with illness. He even describes a form he calls practical anxiety, the kind that prompts people to find out more and to rethink the way they do things. For the American psychologist Susan Clayton, this anxiety is very real and deserves the attention of health professionals, but a distinction must be made between anxiety that remains suited to the situation, because it helps people cope, and anxiety that no longer is, because it stops them living.

Several emotions under a single word

The word "anxiety" is a little misleading, because it suggests that only fear is involved. Fear is about what might happen. Sadness is about what is lost or in the process of being lost: in 2018, the researchers Ashlee Cunsolo and Neville Ellis described ecological grief, that is, the sorrow felt at the loss, experienced or anticipated, of species, environments or landscapes that mattered, and they regard it as a natural response to a real loss. One particular form of this sorrow has a name, solastalgia, proposed by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht: it is the distress of seeing the place where you live being transformed, without ever having left it.

Anger is directed at inaction and injustice; we will see that it is not the most harmful of these emotions. Guilt is about your own part in it: a trip, a purchase, a meal. Finally, powerlessness often comes down to three words, "what's the point", and it is often the one that weighs most heavily.

Identifying which one dominates for you is not a minor detail: you do not get through sadness the way you get through fear.

Well founded, and sometimes too costly

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, assesses the published scientific work on the climate on behalf of governments. In its 2023 synthesis report, it establishes that human activities have unequivocally caused the warming of the planet, and that this warming threatens human well-being. Being worried about it means seeing something that exists.

But a worry can be well founded and still cost you far too much. Grief, too, is well founded, and yet it sometimes stops people living. So what is open to question is not whether your emotion is justified, but the price it makes you pay.

3. Three situations not to confuse

A worry that has its place

You often think about the climate. Some news saddens you or makes you angry, you keep yourself informed, and you have perhaps changed a few habits. The emotions rise at times, then they subside. You sleep, you work, you see the people close to you, you make plans. There is nothing to treat: this is a concern in proportion to its object, and research even suggests that it is often constructive. This guide may be useful to you on a point or two, but you do not need any programme.

A worry that takes over your life

The picture changes when the worry starts making decisions for you. You spend hours on it every day, often in the evening. Your sleep deteriorates. You have given up pleasures because you feel you no longer have the right to them. Every purchase comes with an inner reproach. You swing between a paralysis in which nothing seems to serve any purpose any more and a commitment that exhausts you. Arguments break out with people close to you, and decisions have been frozen for months, whether they concern studies, a move or the question of children.

And yet, if you set the climate aside, the rest holds up: you do not worry about everything, and your mood has not collapsed in other areas of your life. It is this situation that this guide is intended for first and foremost.

An anxiety or depressive disorder that has taken the climate as its subject

Generalised anxiety disorder is an excessive worry that is hard to control and covers many areas at once, such as health, money, work and loved ones, almost every day for months, with a tension and a fatigue that never let up. The climate is just one subject among others: it has taken the place of an earlier worry, and it will give way to the next one. This disorder responds well to treatment, and Constant worry: generalised anxiety disorder is devoted to it.

Depression, for its part, lasts at least two weeks, almost every day, and affects desire, sleep, appetite, energy, concentration and self-esteem all at once. The loss of interest goes beyond the climate: nothing gives pleasure any more, and the despair is about yourself as much as about the world. See a doctor, and read Understanding depression.

In both cases, the tools in this guide can be used alongside treatment, without replacing the treatment of the disorder.

Three questions to work out where you stand

If the climate were not a problem, what would you be worrying about? If your answer is "everything else", look in the direction of an anxiety disorder.

What has this concern made you stop doing, or what does it prevent you from doing? The answer measures how tight its grip is. A concern that has taken nothing away from you does not need to be worked on.

How many minutes a day do you spend thinking about it without having decided to? Do not answer "all the time": look for a figure, which section 6 will help you pin down.

Other situations, which call for a different kind of help

If you have lived through a disaster, the suffering can take the form of psychological trauma: the event keeps forcing itself on you, through memories that come back against your will, through nightmares, through a constant state of alert. Section 14 comes back to this.

If your doubt is about your own actions, such as having left a tap running or having sorted a piece of rubbish wrongly, and it pushes you to check or to start again without relieving you for more than a few minutes, it may be obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. This disorder can be recognised by thoughts that force themselves on the person, which the person themselves judges to be excessive, and by rituals meant to neutralise them. It is treated differently: see OCD: the eight-step exposure programme.

Finally, a vegetarian diet chosen for ecological reasons is in no way a symptom. A restriction that keeps spreading, with weight loss, a fear of putting on weight and meals that become a battle, is one, whatever reason is given for it: it may herald an eating disorder, such as anorexia nervosa. Talk to a doctor about it without delay, because these disorders affect the body and need to be assessed early.

4. What the research says

A very widely shared worry, especially among young people

The large survey by Caroline Hickman and her colleagues, published in 2021, questioned ten thousand young people aged sixteen to twenty-five in ten countries, including France. Of them, 59% said they were very or extremely worried, and 84% at least moderately worried. More than 45% said that their feelings about climate change had a negative effect on their daily life, and 39% said they were hesitant to have children.

The authors acknowledge the limits of their work: the questions were not taken from validated questionnaires, that is, questionnaires whose reliability has been checked, and no measure of mental health was included. These figures therefore describe a massive concern, not a number of people who are ill.

Among adults, the picture is more nuanced. In a British survey of more than one thousand three hundred people, Lorraine Whitmarsh and her colleagues found in 2022 that concern about the climate was very widespread, but that climate anxiety was low overall, and more marked among the youngest.

A worry that is often useful

In 2013, the psychologist Bas Verplanken published, with Deborah Roy, a study whose title begins with these words: "My worries are rational". In it, the habit of worrying about ecology had practically no link with pathological worry, the kind that characterises anxiety disorders, and it went hand in hand with environmentally friendly behaviour. Three studies published in 2020 by Bas Verplanken and other colleagues qualified this result without overturning it: for some people, this worry is part of a more general distress; for many others, it remains a constructive response.

When it weighs on health

A systematic review, that is, a synthesis that brings together, using a rigorous method, all the studies published on a question, was carried out by Suzanne Cosh and her colleagues in 2024. Across thirty-five studies conducted in adults, totalling more than forty-five thousand participants, eco-anxiety was associated, weakly or strongly depending on the study, with more psychological distress and with more depressive and anxiety symptoms. A survey of more than twelve thousand people in thirty-two countries, carried out by Charles Ogunbode and his colleagues in 2022, found that climate anxiety went with lower mental well-being in thirty-one countries out of thirty-two, but also, in twenty-four of them, with more environmentally friendly behaviour.

Among adolescents, an Australian study followed more than two thousand young people from the age of ten or eleven to the age of eighteen or nineteen. About one in eight kept a high and persistent worry about the climate, and at the end of the follow-up this group showed more depressive symptoms than the young people whose worry remained moderate (Emma Sciberras and Julian Fernando, 2022).

Almost all of these studies take a snapshot at a single point in time: they show that worry and distress go together, without saying which one leads to the other.

Not all emotions carry the same weight

Drawing on a national Australian survey, Samantha Stanley and her colleagues distinguished in 2021 between three emotions linked to the climate. Anger, which people are often keen to calm, went with better mental health and more engagement; anxiety and despondency went with lower well-being.

What is known about the forms of help

The data are thin. As of the date of this guide, we have found only one published controlled trial that evaluates a psychotherapy in adults who are distressed because of the climate. A controlled trial divides participants at random between a group that receives a form of help and a group that does not receive it yet, so that the difference can be attributed to the help itself. This one concerned cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, a structured, short psychotherapy that works on thoughts and behaviours, with exercises between sessions. Conducted in Sweden by Nike Lindhe and colleagues in 2023, it compared, in sixty adults aged twenty-three to seventy-three, eight weeks of this therapy delivered over the internet, with support from a therapist, against a waiting list. In the treated group, depression, stress and climate-related distress fell markedly more than in the waiting group, and quality of life improved, without any decrease in environmentally friendly behaviour. Anxiety and sleep, on the other hand, did not change differently in the two groups. It is a pilot trial, that is, a first, small-scale study, and it needs to be confirmed.

When they were interviewed afterwards, nine participants described the change like this: their emotions about the climate had stayed roughly the same, but they had acquired new ways of dealing with them (Nike Lindhe and colleagues, 2024). That is exactly what this guide aims for.

Beyond that, the reviews describe more than they measure: the one by Pauline Baudon and Liza Jachens, in 2021, lists the approaches proposed by practitioners without being able to say which ones work. Climate cafés, those open discussion groups where people come to say what they feel, are appreciated by those who take part, but a review published in 2025 by Anna De Jong and her colleagues found no scientific study measuring their effects. Finally, we have found no study evaluating a medicine against climate worry itself.

What is not established

We do not yet know which method helps most, nor whether climate worry makes depression more likely or whether a shared vulnerability explains both. Nor do we know whether action protects against distress, or whether it is the people who are least distressed who find it easiest to act. The tools in this guide are therefore borrowed from methods that have proved themselves elsewhere, in the treatment of excessive worry and of depression. They are reasonable borrowings, not certainties.

5. What keeps the grip in place

The mechanisms described here come from models of worry and of depression. Their role in eco-anxiety is plausible, without having been demonstrated, and each one offers a point of leverage.

News that never stops

In the survey conducted in thirty-two countries, climate anxiety was all the stronger when people were exposed to information about the effects of climate change and paid attention to it. The British survey mentioned above found the same among the people who sought out the most information about the climate. These surveys do not say which way the link runs: you may also seek out more because you are already worried.

Research on a completely different subject suggests that exposure itself can take its toll: after the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, the team of the American psychologist Alison Holman observed that following the event in the media for six hours or more a day went with more symptoms of intense stress than having been there in person. Nothing proves that this result applies to the climate, but it is an invitation to keep an eye on the time you spend.

With the climate, the flow never stops. And keeping informed has every appearance of responsibility: closing the app feels like looking away. The relief of having "done something" reinforces the habit, even though no action followed.

Thinking that goes round without reaching a conclusion

Going round and round a global problem can take hours and leads nowhere, because no decision will come along to put an end to it. Psychologists call this thinking that loops over the same questions rumination. It looks serious, and carrying on thinking about it seems more responsible than stopping: that is what makes it so sticky.

Responsible for everything, or for nothing

Two opposite positions lead to the same place. The first makes you responsible for everything: every action becomes a possible fault. The second persuades you that nothing you do counts. In a study among American students, some described, in their written answers, this feeling that their actions were insignificant in the face of the scale of the problem (Sarah Schwartz and her colleagues, 2023). The first position exhausts you, the second paralyses you.

Fleeing the emotion, or drowning in it

Minimising soothes. In 2012, the Swedish psychologist Maria Ojala studied the way 293 twelve-year-old children coped with climate change: those who played down its seriousness felt fewer negative emotions, but they also felt less able to act, and did less for the environment. These children were questioned only once: the study shows links, not causes. At the other extreme, dwelling on an emotion without letting it run its course keeps it going just as much.

Withdrawing from life, and staying alone

"I don't have the right to go away for the weekend." Giving up pleasures and plans deprives you of what was supporting you: your mood drops, rumination fills the space that has been freed up, and the withdrawal deepens. Loneliness is often added to this. In Caroline Hickman's survey, nearly half of the young people who talked about the climate with those around them said they had been ignored or brushed off. The less you talk about it, the less you hear other ways of living with the same worry.

The complete circle

Tuesday evening, in bed, you watch a video about melting ice. The thoughts go round until two in the morning. On Wednesday, you get up tired and sad, and you cancel your climbing session, because "this isn't the time". In the evening, alone, you reproach yourself for doing nothing and, to make up for it, you reread articles, which sets the fear off again. On Thursday, you are on edge with your partner. On Friday evening, you open the news feed again.

Each step has its own logic. Taken together, they shrink your life, and the rest of this guide dismantles the circle piece by piece.

6. Taking stock: a week of observation

Before changing anything, look. For seven days, without changing anything, note each moment when the concern took over, in a notebook or on your phone, but never in bed. Note the day and the time, what triggered the moment, what you did, how long it took in minutes, and the intensity of your distress, from 0, which means none, to 10, which means the worst possible.

Day and time	Trigger	What I did	Minutes	Distress from 0 to 10
Monday, 7.30 a.m.	The radio announces a heatwave	I read three articles on the bus	25	6
Monday, 11.10 p.m.	A video of a fire just as I was going to bed	I scrolled through videos, then searched "too late"	70	8
Tuesday, 7 p.m.	My brother talks about the holiday he flew to	I said nothing, then ruminated all evening	90	7

What the record shows

At the end of the week, add up the minutes for each day: the total, written down in black and white, often comes as a surprise. Then look at the times, because the evening comes up again and again for many people, then at the triggers and at what you did. You will see your habits emerge: reading more, seeking certainty, keeping quiet, withdrawing. The grip has its own recognisable times and triggers: that is your first point of leverage.

What the worry has taken from you

On another page, write down what you have stopped doing since this concern took up so much room: music, sport, outings, people you see less of, plans put on hold. This is not a charge sheet. It is the inventory of what can come back, and it will be used in section 10.

Then, every Sunday evening, note the total number of minutes for the week and the number of activities you have taken up again. These two figures tell you far more about your progress than your impression of the moment, which depends on the last piece of news you read.

7. Choosing your information

The aim is not to stop keeping informed, but to move from information that you put up with, continuous and often late at night, to information that you choose, limited in time, and followed by something.

What you are looking for when you open the feed at midnight

Ask yourself the question next time. The same answers often come back: not looking away, finally knowing whether it is too late, or sometimes punishing yourself for not doing enough. These reasons deserve respect, but you are no more responsible after two hours of reading than after twenty minutes. You are only more tired.

Informing yourself means choosing a source, a time and a length of time. Having information pushed at you means letting a news feed decide all of that for you. These tools are designed to hold your attention for as long as possible, and a feed never stops of its own accord: it is up to you to decide where it ends.

Your information plan

Take a sheet of paper and write your plan. It comes down to five decisions.

1. Choose one or two reliable sources, such as a news outlet that checks its information or a scientific summary, rather than a feed that mixes everything together.
2. Set a time of day, for example after lunch, and never in bed, on waking or in the hour before you go to bed.
3. Set a length of time, for example twenty minutes, and set a timer.
4. Turn off news alerts on your phone, in the notification settings of each news app, because an alert decides for you when you are going to be shaken.
5. End each information session by noting what you are doing with it, whether that is a reflection, an action, or nothing at all, which is allowed.

The fifth decision is the one people forget. Without it, the information session turns back into rumination.

Keeping informed, or checking

Rereading the same piece of news, searching for the tenth time "is it too late", asking someone close to you whether "it's really that bad": this is no longer keeping informed, it is seeking a certainty that does not exist. Each answer soothes you for an hour, then the question comes back, a little more pressing. A factual question is asked once, of a serious source, for example the summaries that the IPCC publishes for policymakers. After that, the only useful question is: what do I do with this answer?

Days of big news

There will be a disaster on the front pages, a major report, an international conference. Plan for these days in writing: "I read a summary at the planned time, I talk about it with someone, and I do not open the feed again in the evening." A rule written on a calm day holds better than a resolution made in the heat of the moment.

8. Thinking in order to act, or going round in circles

The sorting question

When a thought about the climate comes up, a single question is enough: is there something I can do, today or this week? You are not asking yourself whether the threat is serious, but whether there is something you can get a grip on.

Thinking about tomorrow's journey in order to choose between the train and the car produces a decision in three minutes. Thinking about what your region will be like in 2080 produces none, and can take up a whole evening.

The answer may be an action, which you write down with a day and a time: finding out about a project in your neighbourhood, planning how to keep your home cool before the summer. It may be a decision to prepare, such as a choice of studies, which also has a next step to write down. But most often, the answer is: nothing. There is nothing to do today about the question of whether humanity will make it. Those thoughts will go to climate time.

Climate time

You are not trying to think less about the climate: you are deciding when you think about it. This tool comes from the treatment of excessive worry, where it is called worry postponement. In an American study published in 2013 by Sarah Kate McGowan and Evelyn Behar, fifty-three very worried people were divided at random into two groups for two weeks. The first group practised a thirty-minute worry period every day, at a fixed time and in a fixed place; the second was simply instructed not to avoid its worries. In the first group, worry, anxiety and sleep difficulties decreased more. The study is short, preliminary, and was not about the climate, but the principle is consistent with what is known about worry.

1. Choose a daily slot of twenty to thirty minutes, during the day and at a fixed time, never in bed and never in the two hours before you go to bed.
2. Choose a specific place for this slot, a chair or a table, which is neither your bed nor the sofa where you relax.
3. During the day, when a thought about the climate arrives, note it down in three words, tell yourself it will have its place at the planned time, then go back to what you were doing.
4. At the appointed time, set a timer, reread your notes and think about the climate as much as you like, picking out along the way whatever calls for an action.
5. When the timer goes off, stop and move straight on to something physical, such as a walk or a shower.

Postponing is not suppressing: you are not chasing the thought away, you are putting off dealing with it until later. The distinction matters, because trying not to think about something can, through a rebound effect, make you think about it more afterwards. The American psychologist Daniel Wegner showed this in 1987 by asking volunteers not to think about a white bear, and a meta-analysis published in 2001, that is, an analysis that pools the results of many studies, confirmed this rebound effect, small to moderate but real.

In this way, you will discover that a thought that can wait several hours does not have a complete hold over you. Keep this appointment in the first week even if you do not feel like it; after that, it can get shorter once you no longer have anything to fill it with, and that is a good sign.

From "why" to "how"

"Why did we let this happen?" "Why is nobody reacting?" These questions are legitimate, and no answer settles them. In 2008, the British psychologist Edward Watkins brought together a large body of work on repetitive thinking. In the experiments he reviews, abstract thinking, focused on causes and meaning, the "why", tended to keep low mood going in people who were already sad; concrete thinking, focused on means, the "how", tended to help solve problems. This work was not about the climate: applying it here is a transposition, not a demonstrated result. When you catch yourself in a "why", ask yourself: "what could I, personally, do this week?", or "who could I talk to about it?".

At night

Keep a notebook on your bedside table: when a thought comes, write it down in three words and add "tomorrow, at climate time". If your mind is still racing after twenty minutes or so, get up, go into another room, do something calm in soft light, such as reading a few pages of a novel that has nothing to do with the climate, and come back when you feel sleepy. That way, the bed stays associated with sleep rather than with thoughts that go round in circles. If insomnia sets in, it is treated in its own right: see Getting your sleep back: the Psychotip® programme. And if the looping thoughts go well beyond the climate, Stop overthinking: getting out of rumination is devoted to them.

9. Making room for emotions

Accepting is not resigning yourself

Accepting an emotion means neither accepting the situation that causes it nor giving up on acting. It means letting the fear, the sadness or the anger be there, without chasing them away and without feeding them. There are two ways of making an emotion last: fleeing it, through distraction or minimising, and dwelling on it, by adding thoughts to it. When it is simply felt, it is more likely to rise, reach a peak, then come back down.

This idea comes from acceptance and commitment therapy, a form of cognitive behavioural therapy described by Steven Hayes and his colleagues, which teaches people to let a painful emotion be there without struggling against it and to act according to what matters to them. A meta-analysis of thirty-nine controlled trials, published in 2015, found it effective in several disorders, with no significant difference from classic cognitive behavioural therapy. It has not been evaluated specifically for eco-anxiety.

The five-minute exercise

1. Sit down at a calm moment, choose the emotion that dominates for you, and think of an image or a piece of news that brings it on, without looking for the most terrible one.
2. Note its intensity from 0 to 10.
3. Locate where it sits in your body, in the throat, the chest or the stomach, and describe it to yourself as you would describe the weather.
4. Name it, for example by saying to yourself: "this is sadness".
5. Breathe with it for three to five minutes: let your breathing follow its own rhythm and gently bring your attention back to the emotion each time your mind wanders, without trying to make it go away.
6. Note its intensity at its strongest point, then at the end.

If the emotion does not come down that day, the exercise has not failed: you felt it without running away, and that is what is being learnt. It is not a relaxation exercise designed to make the emotion disappear. Practise it once a day for a week.

Stepping back from thoughts of despair

"It's all over." "Humanity is doomed." These thoughts present themselves as facts, and arguing with them opens a debate that nobody can win. You can, however, change your relationship with them. Try saying: "I notice I'm having the thought that it's all over". The sentence denies nothing. It reminds you that this is a thought, which can be present without deciding how your evening goes. Acceptance and commitment therapy calls this stepping back defusion: detaching yourself a little from your thoughts so as to see them as thoughts rather than as truths. You can also give them a name: "ah, here comes the end-of-the-world film again". This stepping back is not meant to ridicule a well-founded worry. It is meant to hold it just far enough away for you to be able to live and act.

Ecological grief

What is lost, or in the process of being lost, for you? The glacier of your childhood holidays, the river where you used to swim, winters with snow, or a future you used to imagine. This sorrow is not treated, it is acknowledged. Give it a form that suits you: writing down what you have lost, going back to a place, talking about it with someone who knew it too. If you have lost someone close to you, in a disaster or otherwise, that is a different kind of grief: see Grief: understanding it, getting through it, and knowing when to ask for help.

Anger and guilt

Anger signals an injustice, and it can mobilise people: in the Australian survey mentioned above, it even went with better mental health. It becomes costly when it turns into resentful brooding, hours spent replaying arguments with imagined decision-makers. It is then this brooding that needs working on, with climate time.

Guilt takes two forms. The first reminds you of a value, pushes you towards an action you have chosen, and subsides once the action is done. The second is about a responsibility without limits: every action calls for another, and none is ever enough. That second form is dealt with by bringing your share back to its real size and by writing down an "enough" (section 11). If it also affects your work or your relationships, Perfectionism: high standards without burning out can help you.

10. Coming back to what matters

Values, not just goals

A goal can be reached and ticked off: finding an internship in the environmental sector, cutting down on your car journeys. A value is a direction you never finish following: caring for others, justice, beauty, passing things on. When all your goals concern a global problem, you fail every evening. Your values are something you can follow every day.

Also ask yourself why the climate affects you so much. The answer almost always points to something that matters, such as an attachment to a landscape or concern for the children still to come.

The ban on enjoying yourself

"I don't have the right to enjoy myself while the planet is burning." Look at what this self-denial produces: less energy, more rumination, isolation. Then ask yourself what it changes about what worries you. The answer, almost always, is that it changes nothing.

In 2008, the American psychologist Susan Folkman brought together the work showing that, even in the midst of periods of great stress, positive emotions coexist with painful ones and help to rebuild the resources needed to keep going. Among the Swedish children studied by Maria Ojala, the way of coping that drew on meaning, trust and hope went with fewer negative emotions, greater satisfaction with life, and also greater engagement with the environment. These are links observed at a single point in time, not proof, but they point in the same direction. Pleasure is not a betrayal. It is part of what allows you to last.

Taking back what the worry has taken

Go back to the list from section 6. For each activity you have given up, ask yourself what value it served: the piano served beauty, the Thursday dinners served friendship. Choose three of them and place them in your week, with a day and a time, without waiting until you feel like it.

This is the principle of behavioural activation, a method that comes from the treatment of depression and consists of putting activities that are meaningful or that do you good back into your days, in a planned way, before the desire for them returns. A meta-analysis of twenty trials, published in 2010 by Trevor Mazzucchelli and his colleagues, showed that it improved well-being, including in people who had no disorder at all. An activity written in the diary escapes the negotiation of the moment, the one that almost always concludes that today is not the right day. Behavioural activation: fighting depression describes the method in detail.

The three-values exercise

Write down five areas of your life: relationships, work or studies, health, leisure, nature or community life. For each one, note in a sentence what matters to you. Then choose three values, and for each one a small action that can be done this week, with a date. At least one of them must have nothing to do with the climate, such as calling a friend you have lost touch with or playing the guitar again for twenty minutes. If all your actions concern the climate, the exercise has missed its point.

11. Acting on your own scale, alone or with others

Choosing your everyday actions rather than having them imposed on you

Take stock of what you already do for the environment, and ask two questions about each action. Does it serve a value that is truly yours? Is it sustainable in your life, given your income, where you live, your family and your health? The actions that pass both questions are worth keeping. The others have become duties, or rituals that you perform to feel beyond reproach more than for their effect, and that exhaust you without satisfying you: you are allowed to drop them. This guide does not recommend any particular action to you: it helps you sort your own.

Bringing your share back to its real size, and setting an "enough"

If you hold yourself responsible for everything, divide things up on a sheet of paper, in three columns: what depends on your choices, what depends on companies and institutions, and what depends on collective decisions. The setting on your heating goes in the first column; the way electricity is produced in your country, in the other two. This is not about letting yourself off the hook, it is about giving your share its real size, which is neither zero nor total. If, on the contrary, you are convinced that nothing helps, judge an action by the value it serves rather than by its effect on the planet: at the very least, it strengthens the consistency between what you think and what you do.

Then write down what you consider enough, for you, now, and a sentence for the moments when the guilt comes back: "I have done what I decided to do; the rest does not depend on me alone." This "enough" is revised when your life changes, not every evening under the influence of an article.

Acting with others

Some people find in collective action, in a voluntary organisation or a neighbourhood project, a way of feeling less alone and less powerless. Sarah Schwartz and her colleagues questioned 284 American students, on a single occasion. Among those who were only slightly involved in collective action, intrusive thoughts and emotions linked to the climate went with more depressive symptoms; among those who were heavily involved, this link disappeared. Action taken alone did not play this role, and the effect did not concern anxiety symptoms. A review published in 2022 by William Bingley and his colleagues singles out, among the interventions whose favourable effects reach the most areas, from well-being to environmentally friendly behaviour, those that work through concrete action, managing emotions and strengthening social ties.

But these studies observe links without proving that action protects. And in the survey conducted in thirty-two countries, climate anxiety went with activism in only twelve of them. Collective action is therefore neither a duty nor a remedy: it is a possibility, which you examine in the light of your values, your time and your temperament. A reserved person may prefer a community garden to a demonstration. If, after thinking it over, you decide not to get involved for now, write down your reasons: a considered decision is worth as much as a commitment.

When commitment exhausts you

In an Austrian study published in 2025 by Gavin Lord and his colleagues, five climate justice activists described their exhaustion: a permanent sense of urgency, activism that ended up taking over everything and isolating them, then stress, cynicism and a breaking point. Five people is very few: these accounts describe exhaustion without saying whether it is common. Watch early on for the signs that it is approaching: nights cut short for the cause, a social life reduced to the group, a new irritability or bitterness, and the feeling of never doing enough.

If you get involved, set your limits beforehand, in writing: a number of hours per week, a day without any activism, a person to talk to outside the group, and the signs that will tell you that you are doing too much. Once you are caught up in the urgency, it is hard to set them. If you are already exhausted, the work runs the other way: cut back your commitment without reproaching yourself, because stepping back for a while is not giving up. Preventing burnout, written about exhaustion at work, describes very similar mechanisms.

12. The future, uncertainty and big decisions

What is known, and what is not

It is known that warming is continuing and that it has, and will have, serious effects. It is uncertain how it will affect a particular place, a particular year, a particular life. And part of the future depends on collective choices that have not yet been made: the IPCC itself writes that the choices made during this decade will have effects for thousands of years. Sorting things in this way does not reassure. It replaces "it's all decided" with a more accurate picture.

"Is it too late?" has no yes-or-no answer: "it'll be fine" and "it's all over" are two opinions. You already live with other uncertainties, about your health or about the people close to you, without having resolved them: you act on what depends on you, and you do not demand every evening a guarantee that nobody can give. Do the same here. If uncertainty is unbearable for you in every area of life, reread section 3: it is a central feature of generalised anxiety disorder.

Two forms of hope

By questioning more than a thousand Swedish adolescents and young adults, Maria Ojala distinguished in 2012 between two forms of hope. One, which she describes as constructive, went with more environmentally friendly behaviour. The other, based on denying the seriousness of the problem, went with less. Constructive hope is not the certainty that everything will be fine: it is the conviction that what you do, and what others do, has meaning. Ask yourself where you find some, even a little.

Big life decisions

Embarking on a long course of study, choosing a career, settling in a region, having children or not: these questions really do arise, and they are legitimate. The problem begins when the distress makes the decision for you, or when the decision stays frozen indefinitely.

On a sheet of paper, write down the decision, then what matters to you in this decision, what you know, what you do not know, and finally what your anxiety makes you say. This last line is often the most illuminating: in it you will read sentences such as "I have to decide now" or "I don't have the right", which come from fear rather than from you. These decisions are not made on an evening of bad news, and they are allowed to remain open for a while. This guide will not tell you what to decide. As a couple, one conversation between the two of you, on a calm day, is better than ten night-time discussions.

13. Talking about it with the people around you

Being heard, rather than convincing

Being mocked pushes people to keep quiet, and a worry kept to yourself takes up more room. But most difficult conversations fail because they try to convince: if your aim is to get your father to change his mind, the conversation will turn into a debate. Aim instead to be heard, to ask for something specific, or to set a limit.

Prepare the conversation in four lines: with whom, what you want to say about what you are feeling, what you want to ask for, and what you will do if the exchange turns into a debate. For example: "I'm not asking you to share my worry. I'm asking you not to make fun of it in front of the children." If the exchange turns sour, saying that you would rather leave it there for tonight is not a defeat: it is the limit you had planned. If arguments with your partner are becoming more frequent, Arguing less, talking better offers a method.

You can also tell the people close to you what helps you: that they listen without correcting what you feel, without reassuring you or adding to your alarm, that they stop answering the umpteenth "do you think it's too late?", and that they suggest shared moments that have nothing to do with the climate.

If you are a parent

The advice that follows is practical advice: no study has evaluated it for the climate. You do not need to hide from your children that you are concerned, nor to confide your anxiety to them, which is an adult's burden. First listen to what they have heard and what they feel, then answer with words suited to their age, without frightening images. To a seven-year-old, you might say, for example: "Yes, the Earth is getting warmer, and it's serious. Lots of grown-ups, like scientists, engineers and farmers, are working on this problem. And at home, we do our part too." Above all, show them how you live with a concern: you talk about it, you do what is within your reach, and you carry on playing and making plans. If their worry overflows, if they sleep badly or keep asking the same questions over and over, Supporting your anxious child will guide you.

14. Particular situations

You have lived through a disaster

Your house was flooded, your village burned, or drought ruined your farm. The IPCC links certain mental health difficulties to trauma caused by extreme events, as well as to the loss of livelihoods and of cultural landmarks. Practical needs come first: housing, money, paperwork, medical care. If, more than a month later, memories force themselves on you, if the nightmares keep coming back, if you jump at every storm, talk to a doctor about it, and do not wait that long if these reactions are already preventing you from living. Post-traumatic stress disorder, that is, the persistence of this state of alert long after the event, can be treated. The British institute that draws up care recommendations, NICE, in its 2018 guidance, recommends a trauma-focused psychotherapy, which helps you go back over the event step by step, in a safe setting, and which can begin within the first month when the symptoms are severe. Understanding trauma and the window of tolerance and Nightmares: taking back your nights will help you understand what is happening.

Your job brings you into contact with the problem

If you work in climate research, agriculture, forestry or environmental protection, you cannot keep information at a distance. Your information plan then distinguishes working time, when the information is necessary, from personal time, when it is not. Talking about it among colleagues, in a setting designed for that purpose, for example a regular time for discussion within the team, can help you avoid carrying what you know on your own.

You are a teenager or a student

A great many young people share this worry. If you are under eighteen and the worry is stopping you from sleeping or from seeing your friends, talk to an adult you trust: a parent, the school nurse, a doctor. The Australian study in section 4, in which a high and lasting worry went with more depressive symptoms, is not a reason to be alarmed. It is a reason not to stay alone with it.

You find relief in alcohol, cannabis or a sleeping pill

A drink "to stop thinking about it", a joint to fall asleep, a sleeping pill taken without medical advice: these substances switch off the alarm for a few hours without changing anything about the circle, and they add their own risks, including poorer-quality sleep and dependence. If this use has become a daily habit, talk to your doctor about it, and read Drinking less, or stopping or Cannabis: taking stock. A prescribed medicine is never stopped on your own: any change is decided with the doctor who prescribed it.

15. When the despair becomes personal

Despair about the future of the world, "humanity is doomed", is common: in Caroline Hickman's survey, more than half of the young people questioned agreed with this statement. It is not the same as despair about your own life, "I can't see a future for myself". But the first can slide into the second without your noticing.

Research on a link between climate worry and suicidal thoughts is almost non-existent: in 2025, Kairi Kõlves and her colleagues, Australian specialists in suicide prevention, found only two studies, too limited to draw any conclusions. What is known, on the other hand, is that despair about one's own future is among the factors associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviour: Aaron Beck and his colleagues observed this in 1985 in patients in hospital, and a 2018 meta-analysis confirmed it, while also showing that it is not enough, on its own, to tell who is in danger. It always justifies talking about it. Ask yourself the question frankly: when you think that all is lost, do you sometimes think that your own life is not worth living, or think about dying?

If the answer is yes, talk about it the same day, to your doctor, to someone close to you or to a suicide prevention line. These lines are often free, available day and night, and answer people in distress as well as those close to them: look up the one in your country now. Saying it out loud does not set off an uncontrollable machine: it sets off help. And talking about it does not put ideas into anyone's head: a review published in 2014 by a team from King's College London found no study in which asking someone about suicide increased their suicidal thoughts.

Do not stay alone in the darkest moments, especially in the evening. Avoid alcohol: drinking at such times makes a suicide attempt markedly more likely. If you feel that you can no longer keep yourself safe, call the emergency services in your country immediately. With a professional, you can write a safety plan: a sheet of paper you keep on you, which brings together your warning signs, what you can do on your own to bring the pressure down, the people to call, the emergency numbers, and what you have put out of reach at home in order to stay safe.

If it is someone close to you who worries you, When someone close talks about dying: ask, make safe, stay explains what to do.

16. Eight weeks, then what comes next

This plan is not a treatment, it is a route map. It is better to spend two weeks on one step than to move on to the next without having practised it.

Week 1 — Observing without changing anything

Before changing anything, look: a seven-day record replaces impressions with facts, and it shows the times and the triggers of the grip, which are your first point of leverage (section 6). The total number of minutes, written down in black and white, often comes as a surprise.

• For seven days, without changing anything, note each moment when the concern took over, in a notebook or on your phone, never in bed (if the moment happened in bed, note it the next morning): the day and the time, the trigger, what you did, the minutes and your distress from 0 to 10 (section 6).
• At the end of the week, add up the minutes for each day, then look at the times, the triggers and what you did, to spot your habits, such as reading more, seeking certainty, keeping quiet or withdrawing (section 6, "What the record shows").
• On another page, write down what you have stopped doing since this concern took up so much room, such as music, sport, outings, people or plans; this list will be used in week 5 (section 6).
• Answer the three questions in section 3: what would you be worrying about if the climate were not a problem, what has this concern made you stop doing, and how many minutes a day do you spend thinking about it without having decided to?
• If the worry or the sadness go far beyond the climate, or if your sleep, your appetite and your wish to do anything at all have collapsed for more than two weeks, make an appointment with your doctor: an anxiety or depressive disorder can be treated, and is treated better when caught early (section 3).
• If the despair you feel for the world becomes despair about your own life, or if you think about dying, do not wait for week 4: talk about it the same day to a doctor, to someone close to you or to a suicide prevention line, and in immediate danger, call the emergency services in your country (section 15).

Week 2 — Choosing your information

The aim is not to stop keeping informed, but to move from information that you put up with, continuous and often late at night, to information that you choose, limited in time, and followed by something (section 7). You are no more responsible after two hours of reading than after twenty minutes: you are only more tired.

• Write your information plan in five decisions: one or two reliable sources, a fixed time of day, never in bed, on waking or in the hour before you go to bed, a length of time set with a timer, alerts turned off, and what you will note at the end of each information session (section 7, "Your information plan").
• From the first day, turn off news alerts in the notification settings of each news app, because an alert decides for you when you are going to be shaken (section 7).
• Every day, apply your plan and end each information session by noting what you are doing with it, whether a reflection, an action or nothing at all; without this last decision, the information session turns back into rumination (section 7).
• Plan in writing what you will do on days of big news, for example: "I read a summary at the planned time, I talk about it with someone, and I do not open the feed again in the evening" (section 7, "Days of big news").
• From this Sunday onwards, note every Sunday evening your estimate of the time the concern took up during the week, in minutes, and the number of activities you had given up that you have taken up again, even if it stays at zero before week 5: these two figures tell you more about your progress than your impression of the moment (section 6).

Week 3 — Setting up climate time

You are not trying to think less about the climate: you are deciding when you think about it. Climate time postpones thoughts to a fixed appointment without chasing them away, because trying not to think about something often makes you think about it more afterwards (section 8). Keep this appointment every day this week, even if you do not feel like it: you will discover that a thought that can wait several hours does not have a complete hold over you.

• Set your climate time: twenty to thirty minutes every day, during the day and at a fixed time, never in bed or in the two hours before you go to bed, in a specific place, a chair or a table, which is neither your bed nor the sofa where you relax (section 8, "Climate time").
• During the day, when a thought about the climate arrives, note it down in three words, tell yourself it will have its place at the planned time, then go back to what you were doing (section 8).
• At the appointed time, set the timer, reread your notes and sort each thought with the question in section 8: "is there something I can do, today or this week?" If so, write down the action with a day and a time; if not, it is a thought going round in circles, and you can think about it until the timer goes off.
• When the timer goes off, stop and move straight on to something physical, such as a walk or a shower, to bring climate time to a close (section 8).
• Put a notebook on your bedside table: if a thought about the climate keeps you awake, write it down in three words with "tomorrow, at climate time", and take it up again the next day at the appointed time; if your mind is still racing after twenty minutes or so, get up and do something calm in another room (section 8, "At night").

Week 4 — Making room for emotions

Accepting an emotion means neither accepting the situation that causes it nor giving up on acting: it means letting it be there, without fleeing it and without dwelling on it, so that it can rise, reach a peak, then come back down (section 9). Stepping back from a thought of despair denies nothing: it reminds you that this is a thought, which can be present without deciding how your evening goes. Climate time continues every day, and it can get shorter once you no longer have anything to fill it with.

• Once a day, do the five-minute exercise: at a calm moment, think of an image or a piece of news that brings on your dominant emotion, without looking for the most terrible one, locate where it sits in your body, name it, then breathe with it for three to five minutes without trying to make it go away (section 9).
• Each time you do the exercise, note the intensity of the emotion from 0 to 10 at the start, at its strongest point and at the end; if it does not come down that day, the exercise has not failed, because you felt it without running away (section 9).
• For your most frequent thought of despair, such as "it's all over", write a sentence that steps back from it, "I notice I'm having the thought that it's all over", or a name, "ah, here comes the end-of-the-world film again", and say it again when the thought comes back (section 9, "Stepping back from thoughts of despair").
• Ask yourself frankly the question in section 15: when you think that all is lost, do you sometimes think that your own life is not worth living, or think about dying? If so, talk about it the same day to your doctor, to someone close to you or to a suicide prevention line, and in immediate danger, call the emergency services in your country.

Week 5 — Coming back to what matters

When all your goals concern a global problem, you fail every evening; your values, on the other hand, are something you can follow every day (section 10). Pleasure is not a betrayal: it is part of what allows you to last. An activity written in the diary escapes the negotiation of the moment, the one that almost always concludes that today is not the right day. The information plan and climate time carry on in the background, for as long as they are useful to you.

• Do the three-values exercise: write down five areas of your life, such as relationships, work or studies, health, leisure, nature or community life, and for each one note in a sentence what matters to you (section 10).
• Then choose three values, that is, three directions that matter to you, such as caring for others, justice, beauty or passing things on, and, for each one, a small action that can be done this week, with a day and a time; at least one of them must have nothing to do with the climate, such as calling a friend you have lost touch with (section 10, "The three-values exercise").
• Go back to the list of what the worry has taken from you, note for each activity you have given up the value it served, then place three of them in your week, with a day and a time, without waiting until you feel like it; an activity you take up again can also count as one of the actions in the three-values exercise, and if the week is too full, start with just one (section 10, "Taking back what the worry has taken").

Week 6 — Acting on your own scale

This guide does not recommend any particular action to you: it helps you sort your own, so that action is neither an endless duty nor an awaited remedy (section 11). Your share is neither zero nor total, and your "enough" is revised when your life changes, not every evening under the influence of an article.

• Take stock of what you already do for the environment and ask two questions about each action: does it serve a value that is truly yours, and is it sustainable in your life? Keep those that pass both; you are allowed to drop the others (section 11).
• If you hold yourself responsible for everything, divide things up on a sheet of paper, in three columns: what depends on your choices, what depends on companies and institutions, and what depends on collective decisions (section 11, "Bringing your share back to its real size").
• Write down your "enough": what you consider enough, for you, now, and a sentence for the moments when the guilt comes back, such as "I have done what I decided to do; the rest does not depend on me alone" (section 11).
• Decide, according to your values, your time and your temperament, whether collective action suits you for now: if so, take a first step, with a voluntary organisation or a neighbourhood project; if not, write down your reasons, because a considered decision is worth as much as a commitment (section 11, "Acting with others").
• If you get involved, or if you are already involved, set your limits in writing: a number of hours per week, a day without any activism, a person to talk to outside the group, and the signs that will tell you that you are doing too much (section 11, "When commitment exhausts you").
• If your commitment is already exhausting you, with nights cut short for the cause, a social life reduced to the group, a new bitterness or the feeling of never doing enough, cut it back this week without reproaching yourself: stepping back for a while is not giving up (section 11, "When commitment exhausts you").

Week 7 — The future and other people

A big decision is not made on an evening of bad news, and it is allowed to remain open for a while; this guide will not tell you what to decide (section 12). Kept to yourself, worry takes up more room: talking about it helps, provided you aim to be heard rather than to convince, as in "I'm not asking you to share my worry. I'm asking you not to make fun of it in front of the children" (section 13).

• If a life decision has been frozen by the distress, such as studies, a move or the question of children, write down on a sheet of paper the decision, what matters to you, what you know, what you do not know, and what your anxiety makes you say; this last line is often the most illuminating (section 12).
• Choose someone around you to talk to about what you are going through, and prepare the conversation in four lines: with whom, what you want to say about what you are feeling, what you want to ask them, and what you will do if the exchange turns into a debate (section 13).
• Have this conversation on a calm day, aiming to be heard, to ask for something specific or to set a limit; if the exchange turns sour, saying that you would rather leave it there for tonight is not a defeat, it is the limit you had planned (section 13).

Week 8 — Taking stock

This week repeats the record from week 1 to measure how far you have come. Judge it by the time the worry takes up each day and by what you have taken back, not by whether it has disappeared, which was not the aim.

• For seven days, keep the record from section 6 again, never in bed (if the moment happened in bed, note it the next morning): the day and the time, the trigger, what you did, the minutes and your distress from 0 to 10.
• At the end of the week, add up the minutes and compare the total with the total for week 1 (section 6).
• If nothing has shifted after these eight weeks of regular practice, neither the time the worry takes up nor what you have taken back, make an appointment with your doctor or a psychologist: it is not a failure, it is a sign that professional support is called for (section 16, "How to judge the result").
• Go back to the list of what the worry has taken from you and tick what has come back into your life (section 6).
• Write down on one page the moments of risk you can foresee, what you are keeping from this work and three levels of response: after a few difficult evenings, reread your information plan and take up climate time again for a few days; if the time taken up by the worry rises clearly for a week, do another week of the record and reschedule an activity you had given up; if the withdrawal comes back, if your sleep deteriorates for a lasting period or if the despair becomes personal, call the person whose name you write down on this page, or your doctor (section 16, "When the bad news comes back").

How to judge the result

Do not judge it by whether your worry has disappeared, which was not the aim, but by the time it takes up each day and by what you have taken back. If you still worry about the climate, but you sleep, you see your friends and you have gone back to the choir, that is a success. If nothing has shifted after eight weeks of regular practice, it is a sign that professional support is called for.

When the bad news comes back

There will be a summer heatwave, an alarming report, a disaster on the front pages. It will not be a return to square one. Write down now, on one page, the moments of risk you can foresee and what you are keeping from this work, then three levels of response.

• If you go through a few difficult evenings, reread your information plan and take up climate time again for a few days.
• If the time taken up by the worry rises clearly for a week, do another week of the record and reschedule an activity you had given up.
• If the withdrawal comes back, if your sleep deteriorates for a lasting period or if the despair becomes personal, call the person whose name you have written on this page, or your doctor.

An evening spent scrolling through videos of disasters does not undo eight weeks of work. What turns a lapse into a relapse is the thought "it was all for nothing". That thought is wrong: you now know what to do.

17. When to seek help, and from whom

Seek help if, after several weeks of work, the worry continues to take up your evenings, your sleep or your relationships. Seek help too if it extends well beyond the climate, if your mood has been low in every area for more than two weeks, if you turn to a substance every evening for relief, if a disaster you lived through continues to haunt you, or if your commitment has exhausted you. And seek help the same day if the despair becomes personal.

Your general practitioner is the first person to see: they can assess whether there is an anxiety or depressive disorder and refer you on. A psychologist, who is not a doctor and does not prescribe medication, is trained in psychological assessment and support: if they are trained in cognitive behavioural therapies, including acceptance and commitment therapy, they practise the approaches on which this guide draws. Ask them how they work. A psychiatrist, that is, a doctor who specialises in mental disorders, is indicated in the case of severe depression or suicidal thoughts, or if medication is being considered.

A good professional will take your worry seriously without telling you that you are exaggerating, or that all is lost. They will not give you their opinions on the climate, on politics or on your way of life: this is not coldness, it is what makes the consultation a place where your choices are not judged.

A few phrases can help you get started.

"I worry a lot about the climate. It's not the worry itself that is the problem for me, it's that it takes my evenings and my sleep."

"For a year now, I've stopped doing a lot of things because of it, and I'm sleeping badly. Could this be depression?"

"I can't see a future any more, either for the world or for myself. I need to talk about it today."

18. Frequently asked questions

Is eco-anxiety an illness? No. It is not a diagnosis in any medical classification. It is the name given to emotions aroused by a real threat. It becomes a problem when it takes over your life, and it sometimes masks an anxiety or depressive disorder, which, for its part, is treated as such.

How do I know whether I worry too much? Look at what it takes from you. If you sleep, work, see the people close to you and make plans, your worry has its place. If it takes hours of your day, your sleep or your pleasures, it deserves to be worked on.

If I get better, will I stop acting for the environment? Nothing suggests so for the moment. In the only published controlled trial of a psychotherapy in adults, the participants who were treated did not reduce their environmentally friendly behaviour, but the trial is small. The aim is not indifference.

Will getting involved in an organisation cure me? Acting with others helps some people feel less alone and less powerless. A few studies point in this direction, without proving an effect, and commitment without limits can exhaust you. It is a possibility to be chosen according to your values, not a treatment.

Is it too late? Nobody can answer yes or no. The IPCC describes serious effects that are already present, and a future that depends in part on choices that have not yet been made. What exhausts you is asking the question over and over again.

Do I have the right to enjoy myself when the planet is in a bad way? Yes. Depriving yourself changes nothing about what worries you, and takes away the energy you need to keep going. In a study among children, a way of coping that drew on meaning and hope even went with more engagement with the environment, not less.

I can't decide whether I want children, because of the climate. What should I do? It is a legitimate question, which belongs to you, and this guide will not tell you what to decide. Distinguish what you want from what your anxiety dictates to you, do not settle the question on an evening of bad news, and accept that it may remain open for a while.

Can a medicine help me? We have found no study evaluating a medicine against climate worry itself. If an anxiety or depressive disorder is diagnosed, a treatment can be discussed with your doctor, who is the only person able to propose one.

Is my sadness at the disappearance of a landscape normal? Yes. Researchers speak of ecological grief, a natural response to a real loss. It is acknowledged more than it is treated: writing about it, or talking about it with someone who knew those places, can help you carry it.

I worry about the climate, but also about my health, my work and my children. Is this guide for me? Only in part. A worry that covers many subjects at once, for months, points rather to generalised anxiety disorder, which responds well to treatment. Talk to a doctor about it, and read Constant worry: generalised anxiety disorder.

19. Key points

• Eco-anxiety is not an illness: it is a reaction to a real threat, and a very widespread one, especially among young people.
• What is worked on is not your concern for the world, but the place it takes up in your nights, your pleasures, your relationships and your decisions.
• A worry that extends well beyond the climate, or a mood that has collapsed in every area, points to an anxiety or depressive disorder, which calls for a doctor and can be treated.
• A one-week record, in minutes, replaces impressions with facts and shows the hours when the worry has its grip.
• Keeping informed means choosing a source, a time and a length of time, turning off alerts, and never reading in bed.
• A single question sorts your thoughts: can I do something today or this week?
• Climate time, every day at a fixed time and during the day, shows that you can postpone a thought without trying to chase it away.
• Accepting an emotion is not resigning yourself: felt without fleeing it or dwelling on it, it can rise and then come back down.
• Depriving yourself of pleasure changes nothing about what worries you, and takes away what keeps you going.
• Action, alone or with others, is chosen according to your values and your means, with an "enough" and written limits: it is neither a duty nor a remedy.
• Nobody knows whether it is too late; the hope that helps is not optimism, it is the conviction that what you do has meaning.
• If despair about the world becomes despair about your own life, talk about it the same day.

20. Sources and foundations

This guide is an original text written for Psychotip. It draws on published work, without reproducing material from any proprietary programme.

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A-Tjak, J. G. L., Davis, M. L., Morina, N., Powers, M. B., Smits, J. A. J., & Emmelkamp, P. M. G. (2015). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy for clinically relevant mental and physical health problems. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(1), 30-36. https://doi.org/10.1159/000365764

Baudon, P., & Jachens, L. (2021). A scoping review of interventions for the treatment of eco-anxiety. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(18), Article 9636. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189636

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Content last reviewed: 2026.