Climate change: the psychological impact of climate anxiety and trauma: understanding from the psychotherapeutic encounter

Abstract

ABSTRACT Anthropogenic climate change has been a crisis that human beings have spent decades being in denial of, at great cost to nature, biodiversity and ultimately to ourselves. Facing the reality of this crisis and the damage done to the natural world has been unbearable and places us in touch with primitive anxieties about our own destructiveness. There is hope that our species can take a different path than the current one of living beyond our means. Some momentum towards change is beginning to occur: but will meaningful change be expedited soon enough to protect our struggling planet? The focus of this paper is to explore how psychoanalytic thinking can provide a deeper insight into the anxiety that the climate crisis is bringing to the fore, especially in young people who are wary of adult figures and institutions that are not seen to be doing enough to address this issue. Through the work of child and adolescent psychotherapy with a young person, the impact of climate change is considered in terms of the relationship between internal and external worlds. Also discussed is the importance of the psychotherapist themselves in bearing the reality of the climate crisis and its accompanying anxieties, especially when working with climate anxiety and climate trauma in our patients.