Coping With Climate Change Anxiety
What to do when the world is on fire and your mind won't stop spiraling.
Posted April 14, 2026 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
If you live in or near a mountainous state, you know that this has been an exceptionally mild winter with historically low snowpack. Within my circle of outdoor enthusiast friends here in the Pacific Northwest, palpable fear is mounting.
This fear extends far beyond the immediate concern for the upcoming season and summer plans.
I write this post not as a weather or climate change expert, but as a psychologist who understands anxiety , an outdoor athlete impacted by climate change, and as a human being who shares these same fears.
First, let’s normalize feeling anxious about climate change.
We are biologically wired as humans to experience fear and anxiety in response to dangerous and/or life-threatening situations. Anxiety is a normal, healthy emotion that serves a protective function in high-risk situations. The human mind has evolved not only to respond to danger in the present moment but also to predict and anticipate danger in the future.
Climate change poses a real, immediate risk to our safety and the safety of, well, everyone and everything on the planet.
Feeling anxious in response to real, immediate risks is a healthy nervous system response.
It's also normal to feel helpless.
As humans, we are natural “fixers.” We love nothing more than to solve a problem, find a solution, get rid of an issue, or make something better.
This works great for problems that can actually be solved.
However, when we face an enormous, complex problem such as climate change, we are also confronted with the reality that there’s no single solution that any of us as individuals can implement.
Experiencing distress in response to a complex, not-immediately-fixable problem is a healthy nervous system response.
That being said, there are some things that can help us understand and cope with climate change anxiety.
There's a difference between pain and suffering.
Psychological pain is an inevitable part of the human experience. We cannot skirt through life without experiencing pain. There simply is no shortcut around it.
If you are a living, breathing human—congratulations, you’ve got pain.
The extent to which pain is accompanied by suffering depends on your mental and behavioral response to the pain.
Pain = climate change anxiety
Suffering = all the stuff you do in response to your anxiety that might help temporarily, but actually makes the anxiety much worse (doomscrolling, self-criticizing, obsessing, drinking alcohol , zoning out, etc.).
A place to begin is to ask yourself these questions:
What am I doing when I feel anxious about climate change?
What do I say to myself when I feel anxious? Am I being kind?
How can I take care of my anxiety in a calm and loving way?
Check the cognitive distortions.
When anxiety is hogging the microphone, it says all kinds of unhelpful (and not true) things:
When these unhelpful thoughts happen, take notice. Begin to practice taking a step back, checking it, and reworking the thought to be something more balanced or useful. (There’s a helpful phrase to remember this sequence: catch it, check it, change it).
This doesn’t mean that you should have only positive thoughts, because that’s also not helpful or realistic.
Get into the practice of reworking anxiety thoughts to something more balanced and in-the-middle.
Take notice of behaviors that are making your anxiety worse.
Sometimes the things we do in response to anxiety help really well in the short term, but not so well in the long run. Doomscrolling is one in particular that tends to just make us feel like garbage, especially in light of uncertainty.
It can be tough to strike a balance between protecting your peace and being informed. When you notice your anxiety spiking wildly, it’s probably time to put the phone down.
Just be here, right now.
When things start to feel overwhelming, come back to what’s true for you today.
Lean on activities that help put you back in your body and help you feel a sense of connection to the present.
Uncertainty exists and we still deserve to be present in our life that’s happening right now.
Identify small action steps that can effect change.
We as individuals cannot solve the climate crisis, but individual actions do matter.
Come up with a list of actionable steps—things you can get started on right now. Things that will make an impact on someone in your life or your community.
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.