5 Tips for Dealing with Climate News
This article was originally written for the Climate Optimist Column in KeiSei Magazine
One of the most profound things I’ve learned in life is that awareness hurts and that's OK. Because when you open up your heart to feel all there is to feel, when you decide that you’re no longer going to be that person who pretends to sleep, but the one who looks boldly at the world in its wholesomeness, you allow for all sorts of things to come crashing in.
Many of these are beautiful things that allow you to have hope in the world, like the small acts of kindness you might begin to witness between people. When you’re fully aware, you will start to notice how the man at the bus stop lends his hand to the older lady and helps her up the stairs, or the woman who stops to listen to the homeless guy playing violin and drops him a dollar in his bucket.
Noticing these little moments of magic is what will begin to transform your life. You will start to understand how much they actually matter, which will make you feel like you matter too. You will begin to see that your actions, no matter how small, matter.
That is what awareness brings - the feeling of connectedness, hope, and that what we do here on this Earth makes a difference. In other words - awareness allows you to see love.
Photo: Gabrielle Henderson
However, once you open those gates, everything will gain entry, and the truth is that not all things are beautiful in this world. Just as you can now see and feel the love, you will also be able to truthfully see and feel the pain.
We live in a super-connected world and because of it, we have access to tremendous amounts of stress, fear, and painful information, as easy as a swipe of a finger. And we keep consuming negative news after negative news like it’s our civic duty to stay informed.
Only we don’t allow for the emotional space to process what we’re learning. Or the time! How can we care about children starving in other countries or wildfires running amok when our lives are filled to the brim as it is? And how would we function in our everyday lives if we were to tap into and feel each devastating news story coming at us?
When I first became a climate optimist, I thought the answer was to seek out the good news and only pay attention to things that made me feel optimistic about the world. I thought that if I could only filter out all the negatives, I could continue wearing that smile I was given and make others feel hopeful as well. To be the sun in all the clouds, so to speak.
But what I’ve learned is that there’s no such thing as not knowing. Because even if you’re trying hard to only focus on the positive, there’s a part of you that pays attention and your body remembers the pain.
In other words -- you can’t have one without the other and if you want to see the beauty, you have to be prepared to also see the pain. You need awareness to live a life with impact and meaning and besides, trying not to know can be dangerous in itself. That is how you make space for anxiety to spread.
Raising Your Fear Mark
Learning how to deal with negative news is that one thing they don’t teach you in school but they should. Not just so that we can consume more of it, but so that we can remain strong and resilient through these oceans of information. Jack Adam Weber, author of Climate Cure: Heal Yourself to Heal the Planet, calls it raising our fear-mark.
"Our fear-mark is the degree of fear we can tolerate while remaining rational and skillful in our response to information. Until we develop awareness, our fears rule us.”
Are you prepared to raise your fear mark? Here are five tips on how to deal with negative climate news and grow your emotional resilience, as learned in our class with Jack Adam Weber, the second session of the Climate Optimist Master Class.
5 Tips for Dealing with Climate Anxiety and Negative News
Find your balance.
Too little awareness might lead to anxiety and stress and too much can overwhelm you. Recognize that we’re all on different resilience levels and some people can consume more negative news than others. By knowing yourself and your limits, you can begin to recognize when you feel overwhelmed and take a break. Take it bitesize and grow your emotional resilience over time.
Practice healthy denial.
All of us are denying climate news to one degree or another. It simply would be impossible to live and function if we were to think about it all the time. Denial isn’t always bad and tuning out from time to time is essential for our well-being.
Mix in optimism.
A good way to consume negative news is to follow up with something positive. That way you can stay aware without feeling like you lose yourself to anxiety and stress. It’s OK to find reasons to smile amongst all the bad and YOU -- the climate hero choosing to work on your emotional resilience -- deserve it more than anybody! So seek out the good news too. Listen to music that uplifts you. Sing, dance, and enjoy life. Do that and you’ll be much better equipped to do something about the things you’re learning.
Talk about it.
By sharing what you’re learning with others you might find that you’re not alone in your worries, which will help ease anxiety. Also, normalizing climate conversations is one of the most important ways to fuel climate action. Just keep in mind that their emotional resilience might be very different from yours -- tread lightly and with kindness.
Fear + Grief = Empowered Action.
Grief alone can consume you. Fear alone can push you into a paralyzed state. But when combined in healthy doses, and applied to an attitude of wanting to make change, you can fuel it into empowered action. So don’t just learn and let go -- empower yourself and do something about it! Knowing what you know now, what can you do today to make it better? Choose to act and be the change, and be assured the world will follow.
How will you go about this today? Can you practice learning something difficult without diving into either denial or despair? Practice growing your emotional resilience by consuming a piece of news that might upset you, and choose one or many tips to let what you learned empower you.
