Facing Climate Anxiety: Evidence-Based Skills to Cope with Fear and Overwhelm, Find Meaning, and Take Action

Printed on wood-free paper with nontoxic ink.

Ignoring climate change is no longer an option. Climate change is real--and so is the fear and anxiety building in its wake. This timely guide offers evidence-based tools to transform your fears about this environmental crisis into meaning, purpose, and action.

Is climate anxiety keeping you awake at night? Have you or your family been impacted by climate-driven fires, floods, or other extreme weather events? Do you worry about the future, and what it means for the next generation? As devastation wrought by extreme weather becomes the new normal, it's getting harder and harder to ignore a crisis that is not only inevitable--but already upon us. How does one cope with this existential realization? So, how can you overcome feeling so paralyzed and powerless that you lose hope, give up, or stop taking action?

Written for people struggling with climate anxiety, depression, and eco grief, this groundbreaking guide offers practical, evidence-based tools based in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help you cope with climate change right now. This book can help you gain strength, wisdom, and clarity to move past feelings of hopelessness. You'll also learn self-care strategies to reduce the fear, anger, and despair triggered by the next inevitable headline.

Discover powerful tools to help you:

• Work through difficult thoughts and feelings
• Regulate your emotions and fears
• Identify your values through an environmental lens
• Transform fear into meaning and purpose

A crisis of this magnitude demands maximum psychological flexibility to avoid being overwhelmed by an avalanche of distressing emotions. Ignoring the problem is not an option. This book will help you tap into the wisdom needed to weather the coming storms.

Jon Gorman, PsyD, is owner of Towson Therapy Group--a psychotherapy group practice in Towson, MD. He is an assistant clinical professor at Loyola University Maryland, a licensed psychologist in Maryland, and is licensed to provide teletherapy in thirty-nine states through PSYPACT. An active member of Climate Psychology Alliance North America (CPA-NA), Gorman is trained in ecopsychology and nature-informed therapy, and is listed in the Climate-Aware Therapist Directory. He has given talks to environmental legislators around the United States to advocate for pro-climate legislation, has testified in front of the Maryland General Assembly in support of climate legislation, and his letter to the editor about climate legislation was published in The Baltimore Sun. He was also featured on the CPA-NA podcast, Climate Psychology Conversations. His therapy office is listed in the Maryland Green Registry, and he is continually striving to reduce the environmental impact of the office.

Foreword writer Lise Van Susteren, MD, is a general and forensic psychiatrist in Washington, DC; an environmental activist; and expert on the physical and psychological toll of climate distress, especially in youth. She is the coauthor of several books, chapters, and research papers on the topic, and has served as an expert witness in multiple cases against state and federal governments for inaction on climate change.