Supporting Children with Climate Anxiety and Eco-Emotions

Supporting Children with Climate Anxiety and Eco-Emotions:  Tips for Educators and Parents

How to respond to climate anxiety in children: 

• Ask children what is bothering them.
• When climate anxiety is in the mix, frame it as a natural response to harm, as an expression of their care and concern for the natural world.
• Acknowledge, validate and normalize. Don’t ignore or minimize (often adults not taking climate change seriously is one of the factors fueling youth anxiety)
• It is a balance – don’t lie to young people and try not to let them become terrified.
• Share information about solutions and good news stories, as well as information about the problems.
• Use climate anxiety as an impetus to action – e.g. planting a garden, a park clean-up, a petition, writing letters, raising money or volunteering. Group engagement in particular can encourage a sense of empowerment, solidarity, hope and optimism.
• Use anxiety as an opening to teach emotion regulation through exercises such as those below that calm the nervous system

Grounding Practices

Tending to your own nervous system and teaching children to tend to theirs can decrease anxiety and build resiliency.  Below are three micro-practices that can be easily taught and used in daily life.

• 3 breaths practice – Deep breathing helps flip the switch from your sympathetic (fight/flight/freeze) nervous system to your parasympathetic (the relaxed) nervous system.
  Find your breath in your body where it is most obvious to you…In three breaths, notice the feeling of your breath from the very beginning of your inbreath, to the very end of your outbreath…even noticing the little place where your inbreath turns into your outbreath…and the still quiet place at the end of your outbreath…
• Soles of the feet – Get out of your head for a few minutes to soften rumination.
  This is an informal practice you can do anytime, anywhere.  Sometimes it helps to do it without shoes – so can really feel floor beneath your feet.  Notice the feel of the floor – hard…soft…cushiony…warm…cold.  Stretch out your toes.  Rock side to side a bit – notice as weight shifts.  Circle your knees.  Bring full attention to movement of body and the physical sensations in your feet.  You might begin to walk around a bit – notice movement of leg through space with each step, the shifting of your weight.  Take a few steps without trying to get anywhere…just feel of your feet against the floor…touch, texture, pressure.  Be curious.  Maybe take a moment to express some gratitude for your feet, aware of what your feet do for you.
• A moment for me – Rather than plowing through your anxiety, take a few moments to meet your anxiety and yourself with kindness and experience the benefit of being a good friend to yourself in difficult moment. There are three steps to this practice:
  Step 1: Acknowledge you are feeling some anxiety.  “This is hard…I am really feeling scared…this is overwhelming.”
  Step 2– Acknowledge common humanity, recognizing that you are not the only one.  “What I am experiencing is something we all experience.  These are uncertain times.  We all feel it.  I am not alone.  Lots of people are afraid these days.”
  Step 3– Offer yourself some kindness, perhaps thinking about what might you say to a friend who was anxious.  Something like “May I be safe.  May I be free from fear.  May I find courage to face this moment.  This won’t be forever.  This will pass.”
• Moving the body and time connecting with the natural world also help cultivate well-being in the face of anxiety.   And when anxiety or other eco-emotions (grief, overwhelm, depression, helplessness, hopelessness or despair) persist or interfere with physical, social, or educational functioning, a referral for counseling is often appropriate to connect a child with additional support.