👋 Hi, everybody! It’s time for another column in our Ask a Climate Therapist series — a special project tackling your questions about the emotional side of living through the climate crisis, with one of the leading voices on climate change and mental health: Leslie Davenport. If you have a question you’d like to see Leslie take on in a future column, you can submit it through this form (or feel free to reply to this email.) We’d love to know what’s on your mind. 

Today’s topic is climate-fueled anxiety — something I, and I think many of you, can deeply relate to. Leslie breaks down how therapy tools can help us navigate a reality where anxiety about the future feels entirely warranted. 

We’ve also got some news stories for you today about circular fashion on display at the World Cup, and why scientists took the worst-case climate scenario off the table.

This post originally appeared in Grist’s weekly solutions newsletter, Looking Forward. Not on our list yet? Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Friday.

Ask a Climate Therapist: Is it still ‘catastrophizing’ if the threat is real?

Collage of wildfire imagery closing in on an anxious person hugging their knees

Grist / Getty Images

Dear Leslie, 

A lot of my work in therapy for anxiety has focused on recognizing catastrophic thinking and assessing what is more realistic. How would you suggest adapting this for a world where reality itself is increasingly becoming more catastrophic, and science suggests things will get worse in the future? 

—  Anonymously Anxious

[Do you have a question you’d like to see Leslie address in a future column? Submit it here.]

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Dear Anonymously Anxious,

Your question points to something I’ve had to reckon with in my own practice as a therapist. Before I became more aware of the impacts of climate change, I used the same framework you describe — I helped clients recognize their distorted thinking and recalibrate toward what’s realistic. 

But as I came to understand the actual science, I had a striking realization: For climate-aware clients, their anxiety isn’t distorted at all. It’s a healthy response to real destruction and the inadequate efforts to address it. Shifting toward “what’s realistic” isn’t what we’re after to manage climate anxiety. Instead, it’s about navigating high-stakes uncertainty by developing new skills — helping people stay grounded and functional while channeling their distress into meaningful action with others. 

I think part of what you’re asking is how to distinguish a clear-eyed view of the climate crisis from catastrophizing. First, we need to understand the human tendency to catastrophize. Part of what shapes our perception of reality is something less visible than the daily news. We all have cognitive biases operating mostly beneath our conscious awareness. One in particular is relevant here: the negativity bias, which causes us to register threatening situations three to five times more intensely than positive ones. That might have been useful for our evolutionary survival, but it can also have a distorting effect — especially in the age of doomscrolling, when it’s altogether too easy to overwhelm ourselves with bad news.

That’s why a balanced view also requires staying current on the real progress being made: dam removals, renewable energy growth, youth litigation wins, communities building resilience. This kind of news often gets less attention, so finding it can take some effort. But seeking out these stories may help to remind you that there are answers to the problems we face.

Still, these advances don’t diminish the urgency of the genuine crisis we’re facing, and for now, our climate problems are still outpacing solutions. Watching that unfold, watching the status quo persist, can be agonizing. In therapy terms, the cognitive goal has to shift from “accurate assessment” to “functional clarity.” Accurate assessment asks, “How bad is it?” Functional clarity asks, “Given what I understand, what can I do?” The first question keeps you spinning while the second moves you forward. It can help you channel your emotions into motivation — to get involved with a local organization, lobby your elected officials, or change your own behavior.

Learn to distinguish between threat awareness, which is necessary and healthy, and threat rumination, which exhausts without informing. When your mind is cycling through worst-case futures with no path forward, that’s your signal to use the tools you’ve been building in therapy: Take a walk, do a breathing exercise, seek out a story about climate progress.

This is also where therapy offers something that information alone can’t. Climate anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind. Therapeutic tools (somatic practices, working through grief, reining in the runaway thoughts that keep you up at night, and building confidence to act) strengthen your capacity to stay present with the shifting climate reality without being overwhelmed by it. That’s not “coping” in the familiar sense of managing symptoms until life returns to normal. It’s developing the inner resources to keep showing up, keep caring, and keep acting with an open mind and heart. That kind of resilience makes sustained engagement possible.

In this with you,
Leslie

Ask a Climate Therapist is a special series from Grist, tackling your burning questions about climate change and mental health with licensed therapist Leslie Davenport. Do you have a question you’d like to see Leslie address in a future column? Submit it here.

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More from Grist

⚽ Circular fashion goals

At the World Cup, athletes will be wearing uniforms made entirely from textile waste. They were made using chemical recycling, which can completely recycle plastic polyester. But don’t count on this as a turning point in our clothing-waste problem — there are significant constraints to the process, and questions about whether it can ever keep up with fast fashion. Read more.

🔥 Out of the fire

Grist’s Zoya Teirstein has spent a year documenting how climate change is supercharging global health risks, and some of the emerging solutions. Her final dispatch comes from Australia, where children born after a summer of wildfires displayed high rates of chronic health problems like asthma and eczema. Researchers are rushing to catch up on understanding how exposure to wildfire smoke affects fetal development, and how to keep babies safe. Read more.

🚧 Gas release

A planned data center in Utah, which would be the world’s largest at 40,000 acres, was supposed be powered entirely by natural gas. But after weeks of protest and controversy, the state’s governor now says the project will “never” be gas-only, and will include nuclear, geothermal, and other power sources in later phases. Read more.

🌎 And one more thing

Join Grist for Radical Possibility: How Climate Fiction Can Create Better Futures, a special virtual conversation exploring how speculative storytelling can help us imagine more just, resilient, and hopeful futures. Grist’s Tory Stephens will be joined by acclaimed writers Sheree Renée Thomas, Vandana Singh, and Wole Talabi to discuss how climate fiction can challenge narratives of inevitability, preserve cultural memory, model collective care, and inspire new visions for collective action. RSVP here!

In other news

And finally, looking forward to …

… a future that’s not necessarily anxiety-free, but is joy-filled.  

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This is your first big hurricane since your niece and nephew came into the picture. You thought it would be way scarier — what if they panicked and couldn’t calm down? What if the family had to evacuate with two toddlers in tow? What if, goodness forbid, they got hurt? 

But somehow, it’s calmer. Even almost … fun. The kids learned about extreme weather safety in school and they happily explain their lessons to you. You make a game out of running around the house with their checklist. Backup batteries: check; storm shutters: check; water cooler, emergency kit, snacks: check … 

— a drabble by Claire Elise Thompson

🌀🌀🌀

A drabble is a 100-word piece of fiction — in this case, offering a tiny glimpse of what a clean, green, just future might look like. Want to try writing your own (and see it featured in a future newsletter)? We would love to hear from you! Please send us your visions for our climate future, in drabble form, at lookingforward@grist.org

👋 See you next week!