The APA has a New 69-Page Guide for Dealing with Climate Anxiety
Climate anxiety is now a thing. Brought to you by the same twits trying to make "plant-based" meat a thing. From what I can tell, "climate anxiety" is the result of reading too many AOC tweets and watching too many NowThis videos, then curling up in a ball and rocking back and forth in the shower. All because you think global change aggregated climate warming is going kill us all in twelve years, and you just can't deal. It was more fun when people went completely coo coo for Cocoa Puffs (see MSNBC Guest Compares Climate Change to Space Alien Invasion and Climate Change Alarmists Glued Themselves to Furniture for the Planet).
If any of the above sounds like you, today is your lucky day. The APA is here to help you through it.
There's no clinical definition, but climate anxiety and grief or solastalgia -- "the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment" -- has become such a concern that the American Psychological Association created a 69-page climate-change guide to help mental health care providers.
69?
Please continue.
A student in Wendy Petersen Boring's climate-change-focused class said she woke at 2 a.m. and then cried for two solid hours about the warming ocean."With the Trump election, the change in my students, the sense of grief and fear and paralysis in the room, became palpable," Petersen Boring said.
Paralysis caused by fear is a real problem, said Susan Clayton, one of the lead authors of the American Psychological Association guide.
Oh for the love of God.
Let's not get into an argument on climate change. That's been well covered throughout this website's lifespan. But you don't need an association of psychiatrists in America to tell you what's wrong with you. I'll tell you right now. You need to get some fresh air. Preferably before the world ends in twelve years.
If you're really that stressed with "what's going on in the world" that you wake up in the middle of the night crying like a Hillary Clinton supporter on Election Night, the problem isn't the planet. It's you. Maybe you need to second guess what media you are consuming. Log off altogether. Go for a walk. Exercise. Have a conversation with someone who remembers history before January 2009.
Basically, get a grip. But I'm totally serious about putting down the glowing screens. Just get offline, you'll be fine.
