My rubbish is making me anxious. That probably sounds funny, but it’s true. Just like us, wildlife – whether that be bees, birds or badgers – needs somewhere to live. Without habitat, there is no wildlife. Devastatingly, in creating more and more space for people, we have systematically stripped our landscapes; leaving our wildlife with very few, or no, places to go.
My rubbish is collected fortnightly, and the bags are all stacked at either end of the alleyway behind my house. Bags and bags and bags of rubbish, heaped on top of each other, spilling open, festering in the sun. Every fortnight, I’m disgusted by how much waste just one side of our little street amasses, and I’m extraordinarily relieved when it has been collected. Out of sight, out of mind eh? Sadly, not so. It keeps returning to my thoughts… All. That. Rubbish. Because I know that it’s still somewherestill piling up as landfill. I feel anxious because I feel powerless to stop it. Does this resonate with anyone?
Despite Blu e Planet, scientific predictions, environmental memes and scary statistics, we still seem to be making a whole lot of mess and doing a load of other damaging stuff besides). Humans leave mess wherever we go. In fact, the recent lovely weather (I write this at the beginning of June) and reduced social distancing, is shining a big old light on it. It only takes a few seconds scrolling on my phone to see dozens of photos, news stories and exclamations of disgust at the litter strewn about beaches, riversides and green spaces after a sunny weekend. As a species we seem unable to tidy up after ourselves or put our rubbish in a bin, let alone reduce the amount of trash we actually create. So where does that leave us? Well, if you’re anything like me, you’re lying awake at night worrying about the end of the world, with images of plastic islands in the ocean playing on a loop in your head.
It seems I’m not alone. A quick Google tells me that the American Psychological Association describes eco-anxiety, or climate anxiety, as “a chronic fear of environmental doom”, and that sounds pretty much on the money. In fact, in 2017 a report called Mental Health and Our Changing limate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance says that “a significant proportion of people are experiencing stress and worry about the potential impacts of climate change, and that the level of worry is almost certainly increasing.” What can we do about the situation? After all, this is no small problem and it’s certainly not going to go away, or be fixed, overnight.
Feelings of paralysis and powerlessness are two of the most common and recognised reactions to, or symptoms of, anxiety and fear, and they cause us to be stuck in an unending anxious and fearful loop. Now I am no expert, but I am a person who experiences this sort of anxiety and my way through it is to fight that awful inertia with action. Because in doing, I always feel better. Here are a few of my top tips on how to tackle feelings of eco-anxiety and how to ‘take the power back’…