How to Manage Eco-Anxiety With Positive Psychology

Are more of your clients distressed about the future of the planet — and do you know how best to support them?

Eco-anxiety, which is also referred to as climate anxiety or climate distress, is not just worry about the environment (Pihkala, 2020).

It’s a strong emotional and cognitive response to the profound threat that climate change poses to our sense of safety, stability, and future that is now recognized as a legitimate mental health concern (Boluda-Verdú et al., 2022).

I live and work in an area that is recognized as an area of great natural beauty, and many of my family, friends, and clients are expressing increasing distress at the threat that climate change poses to our environment.

This article aims to address that distress. It explores what eco-anxiety is and who is most affected, and offers strategies for coping and building resilience.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our five positive psychology tools for free. These engaging, science-based exercises will help you effectively deal with difficult circumstances and give you the tools to improve the resilience of your clients, students, or employees.

What Is Eco-Anxiety? A Psychological Perspective

Eco-anxiety is characterized as a relentless fear of environmental doom, often linked to witnessing the effects of climate change, hearing scientific reports and predictions, or living through climate-related disasters (Usher et al., 2019).

It blends elements of environmental psychology, climate change psychology, existential anxiety, and anticipatory grief (Ágoston et al., 2022).

It has not formally been classified as a mental disorder in the DSM-5, but mental health professionals are increasingly recognizing it as a serious form of mental distress (Cosh et al., 2024).

From a psychology perspective, you may find that your clients experience eco-anxiety when there’s a disparity between the scale of the environmental threat and their ability to influence it (Pihkala, 2020).

This feeling of powerlessness can intensify their distress, leading to eco-guilt, which is characterized by feeling personally responsible for environmental harm, and anticipatory grief, which is mourning for losses yet to come (Ágoston et al., 2022).

How is it different from general anxiety?

Although eco-anxiety shares symptoms with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), such as restlessness, worry, and difficulty concentrating, the trigger and context of your clients with eco-anxiety will be unique (Hogg et al., 2021).

More specifically, you can differentiate eco-anxiety through:

1. Source of distress
   Where GAD can result from multiple life domains, eco-anxiety stems from environmental concerns, often backed by scientific evidence (Pihkala, 2020).
2. Time frame
   Eco-anxiety usually involves both present and future-oriented fears regarding climate distress and what the planet will look like for future generations (Orrù et al., 2024).
3. Moral and existential elements
   Unlike GAD, eco-anxiety is often tied to a sense of moral and ethical responsibility regarding environmental distress and human impact (Banwell & Eggert, 2023).

In short, eco-anxiety is distinct from GAD in several ways, and it is not an irrational fear but rather a response to a very real and pressing global challenge.

What is the difference between eco-anxiety and climate grief?

While they may be related, eco-anxiety and climate grief differ in their emotional foundation (Pihkala, 2022). Eco-anxiety is characterized by fear, uncertainty, and worry about environmental degradation (Hogg et al., 2021).

Climate grief, on the other hand, is the sadness or mourning in response to the ecological loss of species, landscapes, or cultural heritage tied to the environment (Cunsolo & Ellis, 2018).

You may find that in your clients they overlap, especially if anticipatory grief emerges in the form of grieving environmental losses that have not yet happened but seem inevitable.

Who experiences it most?

Eco-anxiety can affect anyone, but research indicates that certain groups are more vulnerable (Boluda-Verdú et al., 2022).

• Women have been found to experience higher levels of eco-anxiety than men, based on binary survey data (Niedzwiedz & Katikireddi, 2023).
• Many studies have found higher rates of eco-anxiety among adolescents and young adults (Hickman, 2020).
• Indigenous people and communities such as farmers, whose cultural identities are deeply connected to the land, water, and ecosystems, may experience more eco-anxiety (Coffey et al., 2021).
• Scientists and climate activists who are more readily exposed to climate data or engaged in eco-activism can experience anxiety and distress leading to potential burnout (Jarrett et al., 2024).

4 Reasons Eco-Anxiety Is on the Rise

Eco-anxiety is not just about personal worry; it reflects broader political, social, and ecological realities related to climate change, which helps explain its rapid rise (Kankawale & Niedzwiedz, 2023).

Here are some of the reasons you may be seeing more cases of eco-anxiety in your practice:

1. Increased media and social media coverage
   Constant exposure to headlines about forest fires, floods, and pollution makes climate threats feel unavoidably pervasive (Shao & Yu, 2023).
2. Scientific reports
   Worrying research findings emphasize the severe risks, and this can fuel anticipatory fear (Pihkala, 2020).
3. Personal experience
   Communities that live through fires, droughts, increasing storm frequencies and intensities, or rising sea levels are more likely to feel the immediate psychological impact of climate change (Makeda, 2024).
4. Government inaction
   When governments delay or downplay climate action, it can cause many people to experience frustration, helplessness, and hopelessness (Kankawale & Niedzwiedz, 2023).

Acknowledging these drivers with your clients may be the first step toward building their resilience and transforming their fear into constructive action (Baudon & Jachens, 2021).

5 risk factors

Eco-anxiety is not going to affect everyone equally. In your practice, you may find that your clients experience different intensities and characteristics of eco-anxiety (Jalin et al., 2024).

This will be influenced by personal, social, emotional, and physical factors that can make some people more vulnerable to developing climate-related distress (Jarrett et al., 2024). Understanding these risk factors makes it easier to explain heightened anxiety to clients.

Let’s look at some of these in a little more detail.

1. If your clients have a personal connection to or live in climate-sensitive regions, such as farming areas dependent on rainfall or coastal communities facing overfishing and rising seas, they may feel the threat more directly and personally (Boyd et al., 2024).
2. Being well informed about climate science, or climate literate, can intensify your clients’ eco-anxiety if their knowledge isn’t balanced with tools for resilience and constructive action (Sims et al., 2020).
3. Clients with a history of trauma or mental health challenges may be more prone to experiencing overwhelming climate-related stress (Liu et al., 2025).
4. If your clients are constantly immersed in media coverage of disasters or political debates about climate change, their feelings of helplessness and fear may be magnified (Shao & Yu, 2023).
5. Clients who are socially isolated and do not have adequate supportive communities to validate and share climate concerns with may feel alienated, compounding their distress (Brophy et al., 2022).

5 Psychological Symptoms Associated With Climate Anxiety

Eco-anxiety can have different faces depending on the unique collection of symptoms your clients experience (Hogg et al., 2021).

For some, it may be a low background hum of worry, and for others, it can become a loud and persistent feeling of distress that disrupts their daily life. While the intensity may vary, Hogg et al. (2021) highlight several common categories of psychological symptoms, including:

1. Affective or emotional symptoms such as fear, sadness, or distress about environmental issues
2. Rumination or persistent, repetitive thoughts about ecological crises
3. Behavioral symptoms such as changes in daily habits or avoidance behaviors due to environmental worries
4. Anxiety about what might happen in the future, whether it’s extreme weather events or ecosystem collapse. This anticipatory anxiety may extend beyond your clients’ personal safety to encompass concerns for their children, future generations, and the planet in general
5. Eco-guilt, which is a sense of responsibility your clients may feel regarding their own ecological footprint

Understanding these categories and their associated symptoms can help your clients to accept, acknowledge, and normalize eco-anxiety as a valid emotional response and explore healthier coping strategies (Tingley, 2023).

The Role of Hope in Managing Eco-Anxiety

Historically, hope may have been equated with naïve optimism or wishful thinking, but research is demonstrating that it is much more than this; it is a powerful psychological resource (Murphy, 2023).

Research in positive psychology in particular has found that helping clients to cultivate hope helps them regulate their emotions, encourages them to get and stay motivated, and guides them toward constructive action (Ciarrochi et al., 2015).

When we apply it to eco-anxiety, hope can contribute significantly as a counterweight to despair (Bury et al., 2020). Hope doesn’t reduce the enormity of the crisis, but it can provide the energy and perspective needed to remain engaged (Marlon et al., 2019).

Hope can enable your clients to acknowledge the reality of environmental threats while still believing in the possibility of meaningful change (Betrò, 2024).

In this way, hope may allow your clients to channel their eco-anxiety into action, protecting and restoring the environment. You can help them with this by introducing them to the concept of active hope.

Active hope

First introduced by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone (2012) in their book by the same name, active hope is about acknowledging the reality of the mess the world is in, envisioning the future we wish to create, and taking steps toward it.

Their definition of active hope is proactive and purposeful. To them, “it is something we do rather than something we have” (Macy & Johnstone, 2012, p. 3).

Active hope, according to the authors, is a blend of mindfulness, resilience, and engagement, which will help transform eco-anxiety into purposeful and meaningful action. Rather than being a naive ideal, it is about showing up for the work, even when it seems like agency is limited and the outcome is uncertain.

5 Promising Research-Based Coping Strategies

The causes of eco-anxiety might be unchangeable and possibly uncontrollable, but as we know, it is how we respond to things that creates our experience (Ágoston et al., 2022).

Shifting the response and developing coping skills to manage environmental anxiety can ease distress and build resilience.

Consider using some of the following evidence-based strategies:

1. Build inner resilience through mindfulness and self-care
   Practices such as meditation, compassionate self-reflection, breathwork, mindful movement, and journaling can help clients regulate their emotions and build resilience in the face of uncertainty (Pérez-Aranda et al., 2021).
2. Proactive environmental action
   Taking proactive steps, from reducing their own carbon footprint to supporting sustainability initiatives, can restore your clients’ sense of agency and reduce feelings of distress (Tingley, 2023).
3. Cultivate supportive connections
   Joining supportive environmental groups and community projects can provide clients with validation, perspective, and connection (Turğut & Öztürk, 2024).
4. Connecting with nature
   Regular time in green spaces can support your clients’ wellbeing, reduce stress, and reinforce a personal connection with the environment. The positive effects of nature can help fuel constructive climate engagement (Parreira & Mouro, 2023).
5. Therapeutic interventions
   Evidence-based therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, grief counseling, art-based therapies, and support groups can help clients process difficult emotions, challenge negative thought patterns, and find meaning in their experience of environmental distress (Ikiz & Carlson, 2025).

How Positive Psychology Can Help With Climate Distress

Positive psychology encourages people to draw on their strengths, cultivate gratitude, and identify sources of meaning that can guide healthier action focused on wellbeing and thriving (Seligman, 2010).

It offers an optimistic lens through which to view eco-anxiety by shifting the focus from fear and helplessness to growth, meaning, and resilience (Malboeuf-Hurtubise et al., 2024).

Rather than denying the seriousness of the climate crisis, positive psychology can help your clients find ways to respond more constructively.

Eco-anxiety often arises because of feelings of powerlessness in the face of overwhelming global challenges (Rehling, 2022), such as wicked problems.

Wicked problems are complex social or policy issues that are difficult or impossible to solve because they involve incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often hard to recognize (Rittel & Webber, 1974).

Positive psychology addresses this by creating space for agency. For example, small acts of pro-environmental behavior can restore a sense of control and purpose (Malboeuf-Hurtubise et al., 2024).

Practices such as mindfulness, compassion, and resilience building can provide clients with tools and techniques to regulate their distress, while meaning making will allow them to reframe their anxiety as evidence of their devotion to the planet rather than a weakness (Baudon & Jachens, 2021).

Positive psychology also highlights the role of social connection (Hodges & Gore, 2019). By engaging in eco-groups and communities, clients can move from isolation toward collective empowerment (Baudon & Jachens, 2021). In this way, their climate-related distress can become not only manageable but also an entryway for deeper connection and commitment to building a more sustainable future.

Helpful Resources From PositivePsychology.com

PositivePsychology.com features an extensive collection of tools that can be adapted for eco-anxiety work. The most valuable tools for this context are categorized below.

Additional reading

Our blog is a library of articles on all sorts of topics related to positive psychology. The most pertinent to working with clients with eco-anxiety include:

• 10+ Best Anxiety Tools for Helping Your Clients Cope — This article provides more than 20 helpful anxiety tools you can adapt to help clients cope with their eco-anxiety.
• How to Use Mindfulness Therapy for Anxiety: 15 Exercises — Here you’ll find mindfulness techniques and exercises that can be used inside and outside treatment to help manage anxiety.
• Anxiety Coping Skills for Adults & Students — Learn cognitive, physical, and emotional strategies to support adults and students to cope with anxiety and build resilience.

Masterclasses and training templates

We have a whole collection of products that could be adapted to support you as you navigate this new area of care.

Both the Realizing Resilience Masterclass© and the Meaning & Valued Living Masterclass© provide key strategies for managing environmental anxiety as they focus on building resilience, clarifying values, and fostering meaning, all of which are essential skills for transforming eco-anxiety into constructive coping and purposeful action.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others overcome adversity, this collection contains 17 validated resilience and coping exercises. Use them to help others recover from personal challenges and turn setbacks into opportunities for growth.

A Take-Home Message

Eco-anxiety is a valid response in the face of an extraordinary global challenge. Though it may be overwhelming for your clients, it shows their deep concern for the planet.

By integrating some of the above therapeutic strategies and coping skills, they can develop insights that can transform their distress into active hope, a practice that will ground them in reality and enable them to engage in solutions.

In this way, it is clear that the antidote to eco-anxiety is not denial but connection between ourselves, to communities, and to the Earth.

We hope you found some insight in this article. Don’t forget to download our five positive psychology tools for free.