What is eco-anxiety and how do its symptoms affect us?

Excess anxiety is one of the mental health disorders that most affects the daily well-being of millions of people around the world. This pathology is characterized by a feeling of discomfort, anguish or generalized suffering in the face of the arrival of a real or imagined danger.

Anxiety is also one of the most studied mental health disorders in the field of psychology and for years a wide variety of disorders based on it have been typified, such as phobias or generalized anxiety; all these phenomena damage the quality of life in one way or another.

However, one of the peculiarities of anxiety disorders is their flexibility and ability to take very diverse forms, also depending on the historical moment in which we find ourselves and the social and cultural development of human groups. In this sense, for some decades the appearance has been detected, mainly in Western societies, of a new type of very specific problematic anxiety: eco-anxiety , which is related to uncertainty about the future in relation to biodiversity, life on earth and the possibility of living in uncontaminated spaces.

What is eco-anxiety?

This type of anxiety was identified in the late 1990s, and designates those people who present a constant fear of suffering an environmental cataclysm in the coming years due to human action on the climate and nature.

The last decades have been marked socially and politically by climate change, natural disasters caused by pollution, heat waves, droughts and all kinds of environmental problems that have alerted the lifestyle of people around the world, and that they are even already producing new migratory flows (for example, among those who live in areas of very low altitude and exposed to floods).

Eco-anxiety affects more and more people and in general those most affected are usually young boys and girls who grew up in affluent societies and see how a future of uncertainty, global unrest and environmental changes for the worse awaits them.

What is eco-anxiety

Although it is not technically considered an anxiety disorder in the field of clinical psychology and does not appear in diagnostic manuals, eco-anxiety may be the way in which psychopathologies such as generalized anxiety disorder are expressed, and it generates pernicious effects both in the mental and physical health of the people who suffer from it and must be treated by a qualified psychology professional .

Next we will see in a summarized way the main characteristics of eco-anxiety, as well as its affectation both psychologically and physically in people who suffer from it.

1. Anxiety over uncertainty

Uncertainty about the future is one of the main characteristics of the phenomenon of eco-anxiety. It is a state of discomfort and suffering sustained over time due to the inability to know what an unknown and worrying future will bring us.

Because there are so many reasons to worry about the future today, some people tend to develop symptoms of anxiety and stress due to the number of problems that lie ahead and the uncertainty of the future .

There are many people with eco-anxiety who already experience a very specific psychological affectation due to the symptoms of anxiety and stress generated by concern for the environment and the future of planet earth.

As in most anxiety disorders, eco-anxiety progressively generates discomfort that affects the mental and psychological health of the affected person, if it is not treated in time.

The general feeling of frustration about the future of the planet, anxiety, anguish and discomfort about what is going to happen in the future end up decisively affecting the mental, psychological and affective health of people who suffer from this condition.

2. Physical affectation

Associated with the psychological affectation, we also find a series of physical alterations that are the daily bread of many people with eco-anxiety.

It is evident that psychological saturation also ends up generating intense physical fatigue and discomfort that affect the person's daily life and their normal development in any area of ​​daily life.

3. Media saturation

Discomfort over the environmental and climate crisis is also aggravated daily by excessive exposure to the media around us, where we can read, listen and watch daily depressing news about the different environmental catastrophes that are happening annually in the world.

This saturation of bad news ends up generating great discomfort and contributing to us feeling greater daily eco-anxiety.

4. Lack of resilience

Some people have resilience deficits, which prevents them from adapting correctly to the new environmental situation that we are experiencing all over the world, so it is convenient to work on this skill.

Resilience is the ability to adapt to adversity, trauma or unpleasant situations that occur throughout our lives, and to come out of them stronger and more knowledgeable.

5. Hopelessness

In addition to an uncertainty that generates discomfort and uneasiness, hopelessness is also another characteristic of eco-anxiety, mainly because we consider that the situation is irreversible and that climate change is advancing inexorably without us being able to do anything about it.

This feeling of general hopelessness and frustration can also cause the development of depressive symptoms of all kinds, which in turn can aggravate the mental health of the person who suffers from them.

6. Fear of the changes ahead

It is not necessary to suffer from eco-anxiety to know that in the future the human species will have to make some changes if it wants to ensure its survival as such.

Fears and anguish about the future also focus on the new ways of life that we will have to adopt to survive in the coming years and mainly on the possibility of emigrating .

Explain what it is, emphasizing that it is a form of excessive anxiety caused by uncertainty about what the future will be like, what will be lost in it, and what totally new ways of life we ​​will have to adapt to.