“Everyday Climate Champions” Podcast Recap: Episode 17: Raising Children During the Climate Crisis
Written by Keith Nickolaus
Learn more about Climate Reality Bay Area’s podcast, Everyday Climate Champions here.
“This is an existential worldwide problem. We're not going to solve it by ourselves and we need to work together, and…we really can't take care of our emotional well-being by ourselves, either.” — Jennifer Silverstein
Listen to Episode 17: here
Transcript: here
Guest: Jennifer Silverstein, Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Host: Sean Mendelson
Summary:
In this episode, we talked with licensed clinical social worker Jennifer Silverstein about the ways her first-hand experiences coping with climate change-fueled fires have created anxiety for her and her young daughter. With a therapist’s perspective, Jennifer discusses her own experiences with climate anxiety as a parent, her recent research on the topic, and explains some of the steps parents and others can take to deal with the growing problem of climate anxiety impacting families today.
Why This Matters:
As climate-related disasters intensify, they leave stress and trauma in their wake, creating an emerging mental health crisis alongside the climate crisis.
The looming existential threats posed by global warming are creating a worldwide mental health crisis that can include debilitating anxiety for many, especially for young adults worried about the scope of the crisis ahead.
Traditional mental health care systems are overburdened by the growing mental health needs in society, leaving space for opportunities for people to come together and forge new models for collective care and support.
Key Takeaways:
Jennifer’s personal experiences surviving two devastating wildfires in Sonoma County in short succession (the 2017 Tubbs Fire and 2019 Kincade Fire) present a harrowing tale of what it’s like to live through the immediate impacts of severe weather events, while also parenting a young child.
Jennifer’s experiences provide a personal glimpse into the nature and potential scope of the anxiety and mental health effects related to climate stress and fears about future climate change-related events.
Just as Jennifer’s own young daughter struggled emotionally in the aftermath of the wildfires in their hometown, Jennifer discovered the crisis had created a huge surge in demand for mental health support across her community, without enough qualified clinicians to support the children seeking services.
As a parent, Jennifer herself struggled with the contradictions of trying to maintain family readiness and vigilance in case of new wildfires, while also not intensifying her young daughter’s anxiety.
The wildfires altered Jennifer’s own private practice as a therapist. Prior to the fires she had primarily worked with young children suffering from familial traumas. After the Tubbs fire, many well-functioning families were also seeking mental health services due to the wildfires.
The mental health impacts Jennifer saw in her community have been documented on a much larger scale, including a recent study published in The Lancet that surveyed 10,000 young adults in 10 countries and found that 59% reported being very or extremely worried about climate change, and 84% were at least moderately worried.
Very concerning was another finding in The Lancet study, indicating that 45% of the young people surveyed were experiencing stress levels impeding their ability to function day-to-day.
Seeing her own need for greater support, Jennifer became a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and went on to make a stronger personal commitment to supporting others.
Jennifer characterized the climate crisis as an existential and collective crisis highlighting the limits of ‘individualism’ and the need to build more relational communities for mutual support, prompting people to connect via Climate Cafes and similar climate-focused social networks.
Jennifer also discussed findings of a literature review she co-authored on climate change and parental mental health that highlighted stresses associated with cognitive dissonance and moral injury. A new field, sometimes called green parenting, is devoted to exploring conflicts like these.
Parents with young children may experience cognitive dissonance (trying to hold two conflicting realities or values at once). An example is a parent feeling compelled to prepare for accelerating climate threats while worrying this is only going to increase anxiety in their children.
Parents may also experience moral injury from feeling their actions are not aligned with their values, such as witnessing government and industry behave in ways that are not aligned with our values and the well-being of the world. In Jenny’s experience, moral injury took the form of a conflict between wanting to do everything possible to ensure a healthy future for her daughter while struggling to live into those values among the demands and constraints of day-to-day life as a busy working parent.
The International Transformational Resilience Coalition also advocates for more collective ways of supporting one another as we tackle and cope with the climate crisis. An example is “community resilience hubs”.
How to Take Action:
Learn more about climate anxiety in children and young people. To start, check out the study by Caroline Hickman published in The Lancet, referenced in this episode, and watch a brief video about climate anxiety in families from NBC News.
Check out Episode 8 of Everyday Climate Champions for more information about how to have climate conversations with kids and adults.
Connect with a Climate Cafe where you live or online, or look into similar groups, such as Collapse Club and Climate Awakening.
Check out the list of related websites below to learn about the International Transformational Resilience Coalition and other groups and resources related to climate anxiety.
Related Websites:
Jennifer Silverstein’s website: www.jennisilverstein.com
Climate Psychology Alliance North America’s Climate Aware Therapist Directory
Caroline Hickman’s study we referenced: Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey
Brief video on climate anxiety in families from NBC News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnu1xU9Qpzw
Climate Mental Health Network’s parent and caregiver resources
Good Grief Network: another excellent resource for parents
International Transformational Resilience Coalition: builds community-level capacity for mental wellness during the long climate emergency
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Get in touch: crba.eccpodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.climaterealitybayarea.org/eccpodcast
The Climate Reality Project Bay Area Chapter catalyzes local solutions to the climate crisis in every corner of the San Francisco Bay Area. We work together to spark urgent action and rapid adoption of solutions to the climate crisis. As Climate Reality founder and Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore says, “Solving the climate crisis is within our grasp, but we need people like you to stand up and act.”
To learn more, visit: www.ClimateRealityBayArea.org
Podcast Production Team: Executive Producer/Editor: Dalya Massachi; Sound Designers/Engineer: Martin Sanchez; Co-Hosts/Researchers: Ellisa Feinstein, Isabella Genereaux, Sean Mendelson, Hasini Parepalli, Logo Designer: Gabriela Vargas
Keywords: #eco-anxiety,#climateanxiety,#eco-distress, #climatedistress, #childhoodmentalhealth,#parentmentalheath;#climatecrisis,#climateaction,#climatediscussions.#climatejustice
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