Guthrie, D. (2023).

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Eco-Apocalypse: An Existential

Approach to Accepting Eco-Anxiety. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(1), 210-223.
https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916221093613

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Eco-Apocalypse: An Existential Approach to
Accepting Eco-Anxiety - Devin Guthrie, 2023 (sagepub.com)

This article sets out to address what eco-anxiety is and provide answers to its existence.
A main point is the acceptance that we don’t currently have the infrastructure to deal with eco
anxiety. That we all need to build the psychological infrastructure to deal with our own eco
anxiety. The author is viewing the climate crisis through the eyes of existential psychology and
how to help psychologically.

This article is, however, the first to detail why viewing the climate crisis through the lens
of existential psychology and approaching eco-anxiety with lessons from existentially based
therapies is the best way to help people, individually and collectively, cope with the
psychological stressors associated with the climate crisis. Death anxiety precedes climate
anxiety because with the possible acceptance of the end of the world due to climate related
issues also comes the acceptance that with the world dying so will the individual. In the
framework of terror-management theory, people’s confusing reactions to the climate crisis
become comprehensible. Generally, people tend to deny the validity of any research that
suggests their lives are in danger. The process of avoiding the subject and anxiety surrounding it
is more damaging for humans and we should mourn climate change. When people can process
the emotions of grief and succeed in integrating loss into a coherent system of meaning, they
are the most likely to recover from grief and experience posttraumatic growth, leaving them
more psychologically resilient. We need to go through the process of acceptance which will
bring us to a neutral stance but ultimately reduce anxiety and depression. Together, these ideas
show it is possible to live in a manner one finds personally meaningful even under the threat of
potential extinction. If people can live mindfully in the moment, if they can savor beauty and
connection, if they can love the world even as they leave it, then they have found meaning that
matters even at the edge of eco-apocalypse.

When we think of limitations, the author mentions many different theories to address
eco-anxiety and death anxiety and possible solutions. However they did mention that not all of
these will work for every individual. When recommending that grief counselors and social
workers get educated on these theories and solutions to help people, there could be issues in
many or even all of these solutions not relating with the individual. Which makes this limited to
a subsection of the population who will relate.

Acceptance of death preceding eco-anxiety was a big topic in this article. This provides
more insight to why people have eco- anxiety in the first place, that is below the surface of just
acceptance. This article also provided many psychological theories to help you gain the
psychological strength to have the framework to deal with your own eco-anxiety. It also gave
recommendations to therapists and grief counselors to be trained in these specific techniques
as this is a growing source of anxiety.