I’m constantly thinking about the role of climate…

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It’s been slightly longer than usual since my last post here, which pretty much fully is due to having been deeply entrenched in finalizing the book manuscript for our upcoming book, which is scheduled for release in April 2027, on Routledge! I’ll keep you updated as we have more specific info about the release.

It’s time consuming to be in the final stages of finishing a book, but above all it consumes your entire cognitive and emotional space, making it hard to think, talk or write about anything else. And after having sent the manuscript off you’re left with a weird combination of tiredness and restlessness.

We wrote our last book back in 2019, as the Fridays for Future movement really was taking off and before we knew how the world would be hit and the environmental movement deeply affected by the covid pandemic. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, before Trump was reelected, before ChatGPT and other LLM:s became part of many people’s daily lives and work. When Twitter was still Twitter, and not a personal toy for a billionaire and his fascist ideas.

It’s always easy to romanticize past times, but it truly feels like it back then was a simpler terrain to navigate the climate psychology field through. Part of writing this new book has involved the quite difficult endeavor to make some sense of the world in its current state, and identify what change is needed; what we as a collective of people need to take on, and what we as a collective of people need to not succumb in the process.

A shift from pro-environmental behaviors to anti-fascism

Another part of writing a new book is that it both allows and forces you to update your own teachings. As the world is changing, and your work revolves around dealing with the climate crisis, the focus of and content in your work needs to be kept updated. Back in 2019, much of the existing climate psychology research focused on individual pro-environmental behaviors, focusing on how to encourage people to save electricity and water in their households, or investigating the effects on throwing trash in the bin depending on the bin’s proximity. Isolated, low-effort, low-impact behaviors. Back then, the biggest message we at Climate Psyched wanted to focus on was to encourage people to move from acting as isolated individuals to collective citizens.

It’s still an important core message, but I believe that, with the world looking like it does in 2026, a more explicit focus on how the climate crisis is intertwined with other ongoing crises, and not the least with democracy issues, is essential. We know that climate obstructive actors, especially those that are organized and strategic, show a large overlap with authoritarian and anti-democratic values. Protecting democracy, and our possibilities of taking civil action within the democratic space, is essential also to tackle the climate crisis.

I also believe that it’s valuable to keep revising the diagnosis of the state of the world, in order to adjust the medicine and dosage of what both the planet and we, as sustainers of the Earth, need in order to be as healthy and capable as possible. I also think that it’s valuable to keep a long enough historic perspective, to be able to recognize and call out obstructive tactics as they get repackaged and reused. So that we - when OpenAI CEO and tech bro, Sam Altman says that people should worry more about their almond consumption than AI:s water consumption - can identify this as the same rhetoric that BP used when they popularized the carbon calculator and encouraged people to “do your part” by cleaning out their cars to reduce emissions. The world is changing, but the strategies of those obstructing a just, healthy planet, often remain the same. I believe that it’s the job of climate psychology to help more people identify and call these out.

The split focus on mitigation, adaptation and resilience

Parallel to protecting democracy and calling out obstruction, we need to nurture that which makes us and our climate engagement last. Keeping a split focus on reducing the harm of the ongoing crises, adapting to their impacts, and strengthening our collective capacity to both deal with acute adversities and take care of each other. It’s a big task to take on! But it’s a task that can be practiced in smaller, daily steps. And by not just protecting us from the threats, but by building something else.

The other day I visited a neighbor at our colony garden in central Malmö (which by the way was featured in the New York Times last year). She’s been growing an amazing variety of tomatoes, and kept some of their seeds to, over the years, build a whole tomato seed catalogue. She invited me over to look at what she had collected - which ended with me getting seeds to grow everything from dwarf tomatoes to pasta tomatoes to winter tomatoes, in red, orange, purple and yellow. These are seeds that would cost a lot of money, should I had bought them in the store. Seeds that she’s spent a good amount of time collecting and organizing with such care through several seasons. But when I asked her what she wanted for them, she said « Nothing, just grow them and be happy ». In this age of late stage capitalism, where everything is a potential commodity, it felt so radical to be gifted something from someone I barely know, and knowing that the best repayment I can offer is to continue planting the seeds, growing, learning and at a later point sharing my knowledge and my own seeds with someone else. Not to sound dramatic, but these acts of generosity feels like acts of resistance in a time where strong forces are working intensively to erode people’s sense of community, belonging and trust in each other. In addition to bring my family delicious tomatoes next season, her gift was a small reminder that we, as humans, always have the possibility of choosing to believe that another world is possible, and that we, even in the midst of climate-breakdown-declining-democracy-with-crazy-authoritarian-leaders-and-increased-warfare have the freedom to be kind and generous to one another.

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Now that the book is (almost) finished, I look forward to getting more cognitive space back, to keep pouring my words into these posts and continue the work of bringing climate psychological insights to the ongoing collective climate work. See you next time!

Thank you so much for reading, it’s the best motivation to keep writing these posts. As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you next time!

We have an upcoming election in Sweden on the 13t…

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I’m on the train to Stockholm, to participate in what’s anticipated to be the biggest climate march ever in Sweden. For almost a year, Mothers’ Rebellion, Fathers’ Rebellion, Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and Researchers’ Desk have been planning and organizing a massive demonstration that unites large parts of the Swedish climate movement, civic actors and citizens to show politicians, media and, well, everyone, that we are a majority wh cares about the climate crisis and who wants better, bolder, climate politics. This is, amongst many other things, an effort to make the silent majority more vocal and visible. Plus, there will be music, artists, child friendly activities, speeches and a 24 hour long manifestation before the actual march.

The timing of the march is well thought out: in three weeks we have a national, regional and local election. And just the other day, a new numbers showed that Sweden’s emissions increased in the first quarter of 2026. Our current government, which is led with the support of a far right party founded by nazis (who are open and explicit in their climate obstructive efforts), has continuously been criticized for their insufficient and sometimes obstructive climate politics. Politics matters, and who we vote for matters.

The Big Climate Demonstration

The climate march - which is named The Big Climate Demonstration (Den Stora Klimatdemonstrationen) - is partly organized by Researchers’ Desk, who describe themselves as a “non-profit organisation and platform for dialogue between researchers and civil society, educators and decision-makers regarding the ongoing climate and biodiversity crisis”. They started in response to the call by made by the young people of the world who said "listen to the scientists." They are often present in different climate actions. And their existence and active participation highlights the question of what researchers role should be in an acute climate crisis. In this new narrative review, a research group explore this topic, and concludes that “Scientists, as both knowledge producers and trusted societal actors, can play a crucial role in addressing it beyond traditional research”. And even though the effects of scientists engaging in activism seems to be highly context-dependent and mixed, collective action can help bring scientists a renewed purpose and empowerment, along with developing new important skills such as public communication, media engagement and organizational skills, all of which are important in communicating important research to the wider public.

And, as new research once again shows: activism works. And it works in multiple ways. Which means that activism too needs a multitude of different types of actions and methods. One way that activism works is that it helps shape social norms and attitudes around various issues. But social influence isn’t black and white, it’s dependent on a number of factors. This new paper outlines a framework that can be used to better understand, but also design interventions and actions to better reach the a certain type of social influence.

A new framework to understand social influence

The framework, as shown in the picture below, consists of four interacting dimensions that all interplay.
Who is the messenger?
Who is the audience?
What is the mode of influence?
What is the behavioral domain targeted?

Rather than giving one fixed answer, the framework invites us to organize and design different actions and communication efforts differently depending on the answer to these four questions.

As for The Big Climate Demonstration, the messenger is a broad union of civic actors, regular citizens and large parts of the climate movement, i.e. the heterogenous majority that wants more climate action. The audience is the politicians, but also the media as well as the general population. Showing that this is an issue that has large support across a wide variety of people and actors. It intentionally wants to keep the message quite general and unifying. “United for the climate” is the overall message. Messages that resonate widely with shared values can help motivate action through nurturing a sense of collective efficacy. Now, this doesn’t mean that large, general messages on their own are sufficient - one criticism that these larger more general movements, for example Fridays for future, have met in recent years is that they try to be too general, too uniting, too apolitical. When it comes down to it after all, even if people agree that bolder climate politics is needed, they may not agree on what those political decisions and policies actually should be. Societal transformation requires political decisions, and those decisions are inherently political and will never be agreed on by everyone.

But bringing about societal change isn’t a question of finding the one perfect solution, but rather about making a myriad of actors take action in a myriad of ways, collaborating to shift things forward in a somewhat common direction.

And not to forget: giving people the opportunity of being part of the biggest climate gathering a country has ever had, at a pivotal time in history, creating the embodied experience of feeling that we are many can be the buffer against hopelessness that helps bring on a new wave of climate engagement amongst the wider public.

This will be an amazing weekend.

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Thank you so much for reading, it’s the best motivation to keep writing these posts. As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you next time!

It’s been a minute since my last text here, as I …

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I’m writing these words from the train, just having left Sweden for a couple of weeks of train travels across Europe. Of logging out and trying to do what’s been tricky in the past couple of months, due to having had too much going on: relaxing and gathering my thoughts. Sleeping and recovering to, hopefully, by the end of my vacation, be ready to once again keep working intensely for this planet.

In the past few years I’ve found it quite hard to navigate the surrounding world. I know a lot of it has to do with the political wave of repression, extreme right values and climate obstruction sweeping over my own country, Sweden. Things I used to be proud of, like our strong welfare system, are being dismantled by political decisions. Democratic values I thought were well established in our institutions are suddenly not respected by leading politicians. And climate action, where we were once a leader, is obstructed by the government, making us lag more and more behind other countries.
It’s disorienting, to say the least. But I know all of this can change.

Lately, one of the most vivid feelings I’ve been holding is love for this world.
I truly think the world is magnificent. In spite of all the shit that keeps happening all over the planet, I can’t shake the feeling of immense love for life.

Feeling love and care in the midst of planetary destruction isn’t always the easiest. In fact, joyous emotions can often trigger guilt. I encounter this regularly in my climate psychology work: the emotional dilemma that love, joy, relaxation and light-heartedness evokes. As if the physical sensation of the calm relaxation, or sparkling butterflies, that love can excite, in itself would be a sign that you’re not taking the crises seriously.

But nothing could be more wrong.

Nurturing our capacity of being in contact with our love and care for each other and the planet can both strengthen our motivation to keep fighting, and offer well-needed recovery whilst nurturing our resilience. I wrote about the human capacity of feeling several things at once a few years back, in a post called Prepare for crisis, resist destruction, enjoy this world. I still find this to be true, and those three things important to engage in simultaneously. And sometimes changeably. It is okay to not always be in contact with your heavy emotions. It is okay to not always think about the suffering of the world. It is okay to sometimes let go, and indulge yourself in the immersive experience of love.

One of my favorite songs by Sade, It’s only love that gets you through, (although it’s not about climate) describes the emotional toll that living through the polycrisis takes on us. That suffering isn’t the same as breaking, and that love, in fact, is what helps get us through.

Because sometimes, in the midst of climate obstruction, democratic demise and overwhelming crisis, we forget that an important source of motivation to keep working, keep fighting, keep practicing our courage in the strive for a safe, just, sustainable planet can be found in the deep, unconditional love of life. That it is in this love we can find the reminders of what we aim to protect. That by looking our loved ones in the eye, by looking at the calming waves of the sea and the insects pollinating our plants, by gazing up on the glorious branches of hundred year old trees, we can remember that this world is worth fighting for.

And that it’s by observing the general acts of kindness, of collaboration, of people going out of their way to bring about change - of activists choosing to spend their time taking brave action, of researchers continuously exploring these issues, of people all across the globe taking thousands of steps - that we are reminded that we are far from alone. That we are, in fact, a collective filled with love and care for each other and the planet. Preparing for crisis, resisting destruction, enjoying this world.

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Thank you so much for reading, it’s the best motivation to keep writing these posts. As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you next time!

How are you doing? How is any of us doing? I myse…

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This past weekend I attended the Swedish Psychological Association’s congress. It takes place once every three years and is the highest deciding organ of our national union. I was there on behalf of the national organization Psychologists for Sustainable Development, of which I’m chairwoman. The organization is part of the psychological association, and aims at developing and strengthening psychology and psychologists’ role in climate and sustainability work, nurture dialogue and community, as well as lobby for climate science, psychological knowledge and by that impact societal change.

There were definitely positive aspects of the congress, and some progress that was made on e.g. including the Agenda 30 goals into the strategic document that guides the direction for the coming three years. But overall, the congress made it clear that it’s far from established how climate should be integrated into the core work of both unions in general, and psychological unions.

What does the union have to do with climate?

Unions have historically been used to deal with large, societal issues and to tackle complex challenges. Having an already built up infrastructure of organized people they have a great possibility of integrating climate work on a local, regional, national and even international level. The climate crisis poses a risk to the very foundation our human societies are built on, and intensified climate impacts will of course heavily affect working conditions for an increasing amount of people. Central unions are powerful political actors that can help affect what issues are placed on the political agenda, as well as consciously pushing for political change.

Unionized workers are spread out over multiple work places, which means that they have the possibility of tackling different aspects of climate related challenges - if they are supported and equipped to do so. The climate crisis affects all sectors of society, everyone has a role to play and basically everyone’s competence is valuable and should be utilized in the climate work.

And I mean, perhaps the most obvious one: there will be no safe jobs on an inhabitable planet.

What does a psychological union have to do with climate?

The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies the climate crisis as the primary threat against human health, especially for already vulnerable groups. Increased climate impacts will pose new challenges for health workers, including increased mental illness. The health sector is also a large producer of greenhouse gas emissions. Psychologists working in the educational sector regularly meet teachers and students who encounter and are affected by the existential aspects of the climate crisis. Psychologists working in the organizational sector regularly work with companies and leaders who encounter climate related challenges, who may be in charge of their companies sustainability work, to mention a few examples. What they all have in common is that the challenges the climate crisis pose will affect the core work and working conditions of psychologists. Psychologists need to be prepared for this, and our unions could and should play a central role in ensuring that.

The American Psychological Association, who for several years have been active in running a systematic climate work, and who have a task force on climate change, highlights the importance of engaging psychologists in climate work. In their strategic plan they aim at

• Utilize psychology to make a positive impact on critical societal issues.

• Prepare the discipline and profession of psychology for the future.

• Elevate the public’s understanding of, regard for, and use of psychology.

This cearly shows the potential of utilizing psychologists’ competence as well as the necessity to prepare the discipline for what is not a question of opinions, but a current state of reality.

The Swedish Psychological Association are, however, still not ready to make a commitment to coordinate a more systematic work on climate, sustainability and their impact on mental health. Although everyone agrees that this is an important, pressing issue, the lack of actual commitment to action taking is disappointing. One argument we’ve been hearing is that it’s better to work at a transunion level, to make a bigger impact. Another that climate work is better done somewhere else, implicating that it’s a question of certain opinions or interests, rather than an issue that is absolutely central to how people’s health and mental health will be ensured, and that psychologists have decent conditions to work as the climate crisis progresses. Not to mention the moral and societal responsibility a highly educated work force can and should take.

And here is where I think it becomes even more apparent why climate is an issue for unions, and for psychologists.

It matters that unions - who are powerful actors that organize thousands of people - take a clear stance. That they dare to be uncomfortable in a time where a continued business as usual equals disaster. It matters for the sense of not being alone. It matters to resist the obstructing forces who consciously try to push the climate agenda off the table, who politicize the collective climate research whilst claiming that the only allowed climate action is that which doesn’t challenge the status quo. It matters that every work force on the planet become better equipped at tackling the consequences of the climate crisis. And that we learn how to organize in order to minimize those consequences. This is not a work that sufficiently can be done somewhere else, by someone else, but it is a work that ultimately needs to be done everywhere.

I left the congress feeling disheartened. It is so very late, and yet the question of making a commitment to take systematic action was too much to ask. But, as we know from history, from experience and from much research on social movements, setbacks doesn’t mean we’re losing, it doesn’t mean that it’s hopeless. Setbacks are steps along the way to drive change. Speaking up and speaking out, asking for action, asking for courage, standing one’s ground still matters.

As we burn - a documentary about Fridays for Future

Last night I was in Gothenburg, attending a screening and participating in a panel talk about the new documentary Strejkarna (English name: As we burn), organized by Doc Lounge. Along side me in the panel were three of the activists who were at the very core group when Fridays for Future started out in 2018: Andreas, Greta and Anton, as well as the film’s producer Elin and director Helena Molin. The documentary shows the previously untold story of the collective that worked intensely to grow a global movement. It shows the courage and sharpness of this group of teenagers who for years carried much of the responsibility that should’ve been carried by the adult world. And it shows the monumental betrayal by adults and people in power as they failed to convert their verbal support for the activists into actual political change.

It was a lovely talk, with so much wisdom coming from both the activists and the film’s producer and director. I encourage everyone to watch it if you have the opportunity!

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Thank you so much for reading, it’s the best motivation to keep writing these posts. As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you next time!

It’s that time of year where things seem to be mo…

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I live in an apartment on the third floor, in central Malmö in southern Sweden. Our co-op building has a smallish garden where 5-6 households for the past few years have been growing plants together. We grow basic stuff like tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini and beans. It’s not much, but it has for me been a gateway in to understanding - not just in theoretical, abstract terms - but in a very concrete way, that our food comes from the soil, and that soil is the most essential part of producing food. That without a healthy soil, nothing can grow. And without plants that grow, we will have nothing to feed us. That technological fixes and lab produced meat will never be able to replace fertile soil.

Feeding the world is essential, and the question of food security is underreported, which at least in many industrialized countries partly has to do with food production having become distant and even abstract to most people. Food is something you get at the store, not from the soil. But as the climate and biodiversity crises progress, the question of how we can keep feeding the world will inevitably become more and more present.

Food production is a question of equality and efficiency

Food security is often described as resting on three pillars: a sufficient and reliable supply of food, access to that food, and the ability to obtain nutrition from the food. As with much else, food security is a question of equality. Minority groups are suffering from lack of healthy food to a larger extent. In the US, around 10% suffer from food insecurity, but among hispanics that number is twice as high. As agriculture is the planet’s largest land user, the largest consumer of water and the primary driver of deforestation and species extinction, it is essential that food is produced in a way that actually goes to feeding the whole planet.

However, a new study, from Project Drawdown researcher Paul West and his colleagues states that only half of the calories produced on cropland are available as food for human consumption. Which means that a lot of the stuff we grow, use land and water for, that produces emissions, doesn’t go towards actually feeding people. While the total calorie production increased 23.9% between 2010 and 2020, the amount of available calories per person only increased by 9%. Having only 50% of the calories produced actually feeding people is a very inefficient way of producing food. And not only inefficient, it’s bad news for food security and resilience.

The study by West and colleagues shows that there are large differences between countries: while people in India, in 2020, ate about 79% of crop calories, the number in Brazil was a mere 24%, and in the US as low as 17%. The study authors write that this largely is driven by the concentration of livestock animal feed and bioethanol in the US and Brazil, whereas a larger share of crop feed in India goes to dairy production, and dairy production converts feed to food more efficiently than beef does. This confirms what has been commonly known for a long time: beef is an inefficient food, it takes a lot of energy to produce, requires 36.0% of all feed calories, but only produces 9.1% of animal source calories. Many many calories get lost along the way. And that is without taking into account the methane emissions cattle produce, or the amount of land they require for grazing. If people in the US and Brazil were to substitute their beef consumption with vegetarian options, or even chicken, it would make a big difference for both the environment and climate. West and his colleagues write that if beef consumption in the 48 countries included in the study analysis was reduced to the amount that’s defines in the EAT-Lancet healthy reference diet, it would free up enough calories to support 1.23 billion people each year. That is a lot of people that could be fed, just by changing peoples food choices.

This is also why targeting food consumption is and important point of focus for climate psychology: it matters and it has the potential of leading to large impacts.

However: just focusing on food consumption will not automatically lead to better or more food system.

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Moving beyond just food choices: intertwined crises require intertwined solutions

From a behavioral perspective, it’s easier to target consumption behaviors: everyone eats food everyday, the difference between eating beef and veg is very concrete, pretty much everyone has a relationship to buying food in the grocery shop as well as at cafés and restaurants.

The food and fertilizer industry causes 34 % of global climate emissions, which means that there’s a great mitigation potential in transforming the food system, not just by changing consumption habits but also by changing the way we produce crops. But it’s trickier to make the whole food system visible for people. Fewer have a relationship to growing food than eating food. One important aspect of raising the importance of sustainable food production is to get more people to start growing food, for example by promoting community gardens. Community gardens are not just good for growing food, they have also been shown to be able to reduce loneliness, increase multicultural socializing and physical activity and increase the values ​​of houses and apartments nearby. It’s an activity that combines several dimensions of sustainability: promoting community resilience, emergency preparedness, social bonds and a strengthened relationship to the soil.

In Sweden, the organization Reformaten, together with Mothers’ Rebellion, have launched the campaign “Matupproret” (translated to food rebellion) with the aim of mobilizing support for policy and decisions aimed at transforming the food system to be truly sustainable: phasing out emissions, feeding the soil, reducing pollution - and instead nurturing a food system that sequesters coal, provides nutritious food to everyone and offers better food security. They write that “Everything is on our plates: Climate. Health. Justice. The future. And emergency prepardness.”

I think the campaign is a good example of how the intertwined problems of greenhouse gas emissions, food security, malnutrition and rising costs, can be tackled by the intertwined solution of transforming the food system. That we need to move beyond just looking at the food choices people make as consumers, to looking at the whole food system, but also clarify how we as individuals can play an active part in transforming the system.

Matupproret wants to shift from an individual to a structural perspective, and support everyone who drives change towards sustainable food systems, by collecting ideas for activities, actions and policy. The timing of the campaign is no coincidence, since there’s an upcoming election in Sweden this September. Until then they will keep presenting concrete policy action on local, regional and national levels, in addition to examine what the political parties think of these suggestions, thus giving voters a clear picture of which politicians are willing to take responsibility of working towards and ensuring safe and sustainable food systems that produce healthy and nutritious food that sufficiently will feed everyone.

I’m curious to learn whether there are similar campaigns or initiative across the globe?

Thank you so much for reading, it’s the best motivation to keep writing these posts. As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you next time!

Last year the Swedish government announced that t…

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Spring has started to arrive in southern Sweden. Over the weekend the sun came out, the temperature started to rise and the air smelt of newly awakened soil. The days are getting longer and longer. Walking and biking across Malmö you could see people bringing out chairs on the sidewalks, their coffee mugs in hand, soaking up the sun, wearing big smiles.

Living in a country that (at least still) has four fairly defined seasons, moving into the lighter season is such a reminder of life. As the snow has melted away, sprouting flowers and plants are peeking up everywhere. They’ve been hibernating beneath the white sheet of snow, slowly growing, getting ready to show themselves to us as nature starts to wake up. It feels like a return of life, movement and joy. Going out into the first trembling days of spring, feeling the sun on your face perhaps for the first time in five months, lifting your chin up towards the sky; it’s almost a cultural ritual for us who live in the Nordics.

It also serves as a reminder that weather directly affects us. And whilst climate isn’t the same as weather, one of the most profound effects of climate change is on weather patterns. There’s no escaping weather, and no escaping that weather is related to our well-being.

How weather affects our well-being

Through much environmental psychology research it’s well established that people are affected by their natural environments. Weather conditions are an important component of this, and include dimensions like light, temperature, wind, humidity, air quality and extreme weather events. How these dimensions relate, directly and indirectly to well-being is explored in a review published last year in Frontiers. They explore various theories of how weather related to people’s well-being: from Lyubomirsky’s happiness formula (i.e. that a person’s well-being is affected by genetic factors to 50%, by individual behavior to 40% and by environmental factors to 10%), to evolutionary psychology theories suggesting the inherent preference for non-threatening environmental factors, as these through human history have been associated with greater survival chances. If our ancestors were happy during sunny, calm days, why shouldn’t we be?

But looking at more current, empirical research, it becomes clear that it’s a bit more complex than sunny days equalling happy people, and gloomy weather equalling gloomy mood.

Light can often act as a mood regulator, with studies showing how people report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction on sunny days compared to rainy days. But sunlight isn’t all joyous, as other studies have shown how sunshine can increase both positive and negative emotions. A climate related dimension of how sunshine and heat is perceived are so called affective dilemmas that Mosquera and Jylhä write about in their paper on norms around climate emotions. Warm and sunny days are usually associated with joy and happiness, and can physiologically feel pleasant. But as the climate crisis intensifies, sun and heat can also increasingly be associated with planetary destruction, causing the affective dilemma of whether it’s okey to feel happy about the sun, or whether the sun merely should act as a reminder of the climate crisis. In my clinical work, this often comes up: sunny weather being a trigger of climate anxiety, and cloudy, cooler days a comforter that perhaps things aren’t as bad as you thought.

Is it the sun itself or what the sun enables?

Being positively affected by sunny, clear days, can also have to do with the fact that sunny days allows for more outdoor activities, encouraging both physical activity and offer possibilities of meeting other people outside. Two things that are known for their positive benefits on well-being. Being outside and getting light exposure can also have additional benefits like increased vitamin D and beneficial production of other neurochemicals such as melatonin and serotonin, that play a part in one’s overall health.

Also affecting people’s tendency to go and stay outside is the surrounding air quality. Poor air quality is a substantial problem in parts of the world. And there’s much evidence that it has a direct impact on people’s mental health and happiness. Higher levels of pollutants are associated with decreased levels of happiness. But also levels of carbon dioxide itself can, according to new research, become so high in the next half-century that it might make the atmosphere we breathe dangerous for people’s health.

Extreme weather doesn’t make us happy

With the climate crisis, the frequency and length of extreme heat is increasing. In light of that (no pun intended) it’s worth noting that there seems to be an inverted U-shaped relationship between temperature and happiness. Temperatures that exceed 21°C (70°F) are associated with reduced positive emotions and increased negative emotions, as well as more tiredness, especially when humidity is high. In Sweden have a word called lagom, which translates to “just about right”. As for temperature and well-being, lagom, seems to be best. As extreme heat is becoming more common, there’s much reason to fear that a scorching hot sun will bring out more negative than positive emotions. In fact, getting people to more clearly associate extreme heat with danger can be life-saving and is a reason why media shouldn’t visualize heat-waves with happy beachgoers, as I’ve written about before.

So called extreme weather events (EWE), like heatwaves, hurricanes and floods, are quite unsurprisingly influencing people’s overall well-being. Having been exposed to the direct dangers of an EWE is associated to increased levels of depression and anxiety. In their review of how weather affects well-being, Zhang and Li write that climate events play an important role in shaping long-term psychological well-being, through both past experiences of EWEs and expectations about future climate related impacts. Being exposed to extreme weather is distressing, while it’s happening, but also because people need to deal with lasting damages from the EWE.

I’m sure we’ll get back to the topic of how communities can nurture a stronger resilience to help their communities prepare for and deal with the direct effects of extreme weather (in our upcoming book, we explore this topic more in depth). In the meantime we can conclude that weather affects us. Weather is an inevitable part of living on this planet, and as such it is both at the heart of certain cultural rituals, sparking conversations, affecting mood and sometime - in it’s extreme forms - posing direct danger.

As for now, I will go out into the fresh spring air, lift my chin up towards the sun, soak in the feeling of awakening. Of having made it through yet another dark season. And be reminded of how we are inevitably bound to nature. That we, in fact, are nature.

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Thank you so much for reading, it’s the best motivation to keep writing these posts. As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you next time!

The other day I saw a post in my Bluesky feed, by…

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It’s been a busy start to the year. For the world (not the least), but also for myself and my colleagues as we just finished the first draft of our upcoming book on climate psychology. It’s been hard to write. Not just because it’s hard to write a book, and perhaps even harder to write a book grounded in updated research. But most of all it’s been hard to write something that aims at help explaining some of the things that are going on in the world at the same time as the world seems to incomprehensible, and in many respects just plain bat shit crazy.

The longer I’ve worked with climate psychology, the more research I read, people I meet in my work, the more we collectively watch the climate crisis unfold, the more apparent it becomes that the climate crisis is deeply intertwined with the rise of authoritarianism and fascism, weakening of democracy, rising inequality and intensified geopolitical conflicts. I believe the field of climate psychology needs to acknowledge this, or else we will be emphasizing behavioral and emotional aspects that won’t target the main drivers of the ongoing crises. Navigating the trenches of an unfinished book manuscript at the beginning of this already crazy year, surrendering to that insight makes it clearer that when the problems are intertwined, the solutions too can, and should, be intertwined. Which means that what is helpful to help mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis, is equally helpful to strengthen democracy and equality.

I was reminded of that in this text by Emily Atkins at Heated, on how to keep finding meaningfulness in the climate work in the US whilst state funded violence is roaming the streets. She writes:

The climate chaos we’re experiencing now, and what we will continue to experience, is a direct, conscious choice by the state to allow certain people to die. It kills through heatwaves, asthma, hunger, and displacement instead of bullets and batons, but the logic behind both is identical: certain people, mostly brown, can be sacrificed.

I always need to remind myself that these are not two separate emergencies competing for attention, but one story unfolding on different timelines. That helps reignite the fire to continue.

The climate crises is not a coincidence. We didn’t just naturally happen to end up in this state of deep global inequality, where the wealthiest 1% emits twice as much as the poorest 50%, where the financial and political power belongs to a few, while climate impacts affect many. Just as we as humans are connected to one another, so are the consequences of how our societies, economies and technologies are organized.

Understanding that the climate crisis isn’t a coincidence, or an inevitable consequence of a short-sighted human nature (which it’s not), also makes it clear why climate psychology is an important field of knowledge and practical tools in the fight to resist and counter the world’s ongoing crises. But it also uncovers how climate psychology, in order to be helpful, needs to refrain from an isolated, individualized perspective that primarily focuses on incremental solutions, consumer behaviors and how to get people to lower their individual carbon footprint. Intertwined crises requires intertwined solutions. Human behavior, our choices and actions, lie at the heart of bringing those solutions forward.

Mobilizing social movements that take to the streets to voice their protest against authoritarian and repressive leaders, as is currently the case in e.g. the US and Iran, is definitely examples of how collective efforts simultaneously aim at strengthening democratic rights, nurture social cohesion and learning skills of cooperation that are much needed in times of crises.

A quite different example of intertwined solutions is building a large communal garden combined with a public park in a neighborhood. From a climate perspective, such a space can contribute to local food production and preparedness for food scarcity, reduce urban heat through vegetation, absorb rainwater during heavy rainfall, and capture carbon. But it also makes low-carbon lifestyles easier by encouraging local outdoor activities. In addition it can have important social and psychological effects: having access of natural spaces affects the sense of community belonging, which in turn is associated with improvements in depressive symptoms, negative mental health and psychological distress, indicating that natural spaces have an indirect positive effect on well-being. There are, of course, numerous other examples like this, where we can bring multiple perspectives together to target several problems at once.

From an emotional perspective the shift towards intertwined solutions can also feel relieving: instead of trying to individually tackle a hundred different balls being thrown at you at once, you can focus on collectively sewing a net that harness many of the balls at once. It also means seeing that people who are joining different groups and movements, partaking in different actions for different causes, can still be part of contributing to a broader collective movement that aims at strengthening democracy, equality and safety. Not everyone needs to to the same thing in the same group to still move things forward in the same broad direction. We can all contribute to sewing our collective safety net.

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Thank you so much for reading, it’s the best motivation to keep writing these posts. As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you next time!

It’s a new year, but the same ol’ crazy world and…

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A couple of weeks ago the national organization that I’m chairing, Psychologists for Sustainable Development, organized a conference on climate psychology in Stockholm, with the addition of six digital hubs from various parts of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, who also participated in the conference. We’d invited several amazing researchers to talk about important aspects of how to facilitate collective, impactful climate action, and how to best cope with the emotional and existential toll of living in uncertain times with global ongoing crises. It turned into an amazing day, full of inspiration, care and togetherness.

One of the researchers we’d invited was Britta Eklöf, who soon will present her PhD dissertation in environmental psychology.

I was extra happy to have her present her research at the conference, since one of the studies she’s done is on the five week intervention that my colleagues and I developed and carried out in our project Terra-Pi. In the project we worked with supporting young people in their difficult climate emotions. The study was recently published, so I wanted to dedicate today’s post into offering some important insights from the study, along with some encouragement that it matters how adults support young people.

The intervention and interviews

Developed as a sort of educative support group, the intervention, called “The Climate Emotion School”, consisted of five workshops, all lasting between 60 to 90 minutes. The aim of the workshops were to help the participants develop their emotion-focused coping strategies, explore both individual and (more emphasized) collective problem-focused coping, nurture social support and offer permission to help participants prioritize self-care and taking breaks from their climate engagement. The group setting encouraged the participants to share their own and listen to others’ emotional experiences, their thoughts and feelings about the climate crisis, as well as increase and explore various ways of taking collective action.

Out of the 60 people who, over a period of 1,5 years, attended one of the offered groups, 10 participated in semi-structured interviews for the research study. The participants ranged from 18 to 29 years (mean age: 22), where 8 identified as female and 2 as male. In addition to interviewing participants four of us who had led the groups were also interviewed.

See below for an overview of the themes of the different workshops in the intervention:

The first part of the interviews explored participants’ climate emotions prior to the program, followed by an exploration of what participants perceived as helpful in the program. The last part of the interviews focused on which parts were perceived as less helpful, or missing.

Important insights

Through thematic analysis of the interviews, six important themes emerged. I’ll go through some of the key findings (along with a few of my own reflections):

1. Individual emotion regulation techniques as a new coping skill

   An important aspect of the program was to help guide the participants into a more non-judgmental way of looking at their own emotions. Rather than seeing difficult emotions as something bad, they can be viewed as valid, informative and motivating. It matters how we perceive and approach our own emotions. As one participant noted in her interview:

   The main thing that I remember was hearing that the negative emotions that we feel around climate change are not bad emotions, but […] something that’s valid. And I think that was a very big eye opener for me […] I always thought that, you know, they are negative emotions that you kind of have to get out of, that you kind of have to turn it into something positive.

   Another aspect of this is to view emotions as impermanent and constantly shifting, which can make them more tolerable. As another participant noted:

   We learned that strong emotions always pass […] I had never thought about it before, now it’s something I think about very often these days.

2. From isolation to connection: The role of social groups in coping

   One important aspect of the intervention was its group setting and the previous lack of spaces to express one’s climate emotions and feel validated by others. This became obvious in the interviews. One participant expressed:

   What I found most valuable was the conversations with the others […] There’s something beautiful in getting confirmation that others experience something similar to what I do.

   Even for participants who studied sustainability issues, and were highly engaged in the climate crisis, there had been a lack of spaces to address the emotional and existential aspects:

   ‘even though everyone in my class is all engaged, feels similar emotions, and is quite comfortable with each other, I still felt like we really needed help with creating that space […] maybe it’s just not so natural to start that conversation.’

   ‘You realize that everybody’s kind of dealing with these emotions and that’s what I really valued in this group… this feeling of loneliness just kind of disappeared.’

   Being together with others served to normalize the various emotions participants were feeling. In addition it fostered positive emotions that helped balance the difficult ones. Community and having a sense of belonging matters to how we cope with difficult emotions.

3. Action knowledge as a source of hope and motivation

   One thing we, as group leaders, experienced was how many participants struggled to identify what collective action actually is, and how different ways of taking collective action might look. This also emerged in the interviews. As one participant expressed:

   ‘Going from thought to action in terms of acting at a structural level is not easy, we are not used to doing it when we consider what to do! ‘Where should I get involved when it’s not enough to eat vegetarian?’’

   Interestingly, it seemed that nurturing a broader and more concrete view of what collective action can look like also affected participants emotions in a positive and hopeful way, something that also has been highlighted in previous research. As one participant said:

   We talked about how to work practically and collectively, that gave me a lot of motivation and more hope for the future. […] I still feel that the climate crisis is something big and problematic, because it really is. So, the truth remains, but I feel a bit less anxious in my body, I feel a bit more hope and I know what to do.

4. Challenges of transferring insights into daily life

   One limitation of the intervention, with workshops that weren’t given weekly, mainly due to practical and scheduling reasons, was that some participants struggled to transfer the knowledge and insights from the workshops into their daily lives. As group leaders this was a tricky one: making the program more intense might have benefitted the implementation of insights into participants daily lives, as would the inclusion of home assignments - but that would also have meant a higher demand and higher threshold to participate in the program altogether. One thing we struggled with when recruiting participants was that many people are just so busy and already overwhelmed, that even a program that aims at offloading some of that mental burden can be perceived as yet another chore to find time and space for.

5. Holding space for difficult emotions can be challenging but empowering

   One of the foundational assumptions in our work as climate psychologists, which is reflected in this intervention, is that we cannot and should not aim at getting rid of difficult climate related emotions. They serve a purpose, and they are a reaction to the very real situation the world is in. However, in order to be supportive of others difficult emotions we also need to attend to our own tolerance of the emotions evoked in us when hearing about others’ suffering.

   One participant expressed this in her interview:

   I can talk to my family about this, but it ends up being conversations aimed at calming me down. And that doesn’t really solve anything long-term; I might be calm for the moment but long-term it’s more that I feel: why isn’t anyone else upset?

   There’s a not always obvious, but yet important difference between comforting someone by trying to remove their emotional suffering, and comforting them by being willing to be together with them in that difficult emotional space. Listening and giving space. I believe that this is one key aspects for adults to learn in order to be able to truly support young people in their difficult emotions. Difficult emotions aren’t bad, but they are painful. We don’t need to get rid of them in order to offer support.
   

6. Participants entering with different emotions, coping-needs and motivations

   The needs of young people who are climate engaged or affected by climate related emotions vary, which means that there is no one-size-fits-all-solution in how to best offer support. This came up in the interviews with both participants and practitioners. Some participants expressed more interest in the practical solutions, whereas others felt more helped by the parts that focused on emotional sharing. Since participants in this, and similar interventions, always arrive with different starting points, having different needs and motivations, an important lesson for adults who aim at supporting young people is to be able to listen into their needs, and have the capacity to be flexible enough to offer a range of different exercises and tools.

Some final remarks

When we first developed this intervention we wanted to find a balance between offering tools to better understand and cope with climate related emotions, and encouraging collective action. The aim has never been to decrease participants difficult emotions, but rather increase their acceptance and tolerance of what they’re feeling, as well as learn how emotions are related to action and social support. The findings in the study validates how making space for difficult emotions may be more helpful and healing than trying to suppress them or force oneself into feeling optimistic.

If you’ve been reading Climate Psyched for a while you might recognize our Ice Cream Model, which was developed during the Terra-Pi project, inspired by the available research literature and our long experience working with supporting eco and climate related emotions. The more we work with this model, the more we feel confident that it highlights truly important aspects of learning how to navigate times of parallel crises and uncertainty. We need each other and we need a range of coping strategies, together with awareness about how to balance these different parts, in order to sustain through the hardships that the world is offering.

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It’s quite amazing to see something that you’ve developed and tried out over time, that you’ve put countless hours into, be explored in a scientific study, put together into a peer-reviewed and published article, accessible to others who are interested in the subject. Supporting young people and science all at once.

Some of the other materials we developed in the project Terra-Pi has been translated to English and is free to use. You can find it here.

And with that, I want to wish you happy and restful holidays! Thank you so much for reading, it’s the best motivation to keep writing these posts. As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you in 2026!

You know what, I thought I’d write a comment on t…

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Lately I’ve been having a recurring feeling of content overload, even when it comes to climate related stuff. This feels somewhat paradoxical since those of us engaged in climate work constantly are screaming for more people to join in, to mobilize and to do more. And yet, there’s so much going on, so many initiatives starting up, so many podcasts being produced, so many texts written, so many talks organized, that it’s hard to keep up. And hard to navigate through the overload of content in order to filter out what truly feels important to read, listen to, attend and engage with. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather have it this way than there being nothing going on - yet, part of taking climate action must involve the process of figuring out how and where to best utilize your own time and effort in a way that makes a difference whilst being sustainable for your own health. Something that’s not always easy to do - I mean I’ve been working with exactly that for a decade, and I still find myself struggling every now and then. The question of what to do to and how to best do it is constantly present in the field of climate psychology. Somewhat related to that, today’s post is about how to solve the problem of wanting to change a system you’re stuck in and have trouble seeing beyond.

Prefigurative politics

Living in a time of polycrisis, watching the destructiveness of the current system unfold more each day, wanting to change it but being hindered by feeling stuck in it can definitely feel like a Catch 22.

To get around this, one strategy can be to start acting as if the desired future was already here. This is called prefigurative politics, and has become quite central in parts of political organization, for example through protest movements like the Arab spring and the emergence of eco-villages. Prefiguration can take on various forms, but are centered around the notion of practicing the social and organizational forms one envision for the future, already today. It can play out as a sort of resistance whilst simultaneously nurturing new skills, way of relating to others, and concretely building something new. Instead of waiting for change, people just start acting in the way they wish for change to happen.

In a systematic review, going through existing literature on studies examining the effects of prefigurative politics, it becomes apparent how collective participation in prefigurative practices affect its participants in numerous ways. For example through an increased sense of empowerment, sense of community and identity change. Empowerment and gaining an increased sense of individual’s and group’s ability to bring about change seems to be extra common consequences of prefigurative action. By beginning to make changes, people seem to recognize that they have power, and that the future can be altered through collective action.

This is foundational in behavioral psychology: actions can precede thoughts and emotions. By taking action, how we think, feel and relate to the world starts to change. So does how we view ourselves. Clark and Drurys review also identifies how prefigurative politics led to identity change; showing how collective participation in prefiguration shifted people’s self-conception. But not only does collective participation change one’s identity, it also fosters a positive sense of community and breaks isolation.

An example of this is how participation in a Nicaraguan grassroots feminist collective led to a greater civic participation and sense of community, as well as improved well-being. Another study showed how a reproductive justice project for people of color gave the participants a stronger sense of dignity and self-determination.

Engaging in prefigurative politics seems to be a way of getting unstuck from the Catch 22 and instead working one’s way through the Catch 22.

Utopian thinking to motivate collective action

Action can precede thoughts and ideas, but thoughts and ideas are often essential in guiding one’s action forward. Numerous historical systemic shifts have come about after first having existed as ideas, visions and dreams about a utopian society. Utopian thinking, i.e. imagining an ideal society, might seem a bit, well, utopian and fluffy, but there’s growing evidence that shows how it actually can motivate collective action. By visualizing a utopian image, light can be shed on flaws in the current system, which motivates change through making people less prone to justify current injustices. Utopian thinking can also be seen as a skill practicing to think in new, creative ways, to facilitate problem-solving, and make the goals that people are striving for more vivid and concrete.

Utopian thinking seems to involve three aspects: shed light on how current society can change into the utopian society, thereby highlighting criticism of the current state, and function as a form of compensation for the current negative state, as a form of escapism.

A study exploring how engaging in utopian thinking would affect participants’ intentions to take action as citizens, showed that it had causal effects on intentions to engage with society, as well as on being critical of one’s own society. By thinking about what the world could look like, people became more motivated to take action and started to view the current society more critically.

Daysh and colleagues conducted two related studies to examine how thoughts and emotions about the future helps shape collective climate action. They wanted to see whether people would become more motivated to take collective climate action by imagining a better - or a worse - future world. They let their participants (liberal-leaning Americans) perform imagination tasks that either focused on a utopian society (where the world had managed to adapt well to climate change), a dystopian society, or a control condition. They found that engaging in utopian thinking increased participants’ feelings of hope, thereby increasing their willingness to take climate action. Interestingly enough, in one of the studies they also found that those who engaged in dystopian thinking also became more prone to take climate action, motivated by feelings of fear. Further the utopian thinking didn’t decrease fear, which shows that hope can be increased in the presence of fear and that utopian thinking not necessarily alleviates fear. Dystopian thinking did however decrease levels of hope. Taken together these two studies show that there can be multiple emotional ways to motivate collective climate action and that utopian thinking can play an important role in that.

Utopian thinking to stop justifying status quo

Another benefit of utopian thinking is that it can help bridge the psychological distance between the current status quo and the imagined, better future. To believe that a better world is possible we need to practice imagining what a better world could look like.

One obstacle to engaging in behaviors that aim at societal and system change is system justification, i.e. the conscious and non-conscious tendency to defend and justify aspects of the current status quo, something that people tend to engage in even when the system is disadvantageous for them compared to other individuals in society. Previous studies have shown how system justification is negatively correlated to collective action that challenges the current status quo, while other studies have shown that when people feel powerlessness and dependent on the social system, system-justification increases. Here’s where utopian thinking can come in handy: it makes it harder to justify a destructive system by reminding us of the possibility to strive for something else. Because what we can imagine for ourselves and the world is not fixed. It can rather be seen as a skill that we have the possibility to train into allowing a fuller range of images, which awakens us to what a different world might look like.

Badaan and colleagues suggest that utopian thinking motivates social change through increasing hope as an important part of collective action, as well as by closing the psychological distance between the utopian image and the current status quo. They mean that hope, unlike despair, helps people see the status quo as changeable, which in turn can foster more hope.

What comes first, the hen or the egg? Ideas or action? In the climate transition the answer seems to be - and perhaps needs to be - both.

Utopian thinking and prefigurative politics can be ways forward, but they need to come with a bit of a warning. Because the ideas about what constitutes a utopian society is of course not equal to everyone. The same way that imagining a just, sustainable society, can nurture hope and motivation to take action, so can imagining a utopia that is filled with authoritarian leaders and injustices. The same things that can be used to encourage action within the climate movement can usually be used to encourage action within climate obstructive groups. Which of course should serve as motivation to make the ideas, thoughts, visions and prefigurative actions of a just, democratic, sustainable world as vivid, common and loud as possible.

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Climate Psychology Conference in Stockholm

Do you live in Sweden? Come to this one-day conference on Climate Psychology that the national organization Psychologists for Sustainable Development (which I’m chairwoman of) is organizing in Stockholm on the 22nd of November. It’ll be a full day of lectures from amazing researchers like Kimberly Nicholas and Maria Ojala, followed by an Open Space where participants will get to dive deeper into questions and issues of their choice. The conference open to everyone, and I would love to see some of you there! (And if you live far from Stockholm, there’s a possibility of organizing digital hubs to join the conference from a distance). You can find tickets and all information here!

Thank you so much for reading! As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you next time!

I’m still in my thirties, but as I approach 40 I …

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The first storm of the fall hit Sweden a few days ago, with winds churning and heavy rainfalls pouring down for hours. It wasn’t too bad, the winds didn’t reach hurricane strength and the rain didn’t cause any flooding. But it was intensive enough to be reminded that the forces of nature are so much stronger than we are.

Although the seasons are changing it feels like the world - and my own outlook on it - is becoming a broken record of ever increasing repression, dismantled democratic rights and a collective feeling of being gaslighted by political inaction while exceeding more planetary boundaries. It is a time where activism and social movements are absolutely essential - and even more essential is that those already engaged in climate activism sustain and don’t burnout. Over the years my colleagues and I have met with numerous activists on the verge of collapsing, after having been so fully immersed in taking collective action that they’ve neglected their own needs, or attended to the pain that living an aware life in a deeply unjust world entails. These are people that are needed in the climate work, with all their knowledge, skills and engagement, which is why the topic of activist burnout is highly important. We don’t have time to wait to take action, but we definitely don’t have time for people to crash when trying to save the planet.

The newish book “The psychology of collective climate action”, by authors from the German NGO Wandelwerk - who combine psychology and environmental protection - digs into what is yet known about activist burnout in the research literature, plus offer some helpful suggestions on how to prevent it.
(Note: the authors of the book are Karen Hamann, Eva Junge, Paula Blumenschein, Sophia Dasch, Alex Wernke and Julian Bleh, but for simplicity reasons I, in this text, refer to them as Wandelwerk. Second note: Kim, over att We can fix it, recently posted a great summary of the whole book a few months ago, which I think you should check out).

What is activist burnout?

Activist burnout isn’t always well defined, but is characterized by a state of being under long-terms stressors that affect the ability to stay engaged in the activist movement. Researchers Chen and Gorski have interviewed human rights activists and drawn up categories of symptoms of burnout, which can be categorized into physical, emotional and motivational symptoms. For example difficulties sleeping, headaches, anxiety, hopelessness and feelings of the activism not making a difference. Wandelwerk notes that activist burnout should be seen as a widespread phenomenon, with one previous study on trade union activism identifying that almost half of all study participants reporting burnout symptoms.

Activist burnout is affected by activism culture

While it’s generally known that different people have different vulnerabilites, and that some people are more prone to feel anxious, feel overwhelmed or become depressed than others, it’s important to note that individuals always exist in a social context, and that this social context either can function to amplify these tendencies or help build resilience and a preventative buffer.

Since activist burnout is associated with withdrawing from one’s engagement, it’s important to look at how the organizational culture can help prevent burnout.

Groups and movements, even when they aim at transforming society, are often influenced by the larger culture in which they exist. It’s hard to fully disconnect from the system you exist within.

Wandelverk emphasizes two group cultures that seem particularly associated with increased risk of activist burnout: culture of martyrdom and culture of competition and performance. As a psychologist who over the years have had numerous conversations and therapy sessions with climate activists I can fully recognize how both of these cultures impose significant obstacles to nurturing resilient activist groups.

Culture of martyrdom is recognized by a social norm that it’s bad to care about oneself, and engage in self-care, since that would be a sign of selfishness and of not fully committing to the larger-than-oneself-issues the group is fighting for. Constant reminders of how privileged one is compared to oppressed people can put pressure on the activists to take on more work than they can handle, and not feel that it’s okay to express their need for pause and recovery. The risk of burnout can increase when the greater cause becomes more important than the activist own health, which in the long run can lead to activists needing to withdraw their engagement altogether. Within this culture of martyrdom there sometimes arises a combination of feeling indispensible for the movement, yet having very low hopes of being able to make a difference. It turns into a sort of Sisyphean work of feeling responsible of carrying the rock up to the top, knowing that you’ll continue to fall back down before you get there - but still being unable to quit, because if you quit the whole movement might die.

I once had a conversation with an activist who expressed frustration over how their activist group worked to bring about system change, aiming at transforming society from a competitive performance focused society, but themselves imposing a culture that encouraged competition and performance. Wandelwerk highlights how the constant feeling of never doing enough and never contributing sufficiently is associated with activist burnout. This can be especially risky since climate activism is a marathon of unknown length, where we seldom know what different protests and actions will lead to. In one way it’s never enough, regardless of how much time and effort you put in, and in another way it’s absolutely necessary to establish a level of feeling that what you do is good enough and encourage the efforts people put in. If not the movement risks ending up with a large amount of burnt out, depressed activists. Wandelverk also highlights the risk of how cultures of competitions can color the way different groups look at collaboration with other groups. A culture that premieres competition and performance might start viewing other climate groups as primarily competitors that compete for the same resources, rather than seeing them as allies who strive for the same cause, albeit using different methods and strategies.

Emotions and activist burnout

Group culture isn’t everything, even though it can help exacerbate already existing vulnerabilities amongst activists. For example by not having clear routines to oversee how responsibilities and tasks are delegated and fairly distributed, which can cause overwhelming work loads. Or by not having routines for how and when to encourage activists’ efforts or celebrating steps of progress. Or not having routines for giving space for activists climate related emotions.

Many activists are (rightfully) angry and feel a great sense of responsibility to act and to help bring about change. Anger is a bit of a tricky emotion: at the same time as it has been associated with action-taking and less ill-being, it has also been shown to be associated with activist burnout. It may be that it’s not anger in itself, but rather the intensity, frequency and available strategies to cope with it that will decide whether it may contribute to burnout or not.

Finding ways of coping with not only anger, but all difficult emotions related to the injustices climate activists are fighting, seem essential for a sustainable long-term activism. The emotions that help us care can also be the emotions that eventually break us, why creating group structures that help activists cope with their difficult emotions are important - as is a nurturing group culture that encourages activists to pause, take time off and recharge with stuff that isn’t related to activism or the issues you fight for.

Wandelwerk also notes that sometimes activism, especially in more repressive countries, can be associated with traumatic experiences; being arrested, jailed or threatened. With increased repression against climate activists, as is currently happening in for example the UK, also comes increased risks of being exposed to traumatic events through one’s activism.

A very current example is the torture activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla were put through when held in Israeli prison after being detained on international water when trying to sail to Gaza to provide aid.

How to build more resilient climate activist groups

Wandelwerk lists a number of things that can help build more resilience in climate groups, and nurture a more sustainable long-term engagement. I’ll recap a few of these here below, with some comments from our own work experience at Climate Psyched:

• Give activists a sense of belonging and identification with the group. Feeling like you belong and have a place of community creates an emotional buffer that best case can help prevent burnout.

• Rotate responsibilities and practice community-building strategies. It’s not just about taking collective action, it’s also about how we take collective action, and how we build up organizations that don’t burn out their members.

• Celebrate big and small wins! Celebration is a way of highlighting progress, bringing attention to the effort everyone has put in, and to strengthen the social ties between group members.

• Make the work fun. Burning for a cause can only take engagement so far - having fun while dealing with serious issues is essential if you want people to stay motivated. Feelings of joy can also act as a helpful buffer when taking on difficult tasks that require courage.

• Give space for emotions: sometimes this can be done through the actions themselves, as Mothers’ Rebellion do with their silent circles - but this can also be done by planning activities that explicitly aim at talking and sharing how you’re feeling. Those activities can also serve as a space to practice active listening, validation and how to offer support to each other.

There is of course much more to say on this topic and I highly recommend reading the entirety of “The psychology of collective climate action” and cheering on Wandelwerk’s important work.

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Thank you so much for reading! As always, feel free to share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you enjoyed reading it, click the heart symbol as a way of letting me know you liked it, or post a comment below to keep the conversation going. See you next time!