Mental Health and Climate Change: Noticing the Good in Times of Absurdity

You too? Maybe it’s the accumulating weight of living in a cruel dystopian satire that … isn’t satire at all. Maybe it’s the absurd tariffs-on, tariffs-off roller coaster. Maybe it’s the brutal disappearance of academics and legal migrants, the erasure of science, the escalating threats to basic social safety nets, the harrowing rollback of environmental protections, and the gutting of climate change research.

Maybe it’s the war on showerheads?

As a friend described it recently, it feels like we’re living in a Saturday Night Live skit version of 1984, except it’s all real. There’s no turning this show off and no changing the channel, particularly for those of us whose work or identities place us especially close to the flood of incoming threats. And despite the constant onslaught of extremely troubling news, we still need to perform the tasks required of our everyday lives: School lunches still need to be packed. Bills still need to be paid. Children still need to be tucked into bed at night. Laundry still needs to be folded. (Just kidding, lol, I’m definitely not folding laundry these days.)

The juxtaposition of apocalyptic news with the normalcy of daily routines can be jarring: it is a feat of Olympic-level gymnastics to hold all of what is true right now. It is true that we’re facing existential threats to our collective well-being. And it is also true that the moments of our everyday lives continue to unfold—moments that we don’t want to miss.

I don’t want to be so consumed by the tumult of the news that I miss what’s right in front of me, like the specific, fleeting ways my children are in the world at nine years old: my daughter’s newfound love for baking; her twin brother’s delight at finding salamanders as they emerge from winter hibernation. I imagine I’m not alone in struggling to figure out how to bear witness and meaningfully respond to the rapid unraveling of the world as we knew it while also being meaningfully present to the rest of my life.

How then do we cope?

Many people are writing helpful things about how to cope right now (I especially liked Joy Lynn Okoye’s take on “How Not to Have a Breakdown While America Does”). But one thing that is especially resonating with me is the idea of trying to be more intentional about noticing what’s good in our lives—a practice almost embarrassing in its simplicity, but easily brushed aside in seasons of chaos. In her book We Were Made for These Times, ordained Buddhist nun Kaira Jewel Lingo talks about the importance of nurturing the good in tumultuous times:

“We may believe that in order to be happy our suffering has to disappear completely. That they can’t coexist. In my experience, even though I may be struggling in a time of transition or adversity, I can still be in touch with what is wholesome and good in me and around me. In fact, this is the moment I need it the most! Nurturing the good is crucial to our well-being and resilience in the face of change and tumult.”

It’s easy to be so swept up in what’s going wrong that we miss what’s not going wrong—almost as if noticing what’s going right is a betrayal of the seriousness of the moment we’re in. But as Rebecca Solnit reminds us in her book Hope in the Dark, “Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism.” We desperately need moments of joy and goodness to keep going.

Before shifting my career toward climate work several years ago, I was a research coordinator for multiple studies on expressive writing for trauma resilience, and over and over again, I’ve witnessed the surprising power of writing to help people cope with profoundly difficult circumstances. One of my favorite ways to notice the good is a writing practice called Three Good Things, which research suggests can increase happiness and well-being. Every day for at least a week, you take time to write down at least three good things that happened in your day, writing about them in as much detail as you can and noticing how they made you feel. If you only have time to jot down three bullet points, that’s a wonderful place to start. The colors of the sunrise today were magnificent. My kid has discovered 80s fashion. I saw a cardinal for the first time in months.

Noticing what’s good in our lives might not erase the dissonance we feel when we read the news, reminded yet again of the harrowing attacks on our individual and collective well-being. But refusing to overlook what’s going right just might keep something essential in our souls intact; it just might help us stay human.

And if there is anything the world desperately needs right now, it is people who know how to stay human.

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