Wildfire is a vital ecological process, but it can be dangerous. It’s also a tangible reminder of how our climate is changing around us. Therefore, living in areas impacted by wildfire can be stressful on many levels, and individuals may experience eco-anxiety – or even eco-grief – in response.
On the latest episode of the Living With Fire Podcast, guest Caitlyn Wallace, LCSW, unpacks these terms and talks about ways to address feelings about wildfire and climate change. According to Wallace, “Eco-anxiety is the anxiousness and the worry about the changing climate and what might happen. And eco-grief is the sadness and grief at the loss of life – human, animal and plant life – that you anticipate to come.”
Wallace, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist in Northern Nevada, specializes in perinatal mental health and the emerging field of climate-informed therapy. She treats patients experiencing pregnancy, postpartum depression and anxiety, infertility, grief and loss. Wallace explained that some of her clients were also experiencing eco-anxiety and eco-grief.
“I started noticing in some of my clients this grief and guilt around – I work so hard for this baby, I tried so hard for this baby. The baby is here. And now I am guilty and ashamed because there’s a pandemic, there’s smoke, there’s this warming climate and we’re in a huge drought. What did I do? Why did I bring a baby into this world?” said Wallace.
On the podcast, Wallace explained that anxiety and grief show up differently for everyone. Therefore, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution for dealing with eco-anxiety and grief. However, she emphasized the importance of acknowledging feelings and experiences.
“I think that a big thing is being able to name it and being able to talk about it. Yeah, we know enough to know that for a lot of these things. Specifically, depression, anxiety, that being able to talk about your feelings around them gets you out of a fight-or-flight reactive place and into a place where you can be more responsive.”
Wallace speaks about the benefits of finding a space to talk about the feelings of eco-anxiety, such as a Climate Café modeled after Death Cafés. According to the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, a Climate Café is “an informal, open, respectful, confidential space to safely share emotional responses and reactions related to the climate and environmental emergency.”
Wallace is one of the only climate-informed therapists in Northern Nevada and has started hosting free Climate Cafés in Reno, which you can read about in Our Town Reno. And, to learn more about eco-anxiety, check out Wallace’s suggested reading list below:
Wildfire is a vital ecological process, but it can be dangerous. It’s also a tangible reminder of how our climate is changing around us. Therefore, living in areas impacted by wildfire can be stressful on many levels, and individuals may experience eco-anxiety – or even eco-grief – in response.
On the latest episode of the Living With Fire Podcast, guest Caitlyn Wallace, LCSW, unpacks these terms and talks about ways to address feelings about wildfire and climate change. According to Wallace, “Eco-anxiety is the anxiousness and the worry about the changing climate and what might happen. And eco-grief is the sadness and grief at the loss of life – human, animal and plant life – that you anticipate to come.”
Wallace, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist in Northern Nevada, specializes in perinatal mental health and the emerging field of climate-informed therapy. She treats patients experiencing pregnancy, postpartum depression and anxiety, infertility, grief and loss. Wallace explained that some of her clients were also experiencing eco-anxiety and eco-grief.
“I started noticing in some of my clients this grief and guilt around – I work so hard for this baby, I tried so hard for this baby. The baby is here. And now I am guilty and ashamed because there’s a pandemic, there’s smoke, there’s this warming climate and we’re in a huge drought. What did I do? Why did I bring a baby into this world?” said Wallace.
On the podcast, Wallace explained that anxiety and grief show up differently for everyone. Therefore, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution for dealing with eco-anxiety and grief. However, she emphasized the importance of acknowledging feelings and experiences.
“I think that a big thing is being able to name it and being able to talk about it. Yeah, we know enough to know that for a lot of these things. Specifically, depression, anxiety, that being able to talk about your feelings around them gets you out of a fight-or-flight reactive place and into a place where you can be more responsive.”
Wallace speaks about the benefits of finding a space to talk about the feelings of eco-anxiety, such as a Climate Café modeled after Death Cafés. According to the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, a Climate Café is “an informal, open, respectful, confidential space to safely share emotional responses and reactions related to the climate and environmental emergency.”
Wallace is one of the only climate-informed therapists in Northern Nevada and has started hosting free Climate Cafés in Reno, which you can read about in Our Town Reno. And, to learn more about eco-anxiety, check out Wallace’s suggested reading list below:
And that day when the smoke was was up over 150 The air quality which is still
Megan Kay:in the unhealthy zone healthy
Caitlyn Wallace:is not where it had been. I think it was just this for me, also. And for a lot of people this is okay. Like we're doing it again. And it's a reminder around the fires, it's a reminder of what it was like the last two years. It's also just this like, okay, like we're watching firsthand how the climate is changing around us.
Megan Kay:This is the living with fire podcast brought to you by the living with Fire Program at the University of Nevada Reno extension. Hi, welcome to the living with fire Podcast. I'm Megan Kay, your host and Outreach Coordinator for the living with Fire Program at the University of Nevada Reno extension. So this is the third episode of our season two and on this season, we wanted to explore stories about wildfire and its impacts that are more under the surface or unseen. This is also our second episode about wildfire and mental health. I just want to let you know right off the bat that on today's episode, we're going to be talking about stress, anxiety, and trauma responses in the body. So on our last episode, we featured an interview with Yasmine Hussain from Oregon State University that was all about trauma informed communication around wildfire and how to talk to kids about wildfire. If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend it. It's a great resource. And on this episode, we're going to be talking about eco anxiety and eco grief as it relates to wildfire and other potentially scary climate change related events. Our guest is Caitlin Wallace.
Caitlyn Wallace:My name is Caitlin Wallace. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and Perinatal mental health therapist and a climate informed therapist and I live work and play on Shoshone Paiute and marshy land in Northern Nevada.
Megan Kay:Now the term eco anxiety or eco grief may be new to you. It was to me, and I'm not the expert. So I'm gonna go ahead and let Caitlin explain it.
Caitlyn Wallace:Eco anxiety is the anxiousness and the worried about the changing climate and what might happen. And eco grief is the sadness and grief at the loss of life. Human animal and plant life that you anticipate to come.
Megan Kay:Kaitlyn is a friend of mine, and as you heard, she's a counselor specializing in this emerging field of climate informed therapy. But before I kind of connected the dots and figured out that that would definitely be an applicable topic to cover on this podcast. What inspired me to invite Caitlin on the show was an Instagram post that she made during this past summer. That really resonated with me and got me thinking about all the stress and anxiety that go along with living in high fire hazard areas or just areas impacted by Wildfire. So I thought that'd be a great place to start.
Caitlyn Wallace:I remember the day it posted. I don't remember specifically what I said. But it was a smoky day with the fires coming out of Yosemite. This smoke was coming out of Yosemite. And for a lot of people in our area, especially after the last two years, which have been weeks and weeks and weeks of smoke there was almost like a trauma response to the smoke in the air. And just to like, oh, okay, here we go again. For those of you who aren't familiar, the last two summers, specifically. So the summer of 2021, and the summer of 2020 in our valley were filled with smoke. Yeah, from like the Kaldor fire and the backwards and the Dixie, which are all kind of and then Tamarack for all happening at the same time. Yeah, just huge amounts of smoke flooding into the valley, which made the air pretty much unbreathable name there was we were wearing masks for COVID. But also they were saying to wear masks for smoke. And the kids schools were canceled because they couldn't handle it or no, it was just a very hard and challenging time. Couldn't be outside without seeing smoke. You didn't really see this on for a few weeks. It couldn't be outside. A lot of people had all these plans for summer that were changed because it couldn't be out and about and I think there's a lot of anticipation that something like that would happen this year two, and that day when the smoke was up over 150 The air quality which is still in the unhealthy zone healthy is not where it had been. But I think it was just this for me also. And for a lot of people decide, okay, like we're doing it again. And it's a reminder around the fires. It's a reminder of what it was like the last two years. It's also just as like okay like We're watching firsthand how the climate is changing around us. Climate change is referred to as a hyper event, meaning it's so big, and so close that we can't really see the edges. So it's really hard for us to understand, it's so hard for us to grasp. It's hard for us to hold it in space and get perspective on it. And when that happens, it's either a cognitive disconnect from it, or a flood of emotion. Because it's so hard to put it in perspective and in space. And I think in that moment, for me, it was a flood the flood.
Megan Kay:Speaking of wildfire smoke, we actually just put out a guide called Living with smoke, how to be prepared for smoke exposure. In our guide, we talk about what is in wildfire smoke, and why it's potentially hazardous to your health. We also talk about how you can prepare for wildfire smoke, and stay safe indoors and outdoors during smoke events. You can find that guide in the resources section of our website at living with feiyr.com.
Caitlyn Wallace:So I'll back up just a little bit and say, I've always been somebody concerned about the environment have been, you know, taking action, organizing recycling campaigns, doing all those things since like high school. Initially, when I went to school, I was going to go do science, and ended up through various choices and path changes, some in my control and some out and a very different end of the spectrum, doing mental health work and got into perinatal work. So treating pregnancy postpartum depression and anxiety, infertility, grief and loss and I started noticing in some of my clients this grief and guilt around, I work so hard for this baby, I tried so hard for this baby. The baby is here. And now I am guilty and ashamed because there's a pandemic, there's smoke, there's this warming climate, we're in a huge drought. What did I do? Why did I bring a baby into this world? So from that perspective, I kind of had that lightbulb moment of like, oh, I can bring this other thing that I'm very passionate about into mental health work, I had no idea how to do it. There was nobody doing it. And I found the climate psychology network, there are the UK, and then they have an American, North American branch of that. And so I have trained with them. And I'm now offering my services as a climate aware therapist.
Megan Kay:So so this is kind of sort of a new field of study, you're saying no one was doing it when the light bulb went off for you. So what is the landscape look like now? People? Are there more climate aware? Sort of counselors around? Is it something that people are interested in?
Caitlyn Wallace:Yes, and no, yes, it seems to me, there's just a lack of mental health. There's a lack of mental health in general writers in general, especially in our area. Yeah. So if you were in the Bay area of California, let's say you're gonna see more and more providers in general, and also more specialized providers, but because of their health care system, their health care system, their population, the awareness to some of these things. So on the East Coast, I think there's a lot of providers on the East Coast, I haven't looked at the directory lately, but I definitely get people who are like, you're the only person that I could find in, you know, 100 mile radius to where I live. So there's that part of it too. And also, just I think, people have a general sort of dis ease, but they can't really put a name or a word to it. And I can't tell you how many times I've told people what I do, or that I do like this is very specific subspecialty of peg parenthood and eco grief and eco anxiety. Oh, what's that? And I tell them like, Oh, my God, I have that. I didn't know there was a name for it. So people aren't even really aware of what it is, let alone the providers, or the very small group of us who are doing this sort of work. We haven't the language for it. We have the books for it. I can put some recommendations and books if you want to put them in the show notes, please. But it's a thing that people don't recognize that they have until they hear it and they're like, oh, yeah, that is the thing that I have. Yeah, that is the thing that really worries me or scares me back to the original question of like, how does it show up? So it helps to differentiate from me between ego grief and eco anxiety. Eco anxiety is the anxiousness and the worried about the changing climate and what might happen. And eco grief is the sadness and grief at the loss of life. human animal and plant life that you anticipate to come. And then there's also some emerging terms that are specific to climate change, like anticipatory trauma. It's a trauma response in anticipation of an event instead of in reaction to an event. So we currently have acute stress disorder and post traumatic stress disorder, which looks at after a traumatic event, what happens to a person and there's been floated this theory and idea based on what some people are saying is that people are having these traumatic stress responses in anticipation of increased fires, water running out. The changing landscape, oceans rising, the lack of drinking water, migrant, you know, the the pattern of migration that will happen as people are fleeing cities that are no longer livable due to heat, or rising oceans, where those people are going to be going.
Megan Kay:How does that happen? How could you have like a trauma response to something that you haven't experienced yet? Can you explain that?
Caitlyn Wallace:I don't know exactly. But it looks like hypervigilance. It looks like nightmares. It looks like inability to sleep well looks like being constantly on edge. It looks like a belief that the world is bad, or that people were bad, that there's extreme hopelessness, about being able to change things or change the way that it's going. And this is just stuff that's being floated. It's all new. This is all it's emerging. Exactly. Right. Yeah. It's a new thing. We've dealt with hyper objects before. But this is a hyper object that is the whole planet.
Megan Kay:Wildfire is stressful, and wildfire, evacuations are stressful. That's why the Luma Fire Program has created our wildfire evacuation checklist. It's a really simple checklist to help you learn how to pack a go bag, and prepare your home and your family, even your pets for wildfire evacuation. I've included the checklist in the links in the show notes below. So be sure to check that out. You can also find it on our website at living with feiyr.com. So we talked, so you mentioned kind of like how that can show up. So is there anything specific about sort of eco anxiety or eco grief, like anything that could possibly help folks that are experiencing that, I'm wondering if it would even be helpful for them to realize that it's, it is real,
Caitlyn Wallace:I think that's a big thing is being able to name it and being able to talk about it. Yeah, we know enough to know that for a lot of these things. Specifically depression, anxiety, that being able to talk about your feelings around them gets you out of a fight or flight reactive place and into a place where you can be more responsive. And so you know, a therapy or climate cafes, or extended gangs, any good grief groups that are more focused on the mental health part of it, are not a place to take action or to talk about resources or to shame people who use a plastic utensil or don't carry a reusable water bottle, they're about getting really clear on the emotions and being able to process through them. So you get out of a very reactive space. And then when you are in an action oriented space, you can be more responsive.
Megan Kay:I mean, I'm just learning in my own sort of personal journey, the difference between those two spaces. You know, when you're feeling big feelings, you want to take action, but you're not always in the right space to do it. Yeah, it can
Caitlyn Wallace:it can turn into an emotional bypass, or you're not dealing with the feelings because you're about doing direct action. And can a term that I learned from Robert Ray who's written a wonderful book called Generation dread, and she uses the term eco fascism, which is just becoming such a hardline guilt Shamy pusher about what is acceptable, what is not acceptable, that we actually create tension. We don't come together. We're not an open, welcoming community that it becomes like pitting people against people. And really what we need to be looking at is corporations and capitalism. There are things that we can do to help feel like we have more control over that we're taking action and larger corporations are responsible for a majority of yeah The climate, greenhouse gases, pollution and water pollution, plastic pollution. So it's a balance of understanding that you do have a role to play, you can take action and that can actually be really beneficial for your mental health is to take those small actions that you can, but then also not shaming people who are using a plastic straw, or who forgot their grocery bags, because that's not actually helping anybody and shame can just entrench people or divide people. Yeah. So what I'm seeing in people, like what is showing up, there's a lot of fear. Yeah. And there's a lot of fear around kind of, I guess, at the hype project of the unknown, but also points in time. So like the upcoming election, the midterm election is a big one. And then the next presidential election is a big one, because there's a belief in place about like political parties and what might happen or what might not happen. There's, I think, this time of year for folks around, you know, the smoke season, as we've taken to calling it knock on wood this year so far, has been pretty mild, mild comparatively. Yeah. So a lot of worry, you know, everything from, you know, my I don't know, if my grandchildren are gonna have the same opportunity to do things that I do to, you know, post the election, it's gonna be mad max, and everyone should just start getting prepared for utter destruction right now. So some people are thinking more long term, right? They're thinking about their grandkids, and some people are really concerned about six months from now
Megan Kay:is, it seems to me like are there analogues for that in the past? Like, for example, maybe people who were really freaked out about nuclear war, or Cold War? Yes. So there are there is there. It's not like you're going in completely blind, right? There are people who have dealt with these like huge existential crises where maybe they might have similar feelings. So what would be like the difference maybe between something like that, and something like climate change,
Caitlyn Wallace:and if your winter would have impacted everybody's, there was a lot of that. And then that's the central stuff that was going on? Yeah. 50s 60s 70s differences that at that point, it was very much like, this is, you know, we pick sides, right? And it's going to be the Russians fault, or it's going to be the Americans fault. And there wasn't a lot of like, this is your fault, because you don't recycle? No, this is your fault, because you eat meat. So with climate change, there's more nitpicking this, there's more person turning on person, right? So in the perinatal world, for example, a lot of people are just opting not to have kids. Right? So I'm seeing, you know, a few people who are working through that, like, what does it mean to be a person who is not having children, but I don't feel like I can because of the state of the world. But that also, then, if you are somebody who's had children in you, but you're also climate concerned, and the researchers say, Oh, well, children are the problem, people who reproduce or the problem, if that doesn't feel very welcoming. And so especially for people who are climate concerned and have had children, there's a lot of baby spaces are not talking about climate stuff. And a lot of climate places are really shaming of people who have had children. So whereas before, in existential threat, not always, but the one that comes to mind that you just mentioned Cold War, there was like sides and a plan and we, you know, took small action. This is like, we're almost pitting people against each other. Yeah.
Megan Kay:Is there any sort of advice that you could offer? Because I know it's like in not like on a clinical level, but on like a general, for people maybe feeling like anxiety, eco anxiety? Or maybe that's advice is not the right word? Where do we go from here? You know,
Caitlyn Wallace:naming it is a huge one, being able to put a name to the experience that you're having is really big, finding people that you can talk to reading the science. Yes, in a way that feels digestible. Some of those articles are very sciency. Yeah, I have a master's degree and I read some of these. I'm like, I have no idea what this is. This is not the same as like my beloved psychology and social work. Well, the headlines can also be sort of misleading. Absolutely. Yeah. You have to stay away from the clickbait. Yeah, totally in regards to anything but especially climate. Grab your time on social media. And, you know, when people come to a climate cafe,
Megan Kay:what is the climate cafe?
Caitlyn Wallace:I'm so glad you asked, so climate cafes are modeled on death cafes, they started in the UK. And it's this idea that there are these big existential crises that maybe we don't need, full blown one-on-one therapy to address but that we need something. We need to be able to talk about it. In fact, maybe talking about with people is actually the most helpful route. And so climate Cafe follows the death Cafe model. It is open it is non therapeutic though it is still supportive, and it's facilitated generally by a climate aware therapist, someone who has been trained to host me cafes, which I have, and it's speaking to the emotions into the feelings that you have. It's not a call to action. It's not a lecture on what climate change is. It's not a place for debate. It's just a place to meet and connect with people and create openings and community to talk about the feelings of climate change.
Megan Kay:Thank you for listening to the living fire podcast. You can find more stories and resources about wildfire and our website livingwithfire.com The living with FIRE program is funded by the Bureau of Land Management, the Nevada Division of Forestry and the US Forest Service and were managed by the University of Nevada Reno extension an equal opportunity institution