Join the Climate Conversation

(pulsing upbeat music) Hi, Headspace. I'm Clover, a climate activist and the Founder and Executive Director of Force of Nature. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Noga Levy-Rapoport, Daze Aghaji and Dominique Palmer, to discuss how we deal with climate anxiety and how caring for ourselves is crucial to caring for the world. (pulsing upbeat music continues) (gentle music) Do you think we're having enough conversations about the mental health impact of the climate crisis? No, not at all. I think we need to talk a lot more about mental health and the climate and I think a lot more people need to realize that all of the different emotions that you're feeling are okay and it is actually a perfectly normal response to what's happening. And don't try to shut it out or ignore it, because it's only going to build up in the background. But embrace it, embrace the rage and the anger that you feel the inaction. Embrace maybe the fear that you fear about the future. Embrace all the love you have for the planet. Embrace the confusion, the frustration. Embrace all the energy that you've gained and yours just want to put it somewhere. Just embrace all of it. In all the conversations we've had with young people around the world who are giving voice to this eco anxiety, they've said that one of the most difficult parts is just feeling very alone in those feelings. And I think particularly, you can look around at culture and society that is largely like sleepwalking toward this cliff of climate collapse. But you have these like internal alarm bells going off saying something is seriously wrong. And it's that sense of dissonance of like everyone seems to be okay around me and I'm the only one who's like freaking out about how huge this is. Yeah. And in fact, I think like creating safe spaces to just talk about how we're feeling is so powerful that suddenly we realize like even in this conversation like, oh, I'm not alone in feeling this way. How do you show up while also caring for your own mental wellbeing? The way in which I managed to do it was I learnt very quickly that you have to rest. You have to do joyous things. You have to have fun. And you have to, you have to, remember that you cannot do this alone. You need a support network around you, that can be your friends, that can be your family, that can be your colleagues in the climate world. No one has ever changed the world single handedly. You're not gonna be the first. None of us are. We do this together. I've also just found so much joy and love from reconnecting with nature. Like it's actually really helped with all these overwhelming emotions and eco anxiety. It's just going in the woods and... Yeah, these, because it's just good for you, exactly. It's like, whether it's being...