Give it to me straight, Doc. How long?
Interview with Maitri
Many people can relate to experiencing sleepless nights following the release of a new climate report. The mind helplessly oscillates between states of anger, despair and suffocating dread. Or if you’re lucky you can completely dissociate from your emotions for long enough to fall asleep. For those old enough to remember at least as far back as the 1990’s, the present day can sometimes resemble a dystopian sci-fi film from decades past. How did we end up here? Surely we must be in the wrong timeline where things went awry.
But young people today have no other frame of reference. For them climate anxiety isn’t a growing tumor in need of removal but rather a chronic limp that can only be managed. To better understand this distinction I spoke with Maitri Gupta, a clinical counselor based in Vancouver BC. Maitri had a background working in social justice and climate activism before she began practicing therapy. She currently spends much of her time working with people struggling with feelings about the climate crisis.
F&F: How did you go from working in activism to clinical counseling?
M: It all started when I was nine. I joined the Nature Club at school because they used to go around presenting to classes about endangered species and animals, and that really resonated with me and that continued to build throughout my educational experiences. I was participating in a lot of work that had to do with protecting the environment, and throughout the years, especially in my university years, I noticed burnout.
It’s just getting worse and worse. And you’re hearing that we have 20 more years. What do you do when those 20 years have passed and you’re kind of at the precipice of the crisis itself?
I was part of the Climate Justice Toronto movement which is asking for policy changes with our government and not just putting it onto the individual to make changes happen. But what tended to happen is folks were burning out and there was that anxiety coming through, not just for activists but the everyday person.
That led me to really think more seriously about how to bridge that gap of dealing with the mental health concerns that come up when we are anxious about the world kind of falling apart.
F&F: What is the age range of people you tend to work with?
M: I have worked with anyone as young as 18 to people in their early forties, and that’s just been the nature of who’s come to me for their services. I would be interested in working with folks slightly younger than that. The sooner you get into therapy the more preventative work we can do and the more protective work we can do. Let’s make sure that you’re more resilient in the face of all of these things.
F&F: What have you been seeing in this area of your work? How are people talking about climate anxiety?
M: What I’m experiencing is that folks are feeling a lot of deep panic and hopelessness. You can be exhausted from feeling so helpless. And there’s restlessness as well. Folks are itching for things to change. And when it’s just one person, then you’ve got this conglomerate world that’s mostly focused on a corporate way of being and that can feel like a very defeating situation. That’s a lot of the activist world.
But we’re seeing this in a lot of everyday individuals that may not be involved in activism, but they’re genuinely and deeply concerned.
F&F: I imagine it’s uniquely challenging to treat someone whose feelings of hopelessness come with justifications that are backed by compelling scientific evidence. How do you approach this?
M: I think that validation is key, right? I think so many folks can be so invalidated and gaslit by society itself. Like when you’re out there seeing things very tangibly and literally fall apart.
I think the first thing to do is validate that, as a clinician, and say ‘I sit here with you and I see it and I feel it’.
I think that’s where it was really important for me when I developed my Climate Anxiety workshop to work with a group of people in one space, because I think a lot of that validation will come from community.
And my experience as an activist has been focusing on that community because that is a ‘protective factor’ as we call it in the therapy world. ‘Protective factor’ is something that allows you to persist and resist. So you persist knowing that you’re not alone. And there are other people that are seeing things fall apart just as much as you are and you’re together in this.
F&F: Is it difficult to help someone determine how much they ought to focus inwards on themselves given the urgency of the climate crisis? For my part, I’ve had to virtually cease my daily intake of current events just to maintain function, but now I feel like a less informed person.
M: You feel guilty. You feel you’re hard on yourself about it. Where do you draw a boundary, right? And is that boundary too harsh?
When we’re constantly pushed outside of our window as tolerance, we lose capacity to hold space for the really difficult things. and that’s kind of where you have to contend with asking ‘where do I draw a boundary’? What does it mean to take care of myself? And where am I taking up too much space and not contributing?
It’s okay that you were at your capacity because we’re not designed as species to internalize so much of what the world sends our way.
F&F: For young people today who’ve only known a world in perpetual crisis, what sort of effect does constant stress have?
M: One thing that I want to say that may start this off with a little bit of hope is I think that for my experience, Gen Z are just so much better equipped. They’re smarter than I was as a millennial. A lot of them are way more equipped literally with technology and so many resources around them than I was. Gen Z are in therapy, they’re working more collectively. They’re better equipped with social media. A lot of the Gen Z are really, really resilient in the face of all the stress. So I want to honor that and build space for celebrating that because there is this lifelong intense amount of stress that to be resilient and persistent in the face of that is worth acknowledging.
The phenomena that we’re seeing is an increase in ADHD diagnoses, an increase in anxiety diagnoses. There’s natural increase simply because we’ve been more open about mental health needs and well-being, but also very genuinely because they’re inheriting that stress and that despair from previous generations. Because a lot of what we’re noticing in studies is trauma can start as early as in the womb. And it’s proven that folks with ADHD start to develop that as early as in the womb.
I think Gen Z is a little bit better equipped than we were because there was a foundation laid out. But I also feel that, yes, they’re up against so much more.
F&F: What is your biggest piece of advice for young people wrestling with these issues?
M: It’s okay to rest. Take care of yourself, honor your feelings, what you’re feeling. It’s okay to step back and step back in when you’re ready and it’s okay to seek help. It’s okay to say ‘I really need to talk to somebody about this and hold space for me’ because it’s when you’re just spinning the wheels in your head all by yourself that can really go to dark places and that might not really be helpful.
And then the other thing is to find community. You’re not alone in this, and that is the biggest service that you could do to yourself and your community members to find people that hold space for you and vice versa, because there’s also empowerment and holding space for others.
What you’re feeling is valid and it’s okay to need help with that.
– JC Arreaga