Posted on June 16, 2026 at 05:45 AM
Being in the world can be a spiritual and physical experience. These days, dealing with the realities of our changing climate adds complexity to our collective existence. So how do we deal with our feelings about all things environmental so that we can continue to live consciously and consider forms of future-enhancing thinking? Best-selling climate author Katherine your. WilkinsonDPhil, has some ideas, along with journal prompts, articles, art, interviews, and more to help you find your way. Below is an excerpt from her new book Climate Quest: Healing ourselves and the planet we call home. – YJ Editors
If you’ve found your way to this piece, I think it’s because you, like me, feel a deep pain about what’s happening within the web of our lives. Maybe she catches the news of the latest unnatural disaster and looks away to stay afloat. Or you survived one and are wondering how to rebuild. Maybe you seethe with anger toward those who gamble with our lives. Or you boiled it for so long that it dried out completely. Maybe you want to hold a friend’s hand and say: Do you see how bad this is?
You and I are not alone. More and more of us are waking up to the climate and environmental crisis that is now right on our doorstep. As we do so, we find ourselves unsettled, stressed, and even ungrounded. Climate change is not only reshaping the physical terrain of our planet. It also changes the internal terrain of our feelings and well-being. The two are connected in fundamental ways.
As an expert on climate and mental health Dr. Brett Wray However, we should not dismiss climate anxiety – or sadness, discontent, shame or exhaustion – as disastrous or overreacting. It’s a healthy response to an existential threat, one that has implications for our lives and everything we love. Our felt reactions are deeply human.
But sometimes these feelings can be slippery or difficult to pinpoint. Dr. Banu Pikala is a researcher in the field of environmental anxiety. Through pioneeringClassification of climate emotions“He sought to put shape to an amorphous and divergent set of emotional reactions to the climate crisis, of which anxiety is just one. This classification has given rise to a map of sorts – a wheel of climate sentiment – created jointly by journalists Anya Kamenetz and Sarah Newman of the magazine Climate Mental Health Network.
As this wheel shows, our climate-related feelings are not just feelings of distress. It may also show interest, inspiration, gratitude, and the like. But most of them are uncomfortable, to say the least. No wonder, then, that it can be tempting to push these feelings away.
Of all these emotions, sadness tends to be the one I feel most often and deeply. Every day there is climate news that will break your heart: another report in the red, another record-breaking, another irreversible extinction, another teetering on the edge, another fall, another failure. Hell, it could be as simple as a warm day in January — beautiful out of context — or selling strawberries at the farmers market a month early. Messengers of the eroding earth are all around us.
If there’s nowhere to go, grief takes up residence, settling heavy in my bones and getting in the way of imagination or action. I feel like I’m straining against some deep gravity. Sadness can also take other forms, from defensiveness to anger. But neither grief nor its relatives have a permanent claim. I’ve learned that I control whether my heart breaks or breaks It opens.
Over the years, I have become better at finding or creating spaces of solace and healing. I invite guided meditation to be with difficult emotions, letting my body move as it wants to express them. Sessions with a climate therapist help me engage, feel, and renew. Spiritual practice helps me connect with something bigger and more lasting; So is lying outside with a dear friend, the earth behind our backs, staring up at a canopy of trees and the clouds drifting overhead. Sometimes, I put my hand on my chest and let the tears flow, like clouds confessing the secrets I’ve hidden.
Connecting with a caring community, even if it’s just a community of two people, can make a huge difference in my ability to cope. For more than a decade, I have been meeting monthly with a kind-hearted group that gives me a sense of refuge, where I can take in whatever comes to my soul. Over time and with support, I have come to see my climate feelings as valuable companions, painful as they may be. These sentiments do not lie on the periphery of my climate engagement; They are in her heart.
However we choose to address our climate feelings, doing so is essential. For better or worse, our feelings determine how we show up in the world. We can be so immersed in distress that we find ourselves paralyzed and unable to participate in the planetary healing that is still possible: It is very difficult to take care of him. Or we may keep moving but find that our emotions are released in harmful ways, such as pent-up frustration that undermines every idea as too weak or too foolish. If we don’t dig deep into the pain, we will choose feel-good gestures that simply don’t create the real change we need.
Hence, our emotions can keep us frozen or fragmented, or they can become fuel. Penobscot author and educator Sherry Mitchell (We Are Humo Quaset) puts it this way: Our difficult feelings about our environmental and social plight are not a sign that there is something wrong with us, but rather a sign that something is. revision Within us. The first time I heard her say that, I felt the liberation that comes from feeling like I’m seeing with clear, kind eyes.
No matter how chaotic or palpitating, our climatic feelings reveal that we carry within us the pulse of life. We want to care about the people and places we love. We want to move towards healing – healing ourselves, our communities and our unique, breathtaking Earth.
That’s what I’ve learned more than anything else about a broken heart: it’s awake, alive, and calling to action. It is renewed, like nature, restoring the destroyed earth and growing again.
With a broken heart, I’m not stuck in grief — or any other difficult feelings running through me. I can access compassion, boldness, and enthusiasm. I can hold the simultaneous realities of devastation and possibility, and tune in to the movements, real leadership, and real solutions that emerge. I can go back to the awe and reverence I feel for this magnificent planet and the fierce love that lives in my heart, a mixture of tenderness and fire.
How to dig deeper into your climate feelings:
- Listen to Dr. Katherine Wilkinson’s guided meditation at www.climatewayfinding.earth.
- Then, journal: What feelings arise within you about the earth, water, sky, and beings? How do you feel holding the climate crisis in your head… your heart… your hands?
Adapted from Climate Quest: Healing ourselves and the planet we call home © 2026 Written by Dr. Katherine K. Wilkinson (Amber Lotus/Andrews McMeel 2026). Art by Ampersand.
