During the unseasonably hot February last semester, I started to feel fatalistic about climate change. I lost my appetite when I touched the plastic cling films that wrapped around my favorite green peppers in the supermarkets. Things as unnoticeable as sipping coffee from disposable cups or throwing away food waste in takeaway boxes became anxiety-inducing. I got mad at myself for overtaking long-haul flights to visit ten countries on four continents over the past year. I locked myself in the dorm, filling my journal with pessimistic climate data and thinking that everything I learned and did at school was not alleviating climate change.

I was so convinced that it was too late to reverse the current climate trajectory. And one day, as an SUV passed by in front of me, leaving a trail of sand and dust, I burst into tears. When I told people that climate change was literally the first thing I thought about when I got up every morning, few people believed in it. They thought I was overreacting. They got worried as well: frankly, what was in urgent need of treatment was not the climate, but my concern.

While impatiently waiting for a spot at the fully booked school counseling services, I took a few days off from school. All my professors admitted that they didn´t know climate anxiety was a thing. I tried to bring up terms that may perhaps sound more familiar. Solastalgia, for example, describes the nostalgic feelings for the way the environment used to be. Or ecological grief, which refers to the feelings of longing or sadness based on changes in one´s ecosystems. Nonetheless, these terms didn´t exactly capture the almost intolerable distress I felt towards climate change. And climate anxiety is still unrecognized in therapy rooms and beyond.

Distress over global warming is increasing all over the earth. But when this feeling of helplessness about the planetary future starts ruining your daily life – and that's the part I struggled with the most while explaining to others – it requires more attention.

Sometimes I also doubt if climate anxiety is a post-materialist privilege: on both individual and national levels, people seem to only begin to worry about environmental issues when they do not have to worry about other more pressing issues such as poverty, inequality, hunger, and low-quality education. To put it in simpler words, many people are still focused on survival. They lack the money or mental space to worry about climate change. If I am already hurting so much, what about less privileged people?

However, climate change can exacerbate all the other problems facing humanity today. And this touches upon perhaps the most unsettling reality of all: that the ones most vulnerable to climate change are also the least responsible for it.

After days of contemplating with myself, my family, and my friends, I have learned to approach climate anxiety differently.

I have learned that, if I truly want to act upon climate change, transforming my overwhelming emotion into a motivator for change is more effective. In my journal, I jotted down a long list of things I want to do in the future: joining the reforestation effort in the Amazon, reporting on environmental issues, and hosting climate workshops for school children. I am still worried about climate change, but my worry shouldn't become a reason to give in, but rather an opportunity to figure out what I can do about it. Accordingly, more people should become worried about climate change!

From time to time, I even feel lucky that I worry about climate change, and that I haven't been blinded by wealth and location: while living a comfortable life in China and Norway, I had the opportunity to look away from this crisis. But I chose to talk, learn, and do something about it.

Many of the people dearest to me still do not see the urgency of combating climate change. My mom would order flowers online and throw them away every week. Some of my friends would buy clothes from those big fast fashion brands. Due to my climate anxiety, I used to (consciously or unconsciously) pass down judgments to them. It took some time, but eventually, I stopped scrutinizing every action of my own as well as others. Now, I just try to focus on what I can do – using whatever trepidations as motivations to act – as small as it can be.

These days, I still question myself whether what I am doing makes any difference to the current climate trajectory. But I hope that this positive dose of climate anxiety will push me to speak more and act more till the day our planet becomes healthy again.