Therapy thoughts from the end of the world

There’s a general but very palpable feeling amongst a lot of the people I encounter every week through my work: they are scared.

They’re scared because of the climate crisis. They’re scared for the economy. They’re scared when they think of employment stability. They’re scared because of war, genocide, global politics… because of this sense that the structures that once seemed to hold our world together are crumbling, or that they maybe never really existed in the first place.

It doesn’t take a brilliant psychoanalyst to recognize this fear, or to understand where it comes from.

In grad school, nobody taught me how to therapize someone through a global poly-crisis. There was no class on what to say when someone is worried contemporaneously about the economy collapsing, kids dying daily, the targeting of minorities, the future becoming harder and harder to conceptualize, and the world changing faster than any of us can process.

What I was taught was how to help people understand and manage anxiety, grief, uncertainty, overwhelm, and fear. I was taught how to sit with someone through hard things. A lot of therapy is about helping people make sense of what they’re feeling, where those feelings are coming from, and what might help. But there are moments when the source of the distress is so much bigger than any one person. There are things happening in the world right now that are frightening and uncertain, and it’s hard to know how to respond to them.

I felt something similar to this during the COVID lockdowns, before I started school to become a therapist. There was so much fear and uncertainty amongst everyone around me. I remember thinking about how many people needed support even when nobody really had concrete answers. I realized that if something like this ever happened again, I wanted to be in a position to help people through it, and this is actually a huge part of the reason I started doing the work that I do.

I try my best to stay informed, and I think that continuing to learn as the world grows and changes is an important part of my job. But I’m not a climate scientist, and I never will be. I’m not an economist, a career coach, or a fortune-teller. I will never have enough information to be able to tell you exactly how much of what you’re worried about is going to happen, what can still be stopped, what’s already happening, or what the world will look like ten years from now.

There is (very unfortunately) no breathing exercise that can fix climate change. There is no therapeutic insight that guarantees economic stability. I don’t have those answers.

One thing I feel like I can offer is the reassurance that I’m seeing the same things you are. I’ve watched the climate shift, and I read the same headlines as you. And I can stay with you while you figure out what all of that brings up within yourself. We can talk about the fear without trying to dismiss it, and look at what’s within your control and what isn’t. We can make space for grief, fear, anger, uncertainty, and whatever else is there.

I can’t tell you that everything is going to be okay, but I can tell you that you don’t have to sit with all of it alone.

I am here. I live in the same world you do. I can’t fix it or hand you the solution. But I am here, and I want to support you through it.

When the world feels overwhelming, what do you need from your therapist? What feels helpful, and what doesn’t? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.