Is Climate Anxiety Actually Healthy? With Climate Psychologist Steffi Bednarek

In this profound and paradigm-shifting episode of Straight Talking Sustainability, host Emma Burlow sits down with Steffi Bednarek, Director of the Centre for Climate Psychology and author of Climate Psychology and Change, to challenge one of sustainability's most damaging narratives: that feeling anxious about climate change represents a disorder requiring treatment.

Steffi flips this entirely, asking instead what is wrong with people who do not feel distressed, exploring workplace splitting that forces us to leave our values at the office door, and revealing how psychological frameworks can help sustainability professionals become "systems ninjas" rather than burnt-out martyrs fighting impossible battles alone.

Emma opens by acknowledging she has waited to dive into climate psychology for ages, recognising that the sustainability sector skirts across the top of psychological issues whilst maintaining a compliance-driven "tick this box, write that report, everyone will be fine" approach that fundamentally misunderstands how humans actually work.

The legacy of treating sustainability as purely technical implementation (tell people what they need to know, give them actions, expect compliance) has created an industry-wide blind spot: we are humans who happen to go to work, not rational machines that switch off emotions and values when the working day begins.

Steffi's background spans consulting on social impact for the Council of Europe and large NGOs, working on policy and strategy including UK domestic violence strategy, then training as a psychotherapist specifically to understand change at a deeper level.

Her key insight from therapeutic work: people arriving for therapy typically know exactly what needs to change, have read the books, tried the things, and say "here I am, I need your magic ideas to help me get from A to B." However, as an experienced therapist learns, this is just the story from their stuckness.

Neither client nor therapist will know initially what actually needs to happen to get unstuck; the real exploration begins when you stop accepting the presenting problem at face value.

This therapeutic insight applies directly to organisational sustainability work. Companies employ consultants saying "we need your advice on how to get from A to B," but Steffi works with complexity theory (Dave Snowden and Cynefin framework) which demands stepping back, really listening to what the main narrative does not pay attention to, and discovering that the story revealing itself is often a very different problem than the one initially presented.

The mechanistic paradigm (analyse something, identify what is needed, tell people to do more X) fundamentally fails because we do not live in fragmented contexts; we live in life, which changes constantly and places us in multiple contradicting contexts simultaneously.

Steffi introduces the concept of double binds: we are never just professionals, we are also mothers, friends, daughters, people socialised to believe success is important, children of ideology receiving mixed messages constantly.

Sustainability dialogue treats humans as though we operate in singular contexts, which makes sense during sealed conference events but collapses when people return home to financial worries, partners expecting certain lifestyles, and the recognition that changing careers (perhaps leaving marketing jobs that contribute to overconsumption) might be fundamentally necessary but financially impossible when children have needs.

The conversation tackles the deeply problematic term "climate anxiety," which Steffi fundamentally opposes. The American Psychological Association defines it as heightened distress in relation to climate changes, but using the word "anxiety" immediately places this within clinical context where anxiety is pathologised, treated, medicated, and eliminated.

Steffi provocatively asks: what is wrong with people who do not feel distress? What has happened that enables someone to feel no anxiety about climate breakdown? The answer reveals the real clinical concern: dissociation, cut-offness from the world, creating bubbles where external reality is completely excluded.

Emma laughs out loud at this reframe, recognising the profound truth: feeling anxious about climate represents a healthy response to a dangerous situation, not a disorder requiring treatment.

The intervention does not belong with people feeling climate distress; it belongs with the numbness, the shutting down, the defensive jokes belittling sustainability ("all right Greenie, I'm off to Morocco for the weekend, don't tell Emma").

Steffi identifies this numbness as the real symptom that is clinically worrisome, noting that heroic culture celebrates lone individuals who weather storms unaffected, yet highest suicide rates occur in young men who have split off from everything that makes them vulnerable and fearful.

The episode explores workplace splitting and disavowal, describing how we genuinely care deeply about children and nature at weekends, feeling like good people with aligned values (100% true), but Monday morning alarm clocks trigger a slow shedding of these values.

By the time we enter workplaces where completely different value sets operate, we have left personal concerns behind because being a mother is not welcome in professional contexts. This splitting is not individual choice; it is survival strategy in systems that demand conformity. We cannot function in current circumstances without splitting, and everyone does it (even fervent activists split off aspects to cope).

Steffi describes how this enables informed climate conversations followed 10 minutes later by decisions completely undermining everything just discussed, allowing us to function without holding too much anxiety.

Gregory Bateson identified this as potentially the origin of schizophrenia: when you bring together worlds that do not work together, it is crazy-making. People who feel climate anxiety have greater capacity to not split off, to make connections across contexts, but the price for holding that integration (necessary for navigating towards safer futures) is anxiety and discomfort. Not fitting in as well becomes the cost of holding children's futures in mind whilst making work decisions.

Emma and Steffi discuss how this manifests in workplaces, with younger generations voicing distress and being pathologised as "problem generations" (the dreaded word "woke" comes up). Employers approach Steffi wanting to "fix" young people feeling too much, when actually the fragmentation sits in operational structures themselves.

Creating "sustainability champions" or dedicated roles represents the problem: Emma holds all of that concern, everyone else can focus elsewhere. This structural splitting makes resistance inevitable, yet sustainability communications typically try to break through resistance rather than becoming interested in it and giving people permission to reject sustainability messages.

Steffi introduces Internal Family Systems (IFS) methodology, which the Centre for Climate Psychology is scaling for organisational contexts. Rather than pushing for change (which creates resistance), IFS acknowledges multiple competing values simultaneously: the part wanting to attend the gym, the part saying work meetings are important, the part saying "but I'm important too, my body is important."

Instead of habitual resolution (work usually wins in cultures socialising us that way), IFS teaches stepping back, making multiple values conscious like a team meeting with different parts, and listening rather than forcing hierarchy.

This approach applies to complex climate decisions where people face genuine dilemmas (career change might be necessary but family has needs). The paradox of change states: the more I push for change, the more resistance I build.

Conversely, when I genuinely stay with "this is too much, this feels uncomfortable, maybe we won't solve this" without manipulation or hidden agenda to turn things around, often the other person moves towards "well I think we should try." Emma recognises this as the listening and space-holding work she increasingly emphasises in training, dropping the guard to acknowledge imperfection and genuinely wanting to hear what people think.

Steffi clarifies that organisations rarely truly want to solve these psychological dynamics because it means actual change: resourcing staff to become competent at working in complex adaptive systems, reading clashes and double binds and splitting, forming their own authority about next possible steps.

This represents fundamental transformation beyond four-hour workshops or talks (the typical requests Steffi receives). Instead, she established the Centre for Climate Psychology to resource staff outside organisational structures, where people hungry for this work (recognising the craziness of their situations and suffering from high burnout rates) can develop capacity.

The conversation concludes with Steffi's vision of people becoming "systems ninjas" when adequately resourced to stay in pressure cooker situations. Meeting others (often outside organisations) enables individuals to recognise that their agency exists everywhere they contact the system (not just at work).

Resourced people make differences they never believed possible, often women who initially think "I leave this stuff to others" who suddenly ask "why isn't anybody doing anything about this?" The key is making mental health independent of whether initiatives succeed or fail, measuring success by conditions created rather than outcomes controlled.

Steffi emphasises that guilt and shame about "not doing enough" are not individual shortcomings. Adding...